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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
“The media have been criticized for playing into terrorists’ hands by
giving them prime-time coverage and, many times, seeming to side with
them, at least in their aspirations. Yet news and commentary can also
provide an effective weapon against terrorism: truth. Central to the
environment that spawns and sustains terrorism is the web of deceit
spun by propaganda, politicking and popular misconception. Keen to
have their people rallying behind them, many governments perpetuate
the myth that their opponents are madmen bent on senseless violence.
Terrorist groups draw moral and material succor from the fiction that
their acts will eventually bring victory. Many like the suicide bombers
of Tiger supreme Velupillai Prabhakaran see heroism, not bestiality, in
the explosive havoc they wreak on innocent bystanders.
Ordinary citizens are often ignorant of the underlying animosity and
injustice giving rise to conflict. So are the leaders and constituents of
powerful countries that can positively influence a fractious situation.
By clarifying the issues and reporting the facts, the media take the
crucial peace-making role which only an impartial observer can play.
That requires, of course, a staunchly objective eye disabused of
partisan misinformation, much of it from the media themselves. While
the news may not always tell the truth about terrorists, it is the only
line of defense against the lies that keep their guns loaded and their
ranks growing.”
While these last two paragraphs contained little vignettes of truth, still I felt
that they mixed a load of self-serving applause for the media and subtle
condemnation on Pirabhakaran’s adopted strategy in his war against the Sri
Lankan state. Thus, I engaged the editor of Asiaweek by sending a response
to the above-mentioned editorial.
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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
“In my opinion, your sermon that ‘In the War against terrorists, truth is
the best weapon’, belongs to the world of fairies and angels. I live in
real world where the truth is always hidden or restrained from
revealing its naked beauty.
Truth is massaged and masked by the media in many countries, of
which Singapore is an extreme example. To sell a thousand copies in
Singapore, many competing international journals would compromise
real truth for ‘massaged truth’. Have you forgotten that recently your
sister paper, Time, received a reprimand and apologized for shading the
truth in its depiction of football great O.J.Simpson in its cover? Even
Asiaweek sometimes twists the truth to suit its stand. For example, in a
foot-note to my [previously] published letter, you have stated that you
did not include the name of JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera in the list of
Sri Lanka’s prominent assassination victims, because that list was
‘confined to political, civic and military leaders’. The massaged truth in
your explanation is easily recognizable to all Sri Lankans, since
Rohana Wijeweera was a politician and he even contested the 1982
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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
presidential election.
Truth is also decorated by almost every practising politician in this
globe according to his or her fancy. Show me a politician who trumpets
the truth in its naked beauty and I will show you a saint. Even the
reputation of a living saint like Mother Teresa has come under attack
recently due to her past cozying with politicians who have had a
penchant for truths of dubious variety.
More seriously, it is an open secret that the Intelligence services of
many countries ‘manufacture or clone’ truths according to their whims.
So you have the alphabet soup of CIA, (formerly) KGB, MI6,
MOSSAD, RAW and ISI working overtime to manipulate the political,
ethnic and religious frictions prevailing in many countries. I find it
perplexing that in your sermon, you have not bothered to mention the
questionable roles played by these Intelligence agencies as creators of
‘cloned truths’. But, you have identified Yassir Arafat, Gerry Adams
and Velupillai Prabhakaran as representatives of ‘terrorists’.
I wonder why have you not written a word about the types of truths the
CIA and MOSSAD had spread in the past about Mr.Arafat, or how the
truth manufacturing department of MI6 works round the clock to
slander the IRA or how RAW released a truth about the violent death
of Prabhakaran in the jungles of Vanni five years ago. If you have a
sincere campaign to abolish all the Intelligence agencies in the world to
save the real truths from their ‘cloned creations of truths’, you can
count on me to raise my hand.”
“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat
them as whole truths that plays the devil.”
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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
“…In Sri Lanka last year, we had a $3 million aid program and a
two-way trade with over $1.5 billion. Trade, not aid, is the wave of the
future… In Sri Lanka, where heavy fighting between government and
LTTE forces continues, the United States supports a negotiated
political settlement to the conflict. Last week’s massive bomb attack in
Colombo only underlines the importance of ending the fighting. We
believe the Sri Lankan Government’s wide-ranging proposals for
constitutional reform are a solid basis for a peaceful solution to this
tragic conflict. Earlier this month we designated the LTTE as a terrorist
organization for the purposes of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act. We call upon the LTTE to stop its indiscriminate attacks
and support a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Sri Lanka.”
Mr.Doug Bereuter, one of the committee members, raised the issue of LTTE
to Mr.Inderfurth for additional clarification, as follows:
Mr.Doug Bereuter: Just a few minutes ago, you mentioned the designation of
the LTTE as a terrorist organization. I think all of us in Congress were
pleased to see the Administration release that list of terrorist organizations.
Our expectation would be that this will place a cramp on their fund raising
opportunities in this country…How do we now plan to react to past Sri
Lankan Government’s request for assistance, and how specifically will our
domestic law enforcement agencies attempt to implement the requirements
of the act, of the list that has been promulgated under the act which lists the
LTTE as a terrorist organization?”
