by Karthick RM, Sanhati, October 10, 2012 - Countering insurgencies is as old as states and empires. As a concept, however, study in Counterinsurgency (COIN) gained momentum in the colonial period so as to deal with frequently occurring rebellions in colonies as well as to counter the “communist menace”. COIN grew as a science with late modernity and the rise of what ‘Taraki’ Sivaram) called “counter-insurgency nation-states”. We must understand that COIN has developed as a science, deployed by specific actors in specific conditions as a science. And by virtue of its being a science, each deployment is closely followed, studied and applied by various states engaged in COIN operations according to the particular conditions they encounter. Some refined political analysts, understanding the geo-strategic importance of Sri Lanka, have argued that the Sri Lankan war machine was ideologically and materially equipped in its COIN operations against the Tigers by a confluence of world powers. Reflecting on this, Mark Whitaker writes in his biography of ‘Taraki’ Sivaram that “by the middle 1990s Sivaram had come to view Sri Lanka’s conflict as a kind of military-political laboratory in which the various repressive forces of late modernity (local and international) were testing their clever, often cruel, counter-insurgency tactics”. Just that the lab rats favoured by the world powers in the island had genocidal intentions, Karthick RM argues in this article.

By Karthick RM (Research scholar in political theory at the University of Essex), Sanhati.com, December 17, 2011 - The political resolution adopted by the 5th conference of the Co-ordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) on March 2011 said that “the defeat of LTTE is an immense loss to the struggling people of the world.” LTTE was not defeated because the Sri Lankan government was strong, LTTE was defeated because the LTTE was strong and it presented a model of development and resistance that was not in tune with the paradigms of the world imperialist forces. The credit for the military defeat of the LTTE then should not be given to the ‘genius’ of the Lankan government but rather to the calculated designs of the geo-strategic compulsions of world powers that had much to lose had a Tamil Eelam been formed in the wake of the Tigers. The weakening, distortion and the destruction of their tradition are a must not just for Sri Lanka but for these powers as well. Marx said that life may die but death must not live. Eelam Tamils were left to die. If the now ‘united Sri Lanka’ is allowed to live, as a system it is not only hostis Tamil generis, its very idea is hostis humani generis, an idea that the resistance of a people can be crushed by brute military force, pillage and unrestrained colonization. Its sinister implications for other people’s movements in the region and in the world should be obvious. The idea and the system need to be intellectually and politically defeated even as the tradition of the Tamil resistance is defended.

But this again should not lead to an over-confident assumption that the tradition of the LTTE cannot be defeated. Highlighting the role of principled subjective commitment even if there was no guarantee of success Lenin polemically asked “shall socialists behave like socialists or really breathe their last in the embrace of the imperialist bourgeoisie?” So the question we can ask is whether Eelam Tamils will behave like the inheritors of the Tigers’ tradition or will they walk like sheep into the welcoming arms of those who facilitated their genocide? For just as the LTTE tradition is the only potent force that can give the Tamils a practical rigor, an idea of an egalitarian society, a sense of dignity, a collective hope – all of which are necessary for future struggles to defeat the oppressor regime - the only force potent enough to defeat the LTTE tradition are the Tamils themselves if they waver in their understanding or commitment. And this is something that the oppressors know very well. And if there could be a worse crime in the history of the Tamils than Mullivaikaal, it would be if the latter is allowed to happen.

By Karthick RM, Countercurrents.org, 28 November, 2011 - The ‘Tamil Sovereignty Cognition’ declaration that was released today (Nov 27, 2011), on the momentous occasion of Heroes Day, appears as a significant step in building a political consensus among the Tamils, especially the Eelam Tamil diaspora, in order to pave a path for future politico-legal action that would ensure justice for the Eelam Tamils. It is clear from the declaration that the (much abused) terms ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ are impossible to think of without addressing “the chronic national question of the Eelam Tamils in the island, where genocidal and structural genocidal approaches continuously deployed against the Tamil people in their homeland in the North and East of the island, by the Sri Lankan state with tacit approval of world powers”.

By Karthick RM, October 1, 2011 - The regimes in Cuba and Venezuela not only appear as what a Tamil leftist described as “clowns in the arena of left politics”, they end up as political opportunists by supporting mass murderers and despots like Rajapaksa who virulently implement neo-liberal policies in deed, but put up a sham ‘anti-Americanism’ in words. Maybe the radical left or whatever is left of it in Cuba should reread Lenin who said that “Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realise the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination i.e. the right to free political separation.” Maybe that would restore the red color to the pink left governments of Latin America and enable them to look at a fascist Sri Lanka and the Tamil Eelam struggle that is fighting against it differently. Genuine anti-imperialism does not lie in mere abstract anti-American/anti-west sloganeering. In the wake of a ‘post-national world’ discourse framed by apologists of multi-national capitalism and equally regressive capitalist-bureaucratic models as upheld by states like Turkey, China and Russia - both aiding the logic of genocidal states like Sri Lanka, anti-imperialism in concrete requires solidarity with national liberation struggles and their progressive representatives. Anything else is mere social-opportunism that can only promote a world-wide strengthening of forces of reaction. And then history will not absolve the pink left states, but condemn them to its dustbins.

By Karthick RM, 03 September, 2011, Countercurrents.org - In the discussions that have taken place on the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka, the concerned subjects have been referred to, even by well meaning comrades, as ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’. Whereas the subjects, if one should go by the term used by various Tamil activists, intellectuals and just common people who stand for the struggle for a Tamil homeland, refer to themselves as ‘Eelam Tamils’. What is in a name, as the bard asked ages ago? While the word ‘Eelam’ has been part of Tamil vocabulary for ages to denote the geographical entity which is called Sri Lanka today, the latter name became popular only a few decades back. All the same, today’s ‘Eelam’ has a completely different meaning and connotation from the ‘Eelam’ of the ancient period. Followers of national liberation movements across the world be it Palestine, Kurdistan or Chechnya, would know that the terms used to describe the people and the geographies they contest were not the same in the past as they are now. Of more value than the etymology of self-defining terms of oppressed nationalities is the deployment of such terms in their present resistance and thus, the contemporary usage of such terms is more political than anything else. Keeping this argument in mind, the article seeks to explain the politics of the term ‘Eelam Tamil’ and what it means to the Tamil resistance and its participants.

By Karthick RM, Countercurrents.org, 07 August, 2011 - Sound, it can be said, is relative to the silence that precedes it. Deeper the silence, louder the noise. There was indeed relative silence in the world on the Sri Lankan war and the Eelam Tamils’ struggle, a silence that benefited a fascist state the most. The ‘Killing Fields’ video of Channel 4 came with a devastating bang and exposed to the world the horror that was Sri Lanka’s ‘war on terror’. While the news was already old for Tamil activists, something that many have been writing about for long, the powerful visuals of the 48 minute documentary created shock, especially among the ruling elites of Sri Lanka.

By Karthick RM, Countercurrents.org, 11 May, 2011 - Justice Rajinder Sachar, former Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi, talked about the necessity of taking the report seriously. “Mention any crime, you will find out that it was committed by the Sri Lankan army.” He said that the government of Sri Lanka should be held accountable for its crimes and blasted the President of Sri Lanka for restricting the access of UN panel members to investigate human rights violations in the country. He also lamented the partisan nature of the legal system in Sri Lanka. “India should not remain silent about the barbarism in Sri Lanka. It is not an option,” he said.