Maoists Banned Throughout India

The Centre on Monday banned the Communist Party of India-Maoist as a terror organisation to avoid any ambiguity after the merger of the Communist Party of India-(Marxist Leninist) Liberation and Maoist Communist Centre in 2004.

However, West Bengal's Left Front government feels the Centre's move would make the outfit more aggressive.

A large section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) feels banning the Maoists will hardly make any difference on the ground and it is better to counter them politically.

On Monday, Gour Chakraborty, the CPI (Maoist) spokesman, told rediff.com over the telephone that the Centre's stand would have no effect whatsoever on his party.

This is what he had to say:

The Centre's stand is not a new move. It had made a similar announcement in 2004. This time it just repeated itself in the context of the Lalgarh crisis.

We, the Maoists, believe in class struggle. We make no mistake in identifying our class enemies. The government that we have at the Centre now is a capitalist government run on the maxim: The poor should get poorer and rich the richer.

It is quite, natural, therefore, that the government won't like the existence of a people-friendly outfit like ours in an area like Jangalmahal, rich in foreset reserve, minerals and other natural resources.

Ever since we started our operations, we posed obstructions to the government's ambition of minting money by exploiting the resources of this area. Also, it saw in us a barricade that prevented them from taking undue advantage of the residents of Jangalmahal.

The government knows that unlike the Jangalmahal people, we are armed and that we know how to deal with violence, hence a ban seems to be the best option to put a check on our activities.

However, let me tell you, the central government is thoroughly mistaken. Since inception, the CPI (Maoist) has been an underground party. It has always carried out its operations clandestinely.

Therefore, a prohibition is not going to have any influence on our party's activities. In fact, it will only infuse into us a new sense of grit to counter the government opposition.

Interestingly, the central ban on us has put the Left Front government of West Bengal in a spot. One of the main constituents of the front happens to be the CPI-M . It is common knowledge that one Communist party can never ban another Communist party.

Therefore, the CPI-M as also a few other members of the Front, are against the ban as they have been in the past.

However, the ruling government of West Bengal, I am sure, will continue to arrest our men on the pretext of 'fighting violence', bring fictitious charges against them and will carry on their anti-Maoist activities across the state.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too would not oppose the Left Front's anti-Maoist moves as she wants most of us to be either arrested or killed prior to the 2011 assembly election.

As the spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist), all I want to say is that these ever-changing political equations amuse us greatly; crafty politicians and their shifting loyalties entertain us.

As we stand united to put up a brave fight against our class enemies, we express our deepest hatred for the 'rotten' political system of our country.

Sources: Rediff.com

Israeli Pilots Knew US Spy Ship Was American Before 1967 War Attack

Israeli air control twice told pilots during the 1967 Six Day War that a U.S. spy ship they were attacking was American, according to a new book on the USS Liberty affair.

Israel has always claimed that the June 8, 1967 attack on the spy ship Liberty, which killed 34 U.S. Navy sailors and wounded another 170, many seriously, was a case of mistaken identity, a "tragic accident."

But according to "The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship," by James Scott, Israeli pilots who radioed the Liberty's hull number to their air controller were told two times that the spy ship was "probably American."

Nevertheless, Israeli fighters jets and torpedo boats continued to attack the spy ship, which was flying an American flag and plying international waters as it monitored Israeli and Egyptian radio traffic during the June 1967 war.

Israel's goal in the brutal air and sea assault on the Liberty was twofold, says Scott, whose father served on the Liberty: to prevent the spy ship from learning about Israeli troop movements, and to kill anyone aboard who could later identify the attacking aircraft as Israeli.

Despite Israel's eventual annihilation of Arab forces in less than a week, in its opening hours and days the outcome of the war was far from certain.

And Israel could not be certain of American support in those days.

Only 11 years earlier, in the Suez Crisis of 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had forced Israel to call off a planned attack on Egypt with French and British collusion.

Some published accounts have suggested that Israeli wanted to prevent the U.S. from intercepting its radio traffic about an ongoing massacre of Egyptian troops in the Sinai, or from eavesdropping on the Israeli command's instructions to ready its nuclear weapons in case the war went badly.

But Scott says he never found any corroboration for either theory.

Israel never wavered from its stance that the attack on the Liberty was anything but a mistake, although angry U.S. officials had quickly concluded it was deliberate.

