And tigers will fly

The only point of confusion about Monday’s debut of the LTTE’s ‘air force’ is the number of aircraft used. The Tigers claim they sent two light aircraft hundreds of kilometres out from territory controlled by them to attack the Sri Lankan air force’s primary base on Colombo’s outskirts; the Lankan military say just one plane was used. But the outrageously audacious choice of target makes one thing clear: non-state actors cannot be permitted to maintain air strike capability. The air base is adjacent to Sri Lanka’s only international airport, and shares a runway with it. The prospect of the Tigers striking from the air magnifies many times over their capacity to inflict damage to life and property. Very detailed protocol guides the use of aircraft globally. A violently insurgent group like the LTTE has this week put in jeopardy even that. The LTTE must be immediately made aware that by this act, it stands to lose what is left of the tolerance overground it had gained by that now-tattered 2002 ceasefire.

And, for all the depressing news coming out of Sri Lanka this past year of escalated civil war — with 4,000 lives estimated to have been lost in 15 months — one still cannot discard the possibility of Colombo returning to negotiations with the LTTE. There is a sense, as the fight for territory intensifies in the north and the east, that the military and the Tigers are trying to reach a perceived position of strength to consolidate their respective bargaining positions.

This is why the Mahinda Rajapakse government needs to be more nuanced than it has been in the year and half it has been in power. It has to distinguish — and be seen to be distinguishing — between the terror tactics of the LTTE and the aspirations of the Tamils conceded in the ceasefire. The Tigers themselves have shown their disdain for those aspirations by continually undermining that ceasefire. The strike on the Lankan air force base, with its close proximity to civilian facilities, has once again bared their terrorist tactics.