The conspiracy theory bit

Due to popular request, by one person, here is the conspiracy theory bit,

In back rooms and bars, in garden sessions in the evening and in Christmas day pre-lunch sessions. When friends meet up for beers in cars parked in front of supermarkets for easy refills, in discussions around lunch times with the people you call colleagues the conspiracy theories abound and prosper. They are the grapevine of society, a countering force to the mainstream media, who give out re-fabricated versions of truth, whose own social and political bias can only prevent it from giving out objective information, where appearances are everything and the truth is merely a clay object to sit and mould to create whatever you want of it.

There are various aspects to it.

1) Burning the haystack to destroy the needle

Gaza anyone? indiscriminate aerial bombings have left the tigers no option but to retreat. Guerilla warfare is all very well when you're sure the enemy is not going to come in and bomb the whole jungle. It's all good when the enemy is too careful about not harming civillians to come in and target you, who are hiding amongst them. The haystack was burned down and the needles were wheedled out. International dissent is countered by promises of economic incentives (access to natural resources, investment opportunities potential harmful to the local economy, support at the UN by 'selling' our votes etc).

2) The new deal

Theories about a 'deal' back in the last presidential elections with regard to the prevention of voting of certain segments of the population were abundantly broadcasted through the grapevine, the new deal is a deal between the government and the tigers, huge payoffs were involved, the tigers agreed to get lost, the government made a hoo-ha about fighting and clearing up the area while there were no tigers really there.

The Ugly bit

This is where things get a bit ugly, if such a deal existed then what about the dead? the numbers of the dead have nowhere been as close to the magnitude as you would expect from such a clean up. But there is no denying that there are the dead.

If the deal was made, it was made so that only the higher echelons of the powerful on both sides would know. You can't have soldiers going home and talking about deserted towns and no resistance at all offered by the LTTE, or vice versa. So fighting was staged, people were sacrificed, but not as many as would have been sacrificed if it was all absolutely real, but enough at least to convince those doing the fighting of its truth.

They're on the way to clearing up the whole country and yet, they haven’t found Prabhakaran. Haven't even found the usually heavily publicized underground hiding places, bunkers etc. Where are the rows of dead tigers on TV? Where are the rows of dead soldiers? Why is there such muted backlash from tigers and their supporters abroad?

The beautiful bit

Ah this is the beautiful bit. Why would the tigers retreat if they had nothing in it? surely just the money wouldn’t convince an idealist like Prabhakaran to back off and shut up?

The grapevine says that the Tigers still have powerful allies abroad, governmental allies. The deal was struck knowing this, the beauty of the deal is that after the North-east is cleared up, the leaders of the LTTE (the ones that have remained out of the spotlight, or ones that are puppets to the real ones staying being the curtains) will come back and proceed to participate 'democratically' in the governance of the North-east.

3) The man on the Moon

Its all a sham. Its just to win an election and consolidate power. We'll be back to fighting the war in no time.

...

War is war, but what is it exactly? is it really only just fighting with guns and other weapons and driving back the enemy? Can we really take sides when we look at the greater picture? why are we embroiled in false notions of 'patriotism' and 'right' and 'wrong' when deep down we know that it is all about economic incentives? why are we divided into countries anyway? aren’t we all a part of the same race? The human race?

enough with the philosophy one-oh-one (as David Blacker would say) but the grapevine has told me a few thing and i just thought I’d share them with you. We have to open our eyes, and accept that things may not always be what they seem. If the conspiracies are true, then there are reasons for the farce. People themselves may never accept the tigers as democratic leaders so maybe a whole fiasco had to be done up to at least give them the psychological satisfaction of a win. But then, what about the base of eelam supporters in the world? don’t they need and wont they clamor for a win too? Or has their support base eroded so far that such a series of events is made possible.

Whatever said and done, the conflict seems to be coming to a close. Even the grapevine, usually very skeptical, seems to be convinced that the war as we know it has come to an end. But the way it was brought to an end, and how it ended, may have deeper political and economic implications than we can easily guess on our little island well into the future.