Terrorism - A crisis in Civilisation

Paliha Senanayake

BRUTALITY: Sri Lanka army, like many national security forces in the world, have comprehensive health facilities to the security personnel in order to maintain the morale of the forces.

Among the health perks extended to the Sri Lanka army personnel is the monthly consultation afforded to the expectant wives of the personnel by reputed gynaecologists at the army hospital located in the precincts of the Army headquarters in the high security zone in Colombo.

For years spouses of security personnel, be they officers or rankers have used this facility to ensure the safe passage of their offsprings to this world saving them a sizeable amount of money had they been made to visit the normal channelling centers patronized by the civilian population.

However, a particular event that took place on Tuesday the April 25, 2006, the usual consultation day for expectant mothers, disturbed the serenity and the calmness of the course of this event and momentarily shook the entire security apparatus of the country by the scruff of its neck!

A pregnant lady who was waiting for her turn at the consultation suddenly broke ranks and ran towards the motor vehicle that was taking the SL Army Chief General Fonseka for his mid day meal. Before the bystanders could realise what was happening this hitherto well composed lady was heading for a collision course towards Gen. Fonseka's vehicle.

A member of the vehicle escorts however in the confusion, just managed to obstruct the woman on her path as she blew herself in to smithereens, triggering a bomb kit she had been tying to her abdomen all this while. The resulting explosion instantly killed eight security personnel including many in the Army chief's escort and injured nearly 70 in the vicinity.

According to the information available this lady had been a regular visitor to the army hospital and had established a good rapport with the staff manning the consultation center and in fact had been a few months pregnant.

However since doubts have now surfaced with regard to her real identity as against what she may have pontificated, mystery still surrounds as to the real identity of the woman who had been on a suicide mission to assassinate the Sri Lankan Army Chief, hoodwinking the security staff at the Army Head Quarters for months!

In the Sri Lankan society, expectant mothers are considered a blessing and are treated with a lot of respect. Even commercial establishments carry advertisements signifying respect for expectant mothers as a symbol of a virtuous society. Public transport reserve seats for mothers to be, after clergy and ahead of disabled persons.

Therefore it is always possible that the security staff manning the maternity consultation point at the army hospital were infected by this customary reverence of the SL society to expectant mothers and hence were not all that particular in performing their stringent security operations to the letter.

However, without taking cudgels for the apparent security lapses on the part of the army in a dicey period of nation's security, the quintessence here is the modus operandi the terrorist chose to employ for their suicide mission; A pregnant mother; A blessed member of the society!

Civil Society

The use of a pregnant mother as a suicide bomb has brought a new dimension in the deployment of suicide bombers against unsuspecting enemy targets. Since this particular day, the pregnant mother fraternity found to their chagrin that they have been suddenly been converted to be the most suspicious characters overnight, from being the most blessed, in the same social milieu.

Women's organisations protested against this outrageous act. Other social organisations expressed concern. But this is what a terrorist organisation could do.

They choose the most unlikely scenarios to execute their macabre designs.

A May day rally was chosen to bomb President Premadasa who was known as the 'small man's President'! Babu, the suicide who killed Premadasa was planted in the Premadasa inner circles at the time the LTTE was having 'peace talks' with him enjoying all the concessions including arms doled out to the LTTE.

An attentive listener at an election rally at the height of the election campaign got closer to the stage and bombed the then opposition leader Gamini Dissanayake. Rajiv Ghandhi bend down to acknowledge the sublimity of a supporter who worshipped him and garlanded him when he got blown off!

A cheering woman almost blew off Chandrika Kumaratunga. Lalith Athulathmudali was shot at and not blown off in a charged up political atmosphere to implicate Government involvement to assassinate him. 650 police personnel in the East who abruptly lost contacts with the Government, accepted the LTTE offer of clemency and surrendered to the LTTE. They were straight away taken to the jungle, lined, shot and buried in a mass grave!

Call it treachery or by any other name but the reality is you wouldn't know what to expect next from these terror tigers who will leave no stone unturned to get their target. Once the target is decided upon, human emotions and civilised norms in the society are discarded with contempt. Such norms are in fact used to make their target complacent and palatable.

All what matters is the accomplishment of their target and nothing else that matter. Over the years the LTTE has perfected this art of using the civilised norms in a society as cover to outrage it. Hence with the LTTE around anything could happen and the next suicide bomb kit could reach you wrapped around an infant!