Besides repeatedly raking the defenseless ship with cannon fire and bombs, Israeli jets also dropped napalm on American sailors running about the deck trying to save the ship, reports Scott, an award winning former reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier.

"There clearly were individuals inside Israel's chain of command who knew this was an American ship in time to prevent the fatal torpedo boat attack that left more than two dozen of the Liberty's sailors dead," Scott says.

Yet the Israelis informed Johnson administration officials that they were innocent -- and outraged by such suggestions.

That prompted the State Department's number two official, Nicholas B. Katzenbach, to summon Israel's ambassador Abraham Harman, Scott writes.

"The secret memo of the meeting," Scott writes, "declassified 33 years later, records Katzenbach telling the Israeli ambassador" that Tel Aviv's initial protest "contains some statements they might find hard to live with if the text some day became public."

Nevertheless, the American protest remained muted. President Lyndon B. Johnson didn't want to alienate Jewish Americans who were prominent supporters of his civil rights agenda, especially when many were already deserting him over the Vietnam war.

"The beleaguered president, anxious to retain Jewish support and refocus on Vietnam, couldn't afford the domestic political controversy," Scott writes.

Katzenbach told him in an interview, "It was no helping getting a lot of people angry at the Israelis.

"If the Israelis screw up the relations, then the Jewish groups are going to bail out the Israelis. It ends up with a more difficult situation than you would have otherwise," Katzenbach said.

Years later, an Israeli pilot who participated in the Liberty attack, Yifta Spector, told Scott he'd like to apologize personally to his father.

Scott told his father to come to Israel, where he was conducting research for the book. They met the pilot outside of his house on a dusty street corner in a Tel Aviv suburb, Scott said.

"He stuck out his hand and said, 'We came within 300 meters of each other.'"

"I'm sorry," the old pilot told his father.

"That's all my father wanted to hear for all those years," Scott said.

"Just somebody who would say they were sorry."

Sources: Spy Talk Blog

Iran Secretly Helped U.S. Bomb Taliban Units, Find Al Qaeda

Iran supplied U.S. diplomats with the location of Taliban military units in Afghanistan after the initial bombing campaign in the fall of 2001 failed to rout them, according to former officials in the George W. Bush administration.

The Islamic regime also gave the Bush administration "really substantive cooperation" on al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, at one point providing Washington with a list of 220 suspects and their whereabouts, said one official, former White House National Security Council Iran expert Hillary Mann Leverett.

Leverett said that in December 2002, after the U.S. gave Tehran the names of five al Qaeda suspects it believed were in Iran, the regime found two, which they delivered to the U.S. air base at Baghram, in Afghanistan.

But the budding relationship died on the vine.

Hardliners in the Bush administration prohibited Mann and Ryan Crocker, two of the principal diplomats dealing with the Iranians, from building on the contacts to pursue al Qaeda.

And then a month later, President Bush labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil," lumping it with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

But even then, Leverett said, Tehran continued to provide Washington with intelligence on al Qaeda and expel them from Iran.

"They deported hundreds of [al Qaeda] people," she said.

At the same time, Bush officials were accusing Iran of harboring al Qaeda terrorists - a claim they and their allies continued to make until the end of the administration.

But Leverett, backed up by other officials, tells an entirely different story.

"The foreign ministry took the evidence - passports, vital information - and gave us pages and even a chart showing the disposition or what they'd done with each person," broken down by "those who had been turned away at the border, or been detained or deported," she said.

At one point the Iranian foreign ministry asked the Americans to help it set up "a mechanism" to help it deport Egyptian suspects to Cairo, with which it had no diplomatic relations, Leverett said Thursday by telephone.

But White House hardliners rejected the idea of helping Iran in any way, she said.

"We said, 'Too bad, you're evil. You'll be a target yourself if you don't just get rid of them.'"

Richard N. Haass, the State Department's chief of planning at the time, was also frustrated that Bush officials were scuttling Iranian attempts at rapprochement, which he and others believed might have led to a "grand bargain" on other thorny issues.

"We couldn't get support from the NSC, the Pentagon, from the Vice president's office. And in every case we ran up against this belief in regime change," Haass said in a BBC documentary that aired in the U.K. in February.

"Iran and the West" has yet to be televised here, and a spokesperson for PBS, the usual venue for such fare, said the public broadcasting network has no plans to pick it up.