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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
(2) “The FBI and other law enforcement agencies will be pursuing this –
indeed, already are.”
(3) “So the terrorist designation does not speak to any further
cooperation we may have with the Government of Sri Lanka. It very
much relates to what we will do in this country [USA]”.
(4) “in terms of their insurgency and their war in the North dealing with
the LTTE, this is something that is very much a Sri Lankan matter.”
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Fact 3: FBI’s annual budget in 1993 was 2.0 billion US dollars. By 1998, it
reached 3.0 billion US dollars. Currently the FBI budgest stands at 3.6
billion US dollars. [cover story in the U.S.News & World Report, June 18,
2001, p.17].
Fact 4: ‘Terrorism’ was the theme song FBI played to the decision makers
in the Capitol Hill to receive funding. The cover story on FBI which
appeared in the U.S.News & World Report of June 18, 2001 stated, “The
engine driving the budget increases, of course, is terrorism. Since 1993, the
FBI’s counter-terrorism budget has exploded, from $77 million to $376
million. The biggest increases came after the carnage wrought by McVeigh
in Oklahoma City. Just recently, Freeh [the ex-Director of FBI, who was a
President Clinton appointee] asked for an additional $26 million to expand
a joint terrorism strike force. Not surprisingly, the terrorism pitch is a
winning one on Capitol Hill.”
“Freeh noted in his retirement statement that during his tenure [i.e.,
between 1993 and mid 2001] the Bureau [FBI] has more than doubled
its overseas presence… By the time he leaves, at the end of June,
Freeh, …has overseen the largest expansion of the FBI in the agency’s
history, and assured its central role in national-security issues, very
possibly becoming more powerful than J.Edgar Hoover…
Relations between Freeh and the Clinton White House soon
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Taken together, the above facts [i.e, Karl Inderfurth’s testimony, the retired
FBI director’s penchant for expanding his area of control beyond the
borders of USA, and Clinton administration’s numerous scandals – sexual
and political – and diversionary bullying tactics] led me to infer that for the
FBI to receive additional annual funding from federal budget, it had to show
‘targets’ which it was intending to pursue. And LTTE became one of the 30
‘nominally acceptable targets’ to be included in the US State Department’s
list of ‘Foreign Terrorist Organizations’. This situation may persist until the
Eelam Tamils generate a vigorous political lobby in the USA. One should
note that the power players of American politics hesitate to label the Irish
Republican Army as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ since the Irish vote
lobby is powerful.
Relevant sections on the consultancy for the Sri Lankan army by the
Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), which is an American ‘gun for
hire’ soldier company and the comments of Stan Correy (the producer),
David Isenberg (of the Center for Defence Information in Washington DC),
Paul Harris (a British correspondent), and General Ed Soyster (MPRI’s
spokesman) are provided below.
Stan Correy: MPRI’s success as a corporate army role model comes about
because of its work in Croatia in 1995.
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Stan Correy: MPRI do deny that they led the campaign in Krajina.
General Ed Soyster is MPRI’s spokesman. He is also a former head of
defence intelligence for the US military… However the ‘guns for hire’
label does still [hangs] around MPRI. The phrase ‘US military advisor’
has a rather nasty echo in recent US history. After all, it was US military
advisors who began the protracted US involvement in Vietnam. So when
it leaked out last year [1996] that private American advisors, identified as
MPRI, were said to be taking a contract to train soldiers in one of modern
Asia’s civil wars, media alarm bells began to ring.
Paul Harris explains how it all started at a going-away party in Sri Lanka’s
capital, Colombo.
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dodge the column’. Yes, MPRI did go to Sri Lanka, but the contract to
train the Sri Lankan army was never signed.
Stan Correy: I suppose what people are saying is because you are a US
company and have the military background, and do work by the State
Department, your presence could be seen as American involvement.
David Isenberg: A company like MPRI stands at the pinnacle of this new
hierarchy of private sector military firms. There’s intense interest, because
on the one hand they are private, and independent, but on the other hand
they are very close to the US government military elite. In fact all their
overseas contracts are vetted by the State Department. Couldn’t they very
easily become another arm of the US government, doing what the State
doesn’t want to do directly with its own military?…”
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The Pirabhakaran Phenomenon Part 17 http://www.sangam.org/PIRABAKARAN/Part17.htm
The oft-suggested reasons for this 1997 American action against the LTTE,
such as the ‘long record of LTTE’s atrocities’, Lakshman Kadirgamar’s
active international campaigning for strictures against LTTE and the
Sinhalese expatriate community’s powerful backing of some US
Congressional leaders are merely half-truths.
How did Pirabhakaran cope with this setback? Since four years have
passed, one can see that he did not take any rash and impulse-oriented
decisions to confront the American policy. In this, he had shown
maturity in leadership. He knew who his adversaries were (and are),
and Americans are not in his list of adversaries. I wonder whether he
could have thought that the 1997 labeling as ‘foreign terrorist
organization’ by the US State Department was nothing but a painful
thorn in his flesh. A guerrilla warrior who has survived in jungles also
would have learnt something about how to extricate the thorn without
compounding the pain. (Continued)
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