Ever since humankind evolved on this earth and began to reason out things they realised that it is for the greater good of each and all to establish collective civilised norms and standards in the society they live in. The human emotions created inherent bonds which became imperative in the survival of the family and the propagation of humankind.

Beyond these emotions, certain values and norms were established at the family level as well as at the society level by establishing practices on the basis of consensual evolution.

With time these norms and values transformed in to traditions and cultural practices and the advent of religious leaders in different parts of the world at different times, added a religious fervour to these traditions and cultural practices quenching the man's need to comprehend the inexplicable.

Democracy

Advancement of a civilisation is the advancement or the building up on the accepted practices and norms the society has already established.

A collective effort on the part of the Government and the society in preserving and advancing these norms and standards would beget the confidence of the average man instilling a sense of safety and sustenance in him. But when organisations such as the LTTE try to exploit such civilised standards in humanity for their own selfish ends it brings the man's faith in the social order to question. Such a breach of faith could be very serious since it could crack the very foundation on which the civilised human society is founded!

Terrorism stands out in its use of terror tactics as against the use of the 'element of surprise' in guerrilla tactics to wrestle the advantage to dominate a particular area or a community. Terrorism terrorize its subjects into submission and obsequiousness.

The chopping off of the hand by the LTTE of the only person who cast his vote at the Mulaitivu polling booth during the recent presidential election is a case in point. The LTTE also eliminate all the people with dissenting opinions.

They terrorized, the professionals by assassinating Neelan Thiruchelvam; intellectuals by assassinating Rajani Thiranagama, politicians by killing them by the dozens, members of the journalistic fraternity, by silencing them permanently. Even the members of the civil society, the very people against whose liberation they pontificate to dedicate themselves for, have been murdered in cold blood for not falling in line with the LTTE.

In a terror state extra judicial killings are the rule and not the exception. Fascist system of Governance is the only way a terror organisation would know to run a state and a democratic system with all the checks and balances would be ineffective and hence anathema to them.

In which other country, whether it be a democracy, thearocracy, monarchy or even a feudal system, do communal groups have 'sole representatives'? Hence anybody advocating either self rule to the LTTE or eulogizing their ways would be advocating against the accepted cannons of civilisation, religion and the democratic principles of governance.

Such an attempt, in whatever guise would be tantamount to beguiling a fascist state on this land, which will first bring its immediate citizens under the LTTE jack boot and then pose the biggest threat to world peace with the intransigent terrorists ways.

Self immolation

The very act of suicide bombing itself has become another serious threat to today's global civilisation, empirically it has been exceedingly evident that the human mind is capable of reaching the depths of insanity when obsessed with either love or hate towards a target.

It was the Japanese 'kamikazi' warriors, overawed by their extreme patriotism to the motherland and their antipathy towards the enemy, who first introduced this art of suicide missions to the world.

The recorded human history replete with all the destructive events will stand testimony to this. To associate the word 'humanity' with only the benign things, is a misnomer of optimism since it is these very humans who have vandalised, brutalised and terrorised their fellow human beings for years.

Shoko Ashahara, a Japanese, was the leader of the Aum Supreme Truth Sect that commanded 10, 000 followers in Japan and he ordered the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killing 12 innocent persons and injuring nearly 5000 in 1995. That was in the name of supreme truth! Young minds with their penchant for change show special vulnerability to destructive concepts.

Patricia Hearst or Patty Hearst as she was popularly known was a young woman from a balanced and affluent background in the United States who had nothing to do with rebel politics.

She was abducted by rebel terrorists as she happened to be present during a bank hold up by a terrorist group of South American origin.

After abduction and capture she became a devotee of their cause and took part in hold ups and robberies with the terror group, killing innocent people in the name of their cause.

She was later arrested by FBI during a bank robbery and was put on trial.

During the trial she appealed for clemency on the grounds that she took part in all the criminal activities 'against her free will and in an imbalanced state of mind'.

Some die in their effort to help Prabhakaran to achieve his cause and some others die because they have stood in the way in achieving this cause.

The fact however is that they all die and so far 70.000 lives have been lost in this pursuit. The question however is, that how many more will have to die before this cause is realised? Then again what would be the position after realising this 'cause'? Would the killings end or with a despot in command who only knows one way communication, surrounded by sole less robots, would that only create a platform for more killings bringing about a crisis in civilization.