In the third segment of the three-part documentary, Leverett described the Iranians' secret offer to help the American bombers destroy Taliban units in the fall of 2001.

"The Iranians were willing to do whatever was necessary to help ensure that the U.S. military campaign [against the Taliban] could succeed," Leverett told the BBC.

She had previously described some of the back channel meetings with Iran in an October 2007 story by John H. Richardson in Esquire magazine.

But neither that nor the BBC's "Iran and the West" documentary has elicited detectable news media interest here, despite its incessant descriptions of Iran as an uncompromising, implacable foe.

Iran's hardliners, led by "Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating, America-bashing" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appear to hold the upper hand now, but things could change in elections two weeks from now.

Iran's president in 2001, Mohammad Khatami, sought to get around the hardliners and establish better relations with Washington.

"He had sought reconciliation with America (before), but his political opponents stopped him," the BBC reported. "With America poised to attack the Taliban, he had a chance to win the argument in the parliament."

"The Taliban was our enemy," Khatami explains on the program. "America thought the Taliban was their enemy too. If they toppled the Taliban, it would serve the interests of Iran."

Iran had discreetly offered help to Washington right after the 9/11 attacks, Leverett and other officials say.

But nothing happened until November.

American heavy bombers had been pounding Taliban units for weeks, but the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance rebels were still bottled up.

One of the Iranians Leverett was meeting with lost his temper over the stalemate, she says. He began pounding the table.

"And then he took out a map, and he unfurled the map on the table, and started to point at targets that the U.S. needed to focus on, particularly in the north," Mann said. "We took the map to CENTCOM, the US Central Command, and certainly that became the US military strategy."

Said Colin Powell, Secretary of State at the time: "We took a fourth-world force, the Northern Alliance, riding horses, walking, living off the land, and married them up with a first world air force. And it worked."

Leverett told Esquire that Khatami's representatives believed that helping the U.S. defeat the Taliban - and al Qaeda - would help bridge a quarter-century long estrangement marked by hostage taking, terrorism, name calling and outrage over Iran's clandestine nuclear program.

"They specifically told me time and again that they were doing this because they understood the impact of this attack on the U.S., and they thought that if they helped us unconditionally, that would be the way to change the dynamic for the first time in twenty-five years," Leverett said.

Obviously, any chance was lost.

Bush officials have refused to discuss the issue. When Leverett submitted a piece she had written for the New York Times about her U.S.-Iran contacts to administration censors, swaths were blacked out.

"They said it was classified," she said by telephone Thursday. "But nothing had ever been written down."

Sources: Spy Talk Blog

US Allowed Pakistan To Go Nuclear

The United States allowed Pakistan to manufacture and acquire nuclear weapons without informing the Congress, a non-profit corruption watchdog has said, quoting a whistle blower who was fired for objecting to the policy.

Here is a very resourceful link:

Government Oversight - Richard Barlow Resource Page.

Richard Barlow at Wikipedia.

They Sold out the World for an F-16 Sale

A Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon official, who tried to object to this policy of the then US administration of keeping the Congress in dark on this issue, was fired.

"As a CIA intelligence officer and later in the Pentagon, Rich Barlow learned that top US officials were allowing Pakistan to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons," Danielle Brian, executive director, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), told a Congressional hearing last week.

Washington-based, POGO is a non-profit non-partisan watchdog that works with whistleblowers and government insiders to expose corruption, fraud, and abuse of power.

"Barlow also discovered that US officials were hiding these activities from Congress," Brian told US lawmakers in her testimony during a hearing.

"Barlow objected and suggested to his supervisors that Congress should be made aware of the situation... he was fired," said Brian in her testimony.

"Barlow is now destitute and living in a trailer," she said as she went on to give other examples of the fate of the whistleblowers in the US government.

An investigative story published by UK's The Guardian newspaper in 2007 had said: 'In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan.'

According to the newspaper, Barley soon discovered that senior officials in government 'were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology'.

This was done because in the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance, it said.

'We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb,' Barlow was quoted as saying.

He next discovered that Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb and came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding Pakistan's programme, it said.

'They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license,' he said.

'He (Barlow) prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal -- a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb -- he found himself a marked man,' the paper said.

Sources: Rediff, POGO.org

US drops 'India, AQ Khan' riders from Pak aid bill

Guys, India needs to fight it's own battle against Pakistan and NO ONE is going to help us in this. We have been trying to put pressure on Pakistan through the US and looks like it is not working out. We need to find our "own ways" of taking action if not Pakistanis will feel that we are incapable of defending our country.

