FEER(8/9): Editorial - Smugness And The Sri Lanka Airport Attack

THE ATTACK on Sri Lanka's only international airport is instructive of both the danger that arises from smugness and of how misguided are the foreign supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The airport and its adjoining airbase were supposedly highly secure. The road between Colombo and the airport is lined with military checkpoints, and there's often a queue at the airport entrance as each vehicle is searched and its undercarriage examined. And not only do they X-ray bags at this airport, but the contents of hand luggage are poked at with a stick, then each bag is signed off with an old-fashioned chalk mark. So how did the Tigers penetrate this security, even possibly picnicking nearby before their strike?

Sri Lankans have been fond of telling visitors that foreigners are wrongly concerned about violence; those who actually come, see how safe it is. It is perhaps this complacency that goaded the Tigers into hitting at the heart of the tourist trade, as well as made airport security perfunctory despite outward appearances.

The Tigers inspire no sympathy for their tactics. But their suicide attacks as much deflect attention from the fact that not all Sri Lankan Tamils support the LTTE. Sober voices are left unheard in the din of bombs. And this will continue so long as LTTE supporters safely ensconced abroad continue to fund the terrorism from which they themselves are immune.

A politically weak government may find retaliation with force an attractive option. Yet it would be more profitable to undercut the LTTE by more actively engaging moderates among Tamils -- for whom Sri Lanka is as much home as for Sinhalese. And as for the LTTE's foreign supporters, how many more deaths will it take to convince them that Tiger terrorism only erodes sympathy for the Tamil cause?