If you have never heard of the name in the title above, you are in good company. I had never heard of Charles Anthony Prabhakaran until this morning, when I read my first batch of news for the day.
The news had a story about the leader of the Tamil Tigers – a violent terrorist group – or armed liberation army, depending on which side you are on – operating (until yesterday) in northern Sri Lanka. Their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed today while he was fleeing from the Sri Lanka regular army pursuit. The Tamil Tigers, a.k.a. the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or L.T.T.E., had been under siege for a few months, and the army’s objection had been to obliterate the L.T.T.E. once and for all.
It was not the killing of a military commander that struck me. That happens all the time and it comes with the profession, so to speak. But the news item also mentioned the demise of the leaders son of 24 – the guy mentioned in the title of this posting – a week ago. Somehow this caught my attention.
Getting killed is a kind of standard occupational hazard when one is a combatant. And most of these soldiers are young too. The ridiculous fact that the strongest people of the nation, who are in their most productive age, are put on the front lines and in harms way, is as old as the concept of the regular army itself. And possibly even older. It would be better if this privilege were to be reserved for the elderly, who are more cautious and wise, and maybe less lethal. But, alas, this is not the case in the real world. In our reality, it is quite accepted for a 24 year old soldier – a child still, by any measure – to die in action.
The reason why the death of Charles Anthony Prabhakaran somehow got stuck in my thoughts, is that he is the SON of the L.T.T.E. leader who was killed this morning. And this tiny parameter immediately invoked in me the strong sense of protection I always feel for my own two sons. My first thought was: “How can any father put his own blood in such danger? How crazy can one be?” I would never think of getting my kids into trouble like that. They are my only real Darwinian success on the planet. Nothing else I ever did or will do, my work or even this writing, will remain or is of comparable significance.* Only my children – and theirs – is what eventually matters, if we are fortunate enough to have a normal succession of generations in our family. The mere thought that one of them could be harmed at all, makes me fume with rage. To put it differently: if you touch my boys, I’ll break your face; that is the level of floor-scraping knuckles primitiveness I tend to manoeuvre on when my kids are concerned.
It keeps buzzing in my mind. Maybe it was a good thing that the L.T.T.E. were put out of business. The violence they proliferated was unjustified to begin with. Not necessarily because of their cause, but because violence never is. But it was this father & son thing that put me off. My sympathy, for any leader with whatever cause, vanishes like snow in the sun when I see such reckless conduct with such precious offspring. It is surely my fatherly mildness speaking.
*) Unless I save the world some day, but frankly I don’t see that hapening any time soon…