Following Article illustrates that:

In what may be seen as a major concession to Pakistan, the US House of Representatives has dropped demands of access to the disgraced nuclear scientist Dr A.Q. Khan and preventing terrorist attacks against India as conditions from the aid bill offering Islamabad 1.5 billion dollars for the next five years.


When the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement Act' (PEACE) was first tabled in the Congress in April, it required Pakistan to fulfil some major requirements in order to qualify for the aid.

The act asked Pakistan to improve relations with India, and stop supporting the cross border terrorism.

It also asked Islamabad to provide 'access to Pakistani nationals' and especially to Dr. A.Q. Khan who is connected to proliferation networks.

However, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has now omitted the part that named Dr Khan, The Dawn reports.

Even though, the language of the US aid bill has been reworked, it still has certain benchmarks in place for Pakistan.

According to the restrictions included in the PEACE act, an evaluation of efforts would be undertaken by the Pakistan government to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist and terrorist groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and other regions.

The act also asks for a crackdown on all terrorist camps operating inside Pakistan, including those of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).


One of the major conditions put forth in the PEACE act is to cease all support for extremist and terrorist groups, and increase oversight over curriculum in madrasas.

It also asks for the closing down of all the madrasas which are directly linked to the Taliban and other militant organizations.

The assistance could also stop if the US president fails to certify that Pakistan is cooperating with nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Sources: ANI & Yahoo

ISI HQ Hit in Lahore

Suspected Taliban militants on Wednesday brazenly targeted the provincial headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence in Lahore , detonating an explosive-laden car, leaving at least 35 people dead and over 250 wounded.

Though heavily armed militants, believed to be two to four in number, failed to reach the main premises housing the ISI office, they detonated the explosives, which damaged the building and totally flattened the nearby city police rescue office.

The terrorist hit squad headed their vehicle towards the two buildings located just off the Mall Road, but as heavily armed guards stopped them, they came out and exchanged fire with the guards, before setting off a massive blast.

District Coordination Officer Lahore Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta said a car loaded with explosives rammed into the barriers on the road leading to the buildings housing ISI and the Lahore police office.


Though the Punjab government officials confirmed that only 18 people were dead, the privately-run Ehdi Ambulance Service has put the death toll at 35. The hospital officials said 13 of the dead were policemen and seven were ISI officials.

Commissioner Lahore Khusro Pervaiz said that 18 persons, mostly policeme, had been confirmed dead so far and 187 people had suffered injuries. Police chief Pervaiz Rathore estimated that over 100 kg of explosives had been used in the blast. He said the death toll could rise as a number of people were still trapped under the rubble.

"A white car approached the ISI headquarters and opened fire on the police guards and also threw grenades before heading towards it," Abid Ali, an eyewitness, told PTI.

Lahore is the second largest Pakistani city and today's attack was the third major terrorist assault on the metropolis this year, heightening fears that militancy may be creeping into the Pakistani heartland.

No organisation immediately took responsibility for the blast in the city. The blast comes less than two months after the attack on the police academy at Manawan, close to Lahore, on March 30 this year, when armed gunmen laid a siege resulting in the deaths of 10 people, including eight policemen.


Lahore was also the scene of an attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team on March 3, in which eight people, including six police officials, were killed and six cricketers were injured.

"Apparently the target was ISI," a witness said, adding that the terrorists first opened fire on police guards and then rammed the vehicle into the barrier in a bid to hit the buildings.

TV channels reported three suspects have been arrested. The attack came a day after Taliban spokesperson Maulvi Mohammad Omar threatened attacks across Pakistan if the military operation in Swat was not stopped immediately.

A police source informed PTI that some suspects involved in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team were being interrogated in the ISI building.

In March 2008, some suspects involved in the Naval War College attack were being interrogated at the Federal Investigation Agency building, when a mini-truck loaded with huge explosives ran into it, killing 30 people, mostly FIA officials.

TV channels reported that approximately 40 vehicles were destroyed in the blast, which also caused considerable damage to nearby buildings. Soon after the incident, the army personnel cordoned off the area. The Special Investigation Group of FIA also reached the spot and collected forensic evidence.

