Fallen Heroes

The massive Mullaitivu defeat suffered by the Sri Lankan military in late July, where over 1200 soldiers were killed by the Tamil Tiger forces in a conventional-type attack capturing the base with relative ease, could turn out to be the decisive turning point in the LTTE's 13-year war with the Sinhala-dominated government of Sri Lanka. Some Western journalists saw clearly its parallels to the Viet Cong guerrillas' Tet offensive in Vietnam; one even described it as the biggest military debacle any conventional army in South Asia had suffered in the post-independence era.

The curious point is that no one closely following the national conflict in Sri Lanka thought there was the slightest possibility that the LTTE could launch an attack of that magnitude so quickly after the government's military successes in Jaffna. The spectacular overpowering of the Mullaitivu garrison came as a total shock. All the 'pundits' - that includes the Sri Lankan government, its military leaders, advisers to the Western states and most Western journalists - who seriously thought the back-bone of the LTTE had been broken after the dazzling success of Riviresa operations 1,2 and 3, were somewhat baffled.

The army commander, in a recent interview, assured that the LTTE could no longer carry out "Poonaryn-type" attacks (the Poonaryn attack was a ferocious rebel onslaught in October '93 on a northern military base in which hundreds of soldiers were killed, albeit relatively smaller in comparison with the storming of the Mullaitvu base).

Also, Gen. Anurudda Ratwatta had announced the LTTE was effectively a spent force and that crushing whatever strength remained in the Vanni jungles and East was just a matter of time. The government tried to assure the outside world that its two-pronged - military/political - offensive was on track and that soon the Sinhala-dominated troops occupying some five per cent of the Tamil homeland would be able to win the hearts and minds of the Tamil people living there and impress those still living in the LTTE-held territories as well.

The obvious but fascinating question is what could have made all these supposedly reasonable people so gullible and naive?

But before answering that let us briefly examine the model on which the government's anti-LTTE strategy was based.

The basic assumption running through the entire strategy is the belief that the majority of Tamil populace in the North are fed up of the LTTE and eagerly anticipating the military defeat of the LTTE, provided the government takes steps to "devolve certain powers" to "redress their grievances".

Hence the two-pronged strategy: on one hand, the military offensive to capture a significant portion of rebel-held territory and weaken the LTTE substantially so its activities could be reduced to minor hit-and- run attacks by a "dwindling fanatical group" in the periphery; and on the other hand, the political offensive to establish a government-administration backed by occupying troops which would be used as a base to impress the people living there through "reconstruction and rehabilitation".

It is important to note that the political aspect of the strategy was not to try and impress the LTTE. It was aimed at driving a wedge between the LTTE and the Tamil people. In other words, it was subordinate to, and part and parcel of, the military aim to crush the LTTE. For, the military and the government firmly believed that the Prabhakaran-leadership would never agree to a settlement which would split the Tamil homeland and leave the Sinhala-dominated Centre intact, whereby the final say on the destiny of the Tamil homeland would remain at the mercy of the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo. (Indeed, the LTTE's subsequent calls for a settlement involved substantial re-structuring of the Centre, in addition to devolution of power at the periphery).

So, the primary target of both the military and political offensives was to militarily defeat the LTTE. The government also knew that the bargaining strength of those Tamil political groups collaborating with them in Colombo was dependent on the survival of the LTTE. Once the LTTE was destroyed, imposing on the Tamil people an even more diluted version of the present political package would be no problem at all; and the government knows it. That probably explains why, encouraged by the relatively easy capture of the Jaffna peninsula and the highly bullish predictions of a quick victory, the government was reluctant to force the blatantly opportunistic UNP-Opposition to a parliamentary debate on the political package.

Let us now dwell on more general features of the government's strategy.

Unlike the previous military leadership, the new command (under the influence of deputy Defence Minister Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatta) planned to equip the forces with expensive new technology to launch a massive operation in the LTTE stronghold itself in the hope of dismantling the LTTE's de facto administration and installing a new military administration over a section of the Tamil people. This was expected to facilitate the conditions for marginalising the LTTE. Also, the government had high hopes of buying off Tamil people's loyalty by introducing some form of political package. This, it was thought, would pave the way for a Tamil administration with the help of the Tamil quisling groups in Colombo.

In the hope of putting this plan into practice the military launched its war effort on the 9th of July 1995. In order to test the water, the military started with the Operation Leap Forward and then proceeded with the major "broad front" offensive (code named: operation Riviresa One) to take Jaffna, with tens of thousands of well-equipped troops, backed by indiscriminate shelling and bombing, steam-rolling their way into the Tiger stronghold.

