Like PLO With Arafat

BBC reports: Peace fears as Sri Lanka mourns Lakshman Kadirgamar.

Another fateful assassination has struck at the heart of Sri Lanka's establishment. Suddenly, people are expressing fear that the peace process might come unglued.

Peace process?

There is no peace process with terrorists. Why is it that the world does not understand this basic reality? Terrorists have no political ends, notwithstanding their pious claims of nationalist struggle. All they seek is murder -- because all they know is murder.

Let's please stop characterizing cold-blooded murder as politics by other means. Those who do, the root-cause crowd, cannot evade personal and moral complicity in encouraging these fanatic killers.

We learnt this in Palestine, where Yasser Arafat's PLO remained a terrorist organization all through the so-called peace process. When, in 2000 in Taba, it was offered a deal as good as any possible, it turned it down. In so doing, it demonstrated that the needs of Palestine's long-suffering people was not the issue for Mr. Arafat -- indeed, he needed such suffering to continue so that he would have a convenient cause to sustain his criminal-terrorist enterprise (one that made him a very wealthy man even as Palestine withered).

No peace process was possible, we finally understood, until Mr. Arafat was dead. Mercifully, his demise came sooner than later.

The same is true with LTTE; Pirbhakaran is like Arafat. Only upon his passing (or incarceration for hard-life in Tihar) can the Jaffna Tamils participate in ending Sri Lanka's long national nightmare. Since he has prevented the rise of natural successors, the LTTE will blessedly die with Pirbhakaran.

And, while we await Pirbhakaran's (hopefully excruciating) passing, the Jaffna Tamils need to be clearly told that there's no pot of Eelam at the end of LTTE's violent rainbow. India -- the uber-power in the region -- will not accept any devolution of power to Tamils, unless LTTE is out of the picture. This position should not be up for any negotiation. If Jaffna Tamils prefer the LTTE to civilized negotiation, well then, they are welcome to remain frozen in their little corner of Tiger hell -- no one will come to help them out.

[Note to the "we must examine the root-cause of terror" crowd: Please notice the clarity of this Hindu blogger's denunciation of Hindu terror in Sri Lanka -- something for you all to ponder.]