The impact of the blast was so powerful that windowpanes of government buildings, private offices, schools and a cinema hall within one kilometre radius were broken.

Two schoolchildren were reportedly also killed in the attack. The injured were shifted to the major hospitals in Lahore.

Resources: Rediff.com and Dawn.com

History of Tamil Persecution

Tamils, belonging to the Dravidian Race are the original inhabitants of India. They have been persecuted since ages. The first attack on Dravidians are done by the nomadic Aryans who were looking for an ideal country to settle in. This happened couple of thousands of years back.

There is a language called Brahui, which is spoken in parts of Balochistan Province in Pakistan. This language belongs to the Dravidian Family of languages. Some historians consider that Brahui might be a remnant of the language spoken in the Indus Valley Civilisation. This itself proves that Tamils are persecuted since hundreds of years.


As Aryans advanced, Tamils were pushed into what is called as the present day Tamilnadu in Southern part of India. The Britishers took Tamils to Srilanka and Malaysia to work in the Tea Gardens. Even for this day, Tamils in Malaysia are persecuted by the Muslim majority country through its "Bhumiputra" policy.

British policy of Divide and Rule placed the minority Tamils capturing most of the Government jobs in British Srilanka and once Independence was granted to Srilanka in 1948, the majority Sinhalese saw this domination of Tamils in Government jobs as a strategy to keep the majority sinhalese in Control and in 1956, they came out with a "Sinhala Only Language" (Official Language Act) making Sinhala as the only official language of Srilanka.


This enraged the Tamils and they protested through Satyagraha (Non Violence). Sinhalese mobs reacted through violence and killed more than 300 Tamils in what is called as the "58 Riots". Sinhalese gangs attacked Tamil labourers in Polonnaruwa farms. Tamils who tried to hide in sugar-cane fields were surrounded there and the fields set ablaze by the mobs. Those who fled were clubbed down or hit by machetes. In Hinguarkgoda, rioters ripped open the belly of an eight-month-pregnant woman, and left her to bleed to death.

Here is a list of Anti Tamil Riots in Srilanka:

* Gal Oya (1956)
* 1958 riots (1958)
* 1977 riots (1977)
* Jaffna library (1981)
* Black July (1983)
* Welikada (1983)
* Kalutara (1997)
* Bindunuwewa (2000)

All these riots let to the formation of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Background for Black July Riots:

The events dubbed Black July began after members of the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the Tamil Tigers or the LTTE) organization ambushed a military convoy in the North of Sri Lanka on the evening of July 23, 1983 outside the town of Jaffna in the North of Sri Lanka.


In the July 23 massacre of 13 soldiers, initially, a road-side bomb was detonated beneath the jeep that was leading the convoy, injuring at least two soldiers on board. As soldiers traveling in a truck which was following the jeep dismounted to help their colleagues, they were ambushed by a group of Tamil Tiger fighters, who fired at them with automatic weapons and hurled grenades at them. In the ensuing clashes, one officer and 12 soldiers died immediately, while two more were fatally wounded, bringing the total death toll to 15 along with number of terrorists.Kittu, a regional commander of the LTTE later admitted to planning and carrying out the ambush.

This enraged the Sinhalese and in the following days, massacred 3000 Tamils.

Now, with LTTE wiped out of Srilanka, India should ensure that Tamils were given equal powers along with Sinhalese in the Government.

How the Lankan Army Crushed the LTTE

The modern world has rarely seen a force as deadly as the LTTE who fought the Sri Lankan State for almost 30 years. The LTTE's courage and commitment for their cause was legendary and never doubted. But the ground situation in the LTTE strongholds around Killinochi, Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara started changing, perceptions of supremo V Prabhakaran and the legend of the ferocious Tigers started unravelling once President Mahinda Rajapakse's government decided to take the battle head-on in August 2006.

The abortive attempt on Sri Lanka army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonsenka by a suspected pregnant LTTE woman cadre inside the military headquarters in April 2006 in a way can be termed as the beginning of the last war fought by the LTTE under Prabhakaran's command. A seriously injured Fonseka escaped death by a whisker and spent the next five months in hospital.

Rajapakse, who was elected as president in November 2005, had fought the election against his rival and former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on the plank of wiping out terrorism from the island nation and the military defeat of the LTTE. Ironically, the Tigers helped Rajapakse's ascent to the most powerful position in Sri Lanka by its diktat to the Tamils, who traditionally supported Wickremesinghe's party, to boycott the election. Despite this generous help from the LTTE, Rajapakse won the election only by a margin of 150,000 votes.

