A Nuclear Threat From the Tigers?
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Columnist

    Wednesday 30 May 2007

    Am I living close to a nuclear powder keg? No one among the authorities - atomic or otherwise - is telling me or my neighbors. They are keeping us guessing by giving us both the answers alternately. They are playing safe without making us feel secure at all.

    Mine is a coastal address in the south of India. For the international visitor, a possible landmark is a nuclear complex in uncomfortably close proximity. The Kalpakkam complex (comprising two atomic reactors, one prototype fast-breeder reactor, three upcoming ones, an experimental reactor and a reprocessing plant) lies an hour's drive from Chennai, formerly Madras, capital of the state of Tamilnadu, of which I am today a dread-filled denizen.

    The question we started with cropped up in late March. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out a deft and daring predawn air strike on Katunayake, close to Colombo's international airport of the same name. The surprise raid raised much speculation about the Tigers' motive and the meaning of the move for India - especially Kalpakkam.

    Questions arose also about the threat from the Air Tigers (as the LTTE's air force was christened) to the state's civilian nuclear energy installation, where two megaplants are under construction with Russian assistance in Koodankulam, at the southern tip of the subcontinent.

    It is Kalpakkam, however, that has caused the main concern, even in official circles and the media. We do not know whether this has anything to do with the fact that the complex is one of the eight installations which New Delhi wants to place out of the purview of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and inspections as a non-civilian facility.

    If the Katunayake strike conjured nightmarish visions of the Tigers crouching in the sky for Kalpakkam, the dread only deepened the subsequent series of LTTE bombings on two oil depots close to Sri Lanka's capital again. The strike on the depot, owned in part by the state-owned Indian oil company IOC, appeared a deliberate provocation to some.

    How real was the threat which found a dramatic illustration in the Katunayake feat of the two-piston light aircraft covering 350 nautical miles at a speed of 150kmph and carrying an ordnance overload of 1,040 kg. How real was the threat posed by the LTTE air fleet, estimated at two to five light-winged craft?

    The threat to Colombo was clear. The air strikes were indisputably aimed at settling scores with the Sri Lanka Air Force (which had devastated wide areas in the island's Tamil majority north) and to intimidate the Lankan government. The question was whether the "flying Tigers," as the LTTE's pan-Tamil supporters in India hailed them, posed a far greater and graver threat to Kalpakkam and Koodankulam.

    The most definite answer came from Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona. He asked, "Why should the Tigers, 'a terrorist organization,' not be expected to attempt a strike on Kalpakkam (risking a Chernobyl for the region)? Colombo has subsequently distanced itself from his declamation, but the dread remains.

    On the Indian side, as noted before, the question has received both answers from the same people. "Will they, won't they?" the various official experts have been asking. They seem to be ending up with the last petal pointing to a positive answer.

    Most analysts consider such an LTTE offensive only a remote possibility, but none of them rules it out entirely. M Mayilvaganan of the well-known think tank Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses thinks that the Tigers can go as far as attacking India's commercial craft if their relations with India worsen. He leaves unconsidered a scenario where the relations are aggravated enough to make the Tigers more reckless.

    After a series of reports based on official briefing, and discounting the threat from the Tigers, New Delhi came up with a sudden exhibition of nervousness on the nuclear front. On May 8, at a high-level meeting in India's capital, chaired by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and attended by Defense Minister A. K. Antony, an "action plan" to meet "all eventualities" was reported to have been worked out in response to the newfound LTTE air power.

    National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan, whom the Tigers increasingly see as a threat to relations with India, has come out with a two-answer response, too. The other day, he told the media the LTTE was a "terrorist organization" and said: "We are always concerned about their air and sea capabilities." In another statement, he went a step further and said: "... a terrorist organization possessing air capability is a matter of serious concern and necessary security precaution has been taken...." The action includes setting up of an air station in the south of the state and monitoring of "vulnerable coastal areas" - which obviously include Kalpakkam.

    Similar questions were raised about Kalpakkam and Koodankulam in the wake of the tsunami disaster that struck the Tamilnadu coast in December 2004. The monster waves then killed many in the Kalpakkam township and at least one person in the nuclear complex. By all accounts, the region would have turned into a radioactive hell if the waves had been a couple of meters higher.

    But the dispensers of India's nuclear destiny would not even deign to answer questions and apprehensions then. Thery would not even reply to the demand for a relocation of the complex. We talked in some detail about that one-sided debate in these columns (Tsunamis and a Nuclear Threat in the South of India, January 2, 2005, and Of History and a Barely Escaped Nuclear Horror, January 13, 2005).

    No attitudinal change can be detected since then in India's nuclear dispensation.