However, one unexpected development crippled the military objective - the massive exodus of Tamil people in the face of the approaching army. This left an empty territory for the troops to occupy. Hundreds of thousands of people who fled either went to the Vanni district where the LTTE leadership had retreated or to other areas within Thenamarchchi district which was still under Tiger control. Without the people the government's "victory cry" sounded very hollow indeed.

Operation Riviresa 2 was launched primarily to redress this. The military proceeded by terrorising the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had settled in Thenamarachchi by indiscriminate aerial bombing while sealing off the only available exit to Vanni, and then surrounding a section of the refugee populace and "persuading" them to return to the homes they left in and around Jaffna (Valigamam).

By then the LTTE had learnt vital lessons from Operation Riviresa 1, and consequently chose not to confront the conventional forces head-on at that stage. The Tigers are reported to have encouraged people to return while advising them to be watchful of the Sinhala troops occupying Jaffna. On their part, the Tigers had made a tactical withdrawal mainly to the jungle terrain of Vanni while leaving pockets of guerrillas to continue hit-and-run attacks within the military-controlled areas.

Encouraged by the LTTE's non-confrontational stance the military immediately expanded its main target and hurriedly moved into strategic spots within the remaining parts of Jaffna peninsula too, thereby, over-stretching its resources considerably.

After occupying about five per cent of the Tamil homeland around the Tamils' cultural centre (Jaffna) a military administration, mainly run by Sinhala soldiers, was set up in the hope of carrying out the political aspect of the two-pronged strategy, i.e. to try and win the loyalty of the Tamils through "reconstruction work" and displaying a political package which, the government claimed, had gone some way towards meeting the aspirations of the Tamil people. (In truth, the new proposals are designed to maintain Sinhala/Buddhist supremacy at the Centre and split the territorial unity of Tamil homeland).

I suspect that the deceptively dazzling military victory in the North mesmerised the government into a false sense of self-confidence. The military and political leaders thought the total crushing of the LTTE was round the corner. Hence, a head-on confrontation with the vociferous Sinhala opposition in the South, by introducing even the diluted devolution-package in parliament, was avoided, because a total victory over the LTTE would make the political efforts to win the hearts and minds of Tamils (risking the support of the Sinhala electorate) not terribly urgent. So, the political package took a back seat.

In fact, the Tamil political parties in Colombo, who have been backing the government's war against the LTTE, ended up in an extremely awkward position when the government began to backslide on the political package, pushing even the wavering sections among the Tamil civilians in Colombo towards the LTTE. The leaders of EPDP, TELO, EROS etc., have begun to confess openly about the mistake they made by giving up arms and joining the political main-stream in the South. They appeared to feel betrayed by the Sinhala government, as if the government had been using them in a Machiavellian way to crush the Tamil struggle.

This development has gone a long way towards substantiating my earlier allegation that the Tigers were correct in thinking that the government was conducting the ill-fated peace process in bad faith and using it as a tactical episode in a military strategy to try and marginalise the LTTE from the Tamil people and eventually crush them.

By now, it has become abundantly clear that the government is no longer keen to implement the political package risking its popularity among the Sinhala electorate but is concentrating instead on the military aspect of the strategy to defeat the LTTE. The government "think-tank" mistakenly thought that dismantling the LTTE administration in Jaffna and replacing it with a military administration would serve as a solid basis for crushing the LTTE militarily.

From a purely military point of view the government had good reasons for optimism. To start with, the capturing of Jaffna, quite apart from giving a tremendous boost to the government's image locally and abroad, was seen by the military as a severe blow to LTTE morale (even though developments since have demonstrated that the occupation of Jaffna has in fact hardened the LTTE's resolve to face the challenge as never before).

Also, losing hundreds of thousands of people from LTTE-control had cut off a vital source of income for the rebels. The government never saw the LTTE's sudden retreat to Vanni as a tactical withdrawal which kept its leadership, cadres and weapons in tact. The government saw it as an act of desperation in the face of its own newly acquired military might.

Gen. Anuruddha Ratwatta, the deputy Defence Minister in charge of the overall war strategy, has been assuring President Kumaratunaga that over 60 per cent of the LTTE strength has already been crushed and that it would take only five days for the army to flush the LTTE out from the eastern province. According to him, the LTTE guerrillas restricted to the Vanni jungles could then be easily crushed in a matter of six months. The important thing was to throttle the LTTE forces by cutting off funds and weaponry from abroad.

The Indian navy's collaboration with the Sri Lankan military to track and sink LTTE vessels bringing arms to Tiger territory was a major blessing for the Sinhala government's effort to crush the Tamil struggle. The Delhi government's and the Tamil Nadu administration's open hostility towards the LTTE had been crucial to the government's strategy. (Whether the Indian stance has been significantly altered since