He got the much needed opportunity to launch a military offensive against the Tigers in August 2006 when the LTTE blocked the sluice gates of an irrigation canal in the east over a dispute with the government on execution of a development project in the province.


What began as a fight between the government and the LTTE over the canal issue escalated into a full-fledged war. It was the beginning of the end of the LTTE with the military notching one victory after the other.

The first flashpoint that lead to the LTTE defeat

"This war against the LTTE started in August 2006. The LTTE blocked an irrigation canal in the Eastern provinces which were controlled by the Tigers. The government objected to it. They said this is a cruel thing to do because hundreds of farmers's livelihoods were dependent on it. The LTTE claimed they created an obstacle in the canal project only because the government had not delivered on some other plans and broken promises to release money for development projects for Sri Lankan Tamils.

The tussle over the canal was the first flashpoint that has now ended in the decimation of the LTTE.

The government chalked out a plan to get aggressive. In just a few days, on August 10, 2006, the government closed highway A-9 that connected Jaffna to Colombo. In one stroke that decision affected some 600,000 Sri Lankans who were completely got cut off from the rest of the world.


A-9 is not an ordinary highway. It was a cash-cow for the LTTE. Every item that entered north of Killinochi from the south and mid Sri Lanka was taxed by the LTTE.

The money collected on A-9 was the main source of finance for the LTTE. Their military was strengthened from the tax collected from A-9. The government erected their own entry and exit points on A-9. It was a huge blow to the Tigers.

The LTTE understood the game. On August 14, 2006, two very important events took place. Pakistan High Commissioner retired Colonel Bashir Wali was unsuccessfully attacked.

The same day the government conducted an aerial raid on a school in Mullaitheevu district; 53 girls were killed. The government defended the action, saying the school was training 'suicide bombers'.

In December 2006, a suspected LTTE suicide bomber rammed an autorickshaw into a convoy with Sri Lanka Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse, the president's brother. He had retired from the Sri Lanka military two decades ago and ran a store in the US. A green card holder, Gothabaya returned to the island at the government's invitation to take over the defence establishment.

The Gothabaya Rajapakse-General Fonseka combination proved lethal for the LTTE. In early 2007 the Rajapakse government took a clear and firm decision that the time had come to hit the LTTE in its heartland.

The east liberated, the LTTE pushed back

The government directed the military to clear the eastern province, parts of which were under the LTTE's control, on the ground that the presence of the Tigers in the coastal towns of Trincomalee and Ampara were a threat to Lankan military assets and posed a serious threat to the unity, integrity and sovereignty of the island nation.


The army first neutralised those areas and safeguarded its military assets. Around July 2007 the operation to liberate the eastern province from the LTTE was completed.

Even as the military operations in the east were on, the Rajapakse government marched a brigade to Mannar to take on the LTTE. The east was declared as 'liberated' in July 2007. Another operation commenced in September 2007 from Vavunnia in the north-east.

It was obvious that because of the frontal attacks, the LTTE went deeper and deeper into the Wanni area, perhaps as part of its so-called 'strategic retreat'.

The confrontation went on and on and on. The LTTE would normally know when the major attack would come, so a week or so earlier they would retreat from the area along with the entire population.

They safeguarded themselves with the 'people.' The Tamils in these areas have always found the Lankan army racist in its approach. They have been indoctrinated by the LTTE that only the Tigers could save them.


As the military offensive began some 300,000 people took a decision to stay with the LTTE and not the military. They took their jewellery, children and belongings to move along with the LTTE. They had faith in the LTTE's invincibility.

In March 2007, the LTTE conducted a stunning operation that may have influenced the Tamil population's decision. Two members of the LTTE's Black Air Tiger suicide squad flew two light aircraft, carried out a daring attack and returned to LTTE territory. The LTTE released photographs of the pilots with Prabhakaran. The world took notice of the LTTE's airpower.

The beginning of the end

The LTTE kept losing territory in the north as a determined military breached LTTE defences in town after town, forcing the Tigers to retreat almost on a daily basis. The LTTE suffered loss after loss. By September 2008, the LTTE had lost some 10,000 square km of land. They were left with less than 5,000 square km.


