An ‘Other’ Terrorist Group Has Been Crushed

Family Security Matters » Publications » An ‘Other’ Terrorist Group Has Been Crushed

The world press has always focused on Palestinian terrorists and secondarily on al Qaeda and the Taliban, with little attention to the longest continuous terrorism operation, the Tamil Tigers vs. Sri Lanka. This raises the old chestnut: if a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, would there be sound?

• Palestinians. The once secular Palestinian Liberation Movement had both Muslims and Christians among its members. In 1947, they rejected the UN’s mandate that both Israel and Palestine should share the old Palestine province and have waged – and lost – a number of wars against Israel, despite Arab military support. Now the demographics and politics of the Palestinians have changed. No longer a political movement, it is an Islamist movement using brainwashing, suicide bombing, and direct terrorism against civilians. Graft and corruption, in addition to daily intimidation against those who protest, is making Palestinian life terrible. Even the exit of Israelis in Gaza has not made their lives better, under the nasty rule of Hamas. Any Palestinians who can, including almost all Arab Christians, are fleeing for life abroad.
• Taliban. The Taliban, an Islamofascist group, made a living hell for Afghanistan when in power, until defeated by the American invasion. Unfortunately, they were not wiped out; they lived on in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, among their equally fanatical fellow Pashtoon tribesmen, and have been protected by a foolish Pakistani government, particularly the Intelligence Service, that wrongly perceives India as a bigger threat than the Militant Islamists.

Nobody fussed much when Taliban threw acid and poison gas at Afghan schoolgirls, trying to force these schools to close. But when they began taking territory beyond their region – including several provinces very close to Pakistan’s capital, everyone was concerned and Pakistan embarrassed. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and an Islamist takeover would be very bad for the neighborhood, if not the world.

• FARC. Colombia has also suffered from decades of terrorist activity from FARC, Maoist and vicious. Although they originally had social injustice as an issue, they murdered, kidnapped, attacked police stations, and intimidated the rural natives, and financed this movement through cocaine trafficking. They are coming to an end, at last.
• Tamil Tigers. And finally, Sri Lanka, a Buddhist island at the tip of India (formerly Ceylon), has been dogged by a three-decade-long terrorist movement by a Sri Lankan religious minority, Tamil Hindus from southern India. They too were responding to injustice, but their charismatic leader was prepared to stop at nothing to get independence for his people and power for himself. They kidnapped, murdered, blew up cars and buildings, killed and wounded hapless civilians, and even assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister. They were the first to use suicide bombers. Nothing could make them stop – until now.
• Commonalities. All of these groups share decidedly fascist movements, some Islamic, one Hindu, and one Maoist. Their political aim is to force all who do not agree with them to be liquidated and to preside over an imaginary Brave New World.
• Stamping them out. The Sri Lankan military finally went for the end game, waging an all out war, taking no prisoners, but at terrible cost to civilians. The brutality of the Sri Lankan military scarcely received the notice of the western world’s idealists, nor has the brutality of the Colombian military in fighting FARC. The violence of the Pakistani military and the Russians in Chechnya is certainly not observed first hand by world press, as are American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sri Lanka got unconditional surrender, which the others want too, with a blind eye from human rights watchers.
• Asymetrical Attention. During World War II, the Western allies declared that only unconditional surrender, not another ineffective armistice, would end that war against the Nazis and Japanese. Apparently Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Colombia have followed that example. Only Israel, which has never had an end game of exterminating Palestinians, gets the attention of the righteous when Israel responds to 50 years of attacks from their neighbors. Too bad that such righteousness is so one sided.