Smart extremists know when to give up

Author: Rover

Throughout history, various violent extremists have been in positions of power or have tried to achieve positions of power, but of these, the smarter ones knew when to give up, they knew when to strategize. Here I will take two examples to depict a success and failure, of two extremists, from our own region, and try to illustrate this point; while briefly describing the repercussions of these to Sri Lanka.

King Asoka (2nd century B.C.) inherited a huge kingdom through succession, from King Bindusara (his father) and king Chandragupta (his grandfather). Chandragupta’s Maurya kingdom extended from present day Afghanistan to Mysore (in India); some of the most Westerly parts of this kingdom were wrestled away from even one of Alexander the Great’s most ablest generals Seleucus, highlighting the Indian king’s adeptness at waging war. Asoka during his early tenure adopted an expansionist scheme, to further the borders of his Maurya kingdom; his greatest war was with the massive state of Kalinga (present day Orissa), a bloody battle that left thousands of civilians and soldiers dead.

Asoka’s war with Raja Padmanaphan (king of Kalinga) was thought to have been fought on the Dhauli hills that borders Daya river, and when the war ended, legend says that the river ran red from the blood of slain 100,000 Kalinga Deshis (civilians and soldiers) and 10,000 of Asoka’s soldiers. Nevertheless, this was a great triumph for Asoka as even his grandfather (Chandragupta) had not been able to annex the Kalinga desha, despite waging an earlier war. So king Asoka was a violent extremists, who went to extreme measures to annex a kingdom that his predecessors failed to win over. However, soon after the Kalinga war was won he changed completely; this was his culmination point (“Culmination point” is also a term that Clausewitz introduced, in his book “On War”).

Though Asoka had become a Buddhist just prior to the Kalinga war, he only became pious in this order after associating Sangha (Buddhist clergy). This association changed him completely and led to the formation of the FIRST Buddhist state in the world. He not only gave up violence, but encouraged other states (Antiochnus Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Antigonus of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene, Alexander of Epirus, Kingdom of Chola and Pandyans and Thambapanni – Ceylon or Sri Lanka) to do so. His system of morality is called Dharma (Dharma included ideas such as proper treatment and liberality towards relations, friends, gurus of other religions, companions, servants, poor and the unfortunate; gentleness, saintliness, devotion to morality; prevention of cruelty to animals; and moderation in spending ect.) and the formulation of Dharma helped Buddhism to become a universal religion. To make sure that Dharma reached all people, he formed Dharma Mahamatras (ministers) who spread the message. He also initiated Dharma Yatra, to visit far off places that were significant to Buddhists and Buddhism. He prohibited killing animals, especially on Buddhist Uposath days (full moon or Poya days). He also formed a welfare system for the people and beasts. All in all, he helped his own people and the whole world in general (especially Sri Lanka) by giving up his extremist ways and actively spreading the message of Dharma.

Velupillai Prabhakaran is also an extremist, but who didn’t know when to give up, and this has brought about his demise, together with the demise of the people that he aimed to represent. Unlike King Asoka, Prabhakaran does not have a succession worth speaking of, as a teenager he was an ordinary boy who extraordinarily dropped out of school (a high school dropout may sound like nothing much for a person living in the West, but it is a big deal for someone in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans -both the Sinhala and Tamil people- care enormously about their education, this is what they strive to do more than anything else). Then he got interested in Tamil nationalistic politics and formed a violent organization called the Tamil New Tigers (1973) and later changed it to Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelaam (LTTE), these organizations he formed and nourished explicitly to fight for a small stretch of Sri Lanka which they call Eelaam; due to the unconventional tactics use in this fighting, LTTE is now infamous as a terrorist organization. His violent war with the Government of Sri Lanka (GSL) over the past 30 years has left more than 75,000 Sri Lankans dead.

The culminating point at which Praphabhakaran should have given up terrorism was when he signed the peace agreement (CFA – Cease Fire Agreement in year 2002) with Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe (then prime minister of Sri Lanka, who is now the leader of the opposition). The CFA gave LTTE a vast area of land to rule, together with several other attractive perks (such as cessation of aerial bombardment and the naval, and right of self-administration, to name just a few, which the government didn’t gain anything out of, but yielded to the efforts of the LTTE). One of the modalities of the ceasefire is so ridiculous that I still sit down and think when I read it: “Modality 1.3 The Sri Lankan armed forces shall continue to perform their legitimate task of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka without engaging in offensive operations against the LTTE.”. However, the Prabhakaran did not realize this, and did all he could to violate the CFA; not stopping at that, he actively used terrorists tactics to prevent a democratic election being held in Sri Lanka, resulting in the defeat of Ranil W. - this was Prabhakaran’s Waterloo.

Sometime after President Mahinda Rajapakse came into power, the LTTE actively engaged him into an all out war in 2007. However, the “unity of effort”(again a Clausewitz principle) between the political entity and the armed forces led to the defeat of the LTTE, which is as I write is restricted to a very small area in Wanni. The whereabouts of LTTE chief remains unknown and it is believed that he may have fled to another country.

The people under the LTTE also suffered much; and in general Sri Lanka’s economy also didn’t do as well as it should have perform. The brief respite the civilians of Wanni had under the CFA was soon over and Prabhakaran did all that he could to terrorize the civilians (taxation, forced recruitment for military and other duties, use as human shields, use as suicide bombers and to support their operations, ect.). All this happened because the LTTE supporting Tamil diaspora put all their eggs in the Velupillai Prabhakaran basket. A basket that held an illiterate, bigoted imbecile, who did not know that he had already got what he had been fighting for, several years ago!

In conclusion, a smart Indian king (who was once an extremist) enormously helped Sri Lanka in defining its moral and spiritual background while a bigoted mindless extremist fool of a Sri Lankan has pulled us all down into a pit where it will be hard for us to clamor out of.