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Failed Attempt: Suicide Attack or Peace Process?

Failed suicide attacks by the Tamil Tigers have been few, in terms of not being able to liquidate the intended target. Even on such an occasion, one or several others were killed in the attack. The human weapons of the LTTE achieved huge success and wide publicity to its rationale for ethnic backlash from 1983. However, more than increased security checks and surveillance, the proceeding peace process thinned the suicide bombings. It is at this prime time on 7 July 2004, that a suicide bomber blew herself up at a Colombo police station reportedly the 263rd attack on the organization's honour roll.

The Sri Lankan government has strongly condemned the incident, calling it another assassination attempt for the Tamil politician Douglas Devananda who is also the minister for Hindu Cultural Affairs. "The perpetrators of this act show callous disregard for human lives and are reverting to violence as a means of settling disputes," the government statement said.

Silence from the LTTE seems to confirm their responsibility for the attack which bears all the hallmarks of their organisation. The LTTE's subsequent denial of authorship of the suicide bombing can be linked to the active involvement of the international community in Sri Lanka's peace process. However, as a Sri Lankan military spokesman remarked "it is too early to say whether the bomb blast was an act of war by the Tigers." By assumption, if the rebels intend to initiate the war again, it would be with a series of simultaneous bombings and not just one. Another assumption is that the bomber expected to be escorted to the police station and that was her intended target. Few analysts opine that the suicide mission was destined to assassinate Col. Karuna, who was believed to hole up in that building.

By and large the wide conception of this dreaded act is subscribed to LTTE and that the suicide bomber was apparently on a mission to assassinate the cabinet minister, Douglas Devananda, a fierce critic of the Tigers who publicly encouraged the LTTE's rebellious military commander Col. Karuna to enter mainstream politics. Despite its failure, the explosion marks a malevolent start to Sri Lanka's most-dreaded month of "Black July", when the Tigers, in the past, carried out either individual assassinations or attacks on economic and military installations to mark the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983. The last time the suicide bomber struck in the island was in October 2001, but the target, the then Prime Minister, Ratnagiri Wickremasinghe, escaped from the attack. Earlier a suicide bomber in Colombo killed a cabinet minister CV Gunaratne in June 2000.

The most prominent survivor of the LTTE's human bomb attack is Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka. A woman Tiger suicide bomber made an attempt on the life of Kumaratunga at an election rally in Colombo on 18 December 1999. Kumaratunga the first politician to survive such an attack had a miraculous escape but permanently lost sight in her right eye. On the same day, another suicide blast had occurred at an opposition election rally killing Maj Gen (Retd) Lucky Alagama, former Chief of Army Staff and others. At that time, analysts held that Alagama was targeted because he was reportedly tipped to be appointed as the Defence Minister of Sri Lanka if the UNP was to win the Presidential election.

Not many knew until recently that there is a separate wing in the LTTE known as Karum Puligal or Black Tigers to maneuver such suicide missions. The Black Tigers are constituted exclusively of cadres who have volunteered to sacrifice their life for the benefit of the organisation and its objective of Eelam. The mindset of the LTTE suicide bomber is distinct from his/her West Asian counterpart. The LTTE suicide bomber is motivated by his/her political environment as well as by the indoctrination carried out by the organisation. As Prabhakaran stated, "with perseverance and sacrifice, Tamil Eelam can be achieved in 100 years. But if we conduct Black Tiger operations, we can shorten the suffering of the people and achieve Tamil Eelam in a shorter period of time."

These suicide bombers have short-circuited the cry of an eye for an eye. They are beyond the reach of vengeance now and so that vengeance has become distinctly second order. While the animating 'why' of terrorism seems dark and difficult, there are answers that can lead to a solution some day. Until now, searches and arrests made on the basis of accurate and timely intelligence tip-offs have succeeded in eroding the LTTE's compartmentalized infrastructure to conduct suicide attacks. Therefore the response should not be just with the guns , but by seeking to create confusion, conflict and competition among the perpetrators, which the Sri Lankan government is conniving. In the end, however, what counts is what we fight for, not what we oppose.