The army resorted to all out war. They didn't succumb to public concerns, outside opinion and marched on. In the last week of September 2008, the government directed non governmental organisations and United Nations agencies to quit Tiger-held territory on the ground that their safety could not be guaranteed. They set a deadline for people to escape to safer areas.

From all quarters pressure was applied on the Lankan government and military, but they went on. By October-November 2008, the real war started. It was a full scale operation supported by planning, strategy, resources, intelligence and passion.

The first turning point and the beginning of the LTTE's end was there for the world to see when Killinochi fell. On his birthday (November 27), in his Heroes Day speech, even Prabhakaran said, 'The land of Tamil Eelam is confronted with an intense war as never before. Rearing its head in different parts of Wanni, the war is gathering momentum. As the Sinhala State is committed to a military solution, the war is becoming intense and widespread.'

'This war has affected Tamil civilians more than anybody else,' he said. 'By turning the heat of war on our people and by burdening them with immeasurable sufferings, the Sinhala State is aspiring to turn our people against the LTTE.'

It was quite clear that the pressure was on the LTTE. He praised India in that speech. 'I wish to express my love and gratitude at this juncture to the people and leaders of Tamil Nadu and the leaders of India for the voice of support and love they have extended. I would cordially request them to raise their voice firmly.' The message was a petition to India to help him out.

300,000 people moved along with Prabhakaran

Some 300,000 people were moving along with Prabhakaran. He was under strain and he needed respite from war. He thought the people were his insurance and no one would dare to kill 2,000 or more people. He was seeking an end to the war, but the Sri Lankan government had other plans.


December 31 and January 1, 2008, Killinochchi was under the army's control. Weeks before the military marched into Killinochchi town, the LTTE's administrative and political headquarters, the Tigers had moved to other areas. The Sri Lankan army moved into a deserted and desecrated Killinochchi. Barring dogs and cows, the town was left with no human body or soul.

Prabhakaran, the LTTE and Tamils had shifted to Mullaitheevu much before the military arrived in Killinochchi. The military shifted its focus to Elephant Pass which was with the LTTE since 1996. This was very important because it is the entry point to Jaffna.

Prabhakaran tried all ways to drew the world's attention to the plight of 300,000 people. He kept saying it is a genocide against the Tamils.

Back in India no one else but CPI leaders went on a fast in Chennai on October 2, demanding an end to the war on the ground that it was costing too many people's lives. Karunanidhi did his bit by putting pressure on the central government. He forced the government to act before the deadline. He said his ministers would resign if the military offensive against the Sri Lankan Tamils was not reduced. Rajapakse gave a favourable response in words, but the march of his military went on.

The Sri Lankan military's speed was unthinkable for the LTTE.

Mullaitheevu town was captured on January 25.


The actual war accelerated after this date. It was a ferocious war fought by the Sri Lankan army against its own rebels and people. From Mullaitheevu town, Prabhakaran moved people to Puthukkudiyiruppu.

The war here was different from other battles. In Killinochchi and Mullaitheevu, the Tamils retreated or escaped and left behind a ghost town, but in Puthukkudiyiruppu the battle was fought between the LTTE and army and the casualties on both sides were believed to be high.

The Tigers lost most of its fighting force in this battle along with several middle rung leaders. The town was turned into rubble. The LTTE had built some 100 km long earth-walls cum ditches up to 12 feet deep to stop the army's march.

Walls were built to stop the people from moving out and to prevent the army from getting in. Imagine what kind of effort must have gone in before the LTTE was defeated.

The idea was to get the advantage of height and depth, but the LTTE was defeated soon. The LTTE never expected the army would breach the earth walls so quickly.


The Lankan army's final push

The success of the military in breaching the three square kilometre earth wall in Puthumattlam, about 3 km from Puthukkuduriyippu, proved to be a turning point in the war.

From April 20 to 23, over 125,000 civilians fled from the Tigers's clutches and went over to the government side.

The Lankan government described it as the single largest hostage rescue mission ever undertaken in the world. Daya Master, George Master and other senior Tiger officials and other LTTE men surrendered. The people were hungry, tired, defeated, destroyed, and scared.

This was the defining moment when Sri Lankan Tamils emerged from the war zone. The LTTE and thousands of people were shrunk into a 12 square km area. The entrapment was real, but they didn't surrender.


Outside the war zone the government declared 20,000 people were with the LTTE. UN agencies estimated the figure at 50,000, but there were actually 70,000 people with the Tigers.

Meanwhile the election was on in India and the voting for the first phase ended on April 16. On April 27, to help decrease the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's pressure on the Congress-led government, President Rajpakase issued a cleverly drafted statement that his government's military objective was over and the focus was now entirely confined to rescue people. He said the army would not use heavy weapons.

On May 11, when Sonia Gandhi held a rally along with Karunanidhi, the Sri Lankan military went on a big offensive and shrunk the area under the LTTE's control to 5 square km. Voting in Tamil Nadu concluded on May 13.

From May 14, the military applied maximum pressure on the Tiger cadres and leaders holding onto the last stretch of land they were boxed in. After being encircled, the Tigers had no option but to let the remaining civilians escape from the area.

In less than 24 hours, President Rajapakse, who was at the G-11 summit in Jordan, declared that the LTTE was defeated and that in 48 hours his government would finish its humanitarian operation of the last stretch.

The LTTE understood that the end had come, the game was over. Probably, Prabhakaran and a few of his men were in the last 500 square metre area. On May 15, 16 and 17, the last bunch of 70,000 people came out.

The army captured LTTE sea-war expert Soosai's wife, son and relatives while fleeing the island via the sea. It was the first sign that Prabhakaran had lost control over the organisation, and even his senior comrades were contemplating escape.


At the last minute the president made an offer from Jordan through the Red Cross that the government was ready to accept the surrender of the LTTE top brass. It is not clear what actually happened in the negotiations.

Perhaps the Tiger top brass wanted to surrender to a third party and it was not acceptable to the military. The time had passed for every sane action.

On the morning of May 19, the LTTE's elite commandos and suicide squads fought their last battle. All of them were killed on the battlefield. Prabhakaran's bullet-ridden body was recovered by the Sri Lanka military in the early hours of May 19. Within hours his former trusted commander Colonel Karuna flew down and confirmed his identity.

One bloody chapter of history of this small nation ended that day, May 19, 2009.

Sources: Rediff.com

Did Dick Cheney order Benazir's death?

An 'executive assassination ring', answerable only to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, played a role in the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, noted American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged.

In a May 12 interview with Gulf News TV, Hersh claimed that Cheney ordered the hit on Bhutto because in a November 2007 interview with Al Jazeera TV, she had indicated that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was already dead.

Bhutto apparently added that it was Omar Saeed Sheikh, an Al Qaeda terrorist imprisoned in Pakistan for beheading US journalist Daniel Pearl, who murdered Osama. Speaking to the UAE-based Gulf News, Hersh opined that the Bush White House had Bhutto assassinated because it did not want Bin Laden to be declared dead, as such an event would seriously dent their credibility in continuing operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But the interviewer, award-winning British journalist David Frost, recently depicted in the acclaimed Hollywood film Frost/Nixon, removed her claims for the final edited version of the interview, Hersh alleged.


Hersh, a Pulitzer prize-winner who writes for the New Yorker and other well-regarded publications, is famous for breaking the My Lai massacre story, in which US soldiers massacred 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in a Vietnamese village; he also helped break the Abu Gharib prison abuse story in 2004.

In the interview, he also pointed to former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and a top Lebanese military officer as two more of Cheney's team's executed targets. Hersh said they were murdered for not protecting US interests and refusing to allow US to set up military bases in the country. Ariel Sharon, who at the time was prime minister of Israel, also played a key role, Hersh has alleged.

The man at the centre of these allegations, former US Vice President Dick Cheney, has spent the past few weeks in the public eye, as the debate over America's tactics in the War on Terror has intensified. Appearing on talk shows and in other interviews, Cheney has worked to justify using interrogation techniques widely considered to be torture, such as the controversial practice of waterboarding.

Interestingly, though he's become very forthright when speaking to the media now, during his time in the White House Cheney was often considered a shadowy figure and difficult to get on the record. Media commentators have attributed this recent about-face to Cheney's concerns that he and his peers may be prosecuted for their roles in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, specifically for their authorisation of torture.

Hersh too has been in the spotlight as of late. He recently gave a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union, wherein he accused Iraqi military personnel of sodomising children in front of their mothers in order to obtain information. What's more, he added, is that the US Department of Defence has tape of the incidents and were aware of such acts of barbarity.

Sources: Rediff.com (Did Dick Cheney order Benazir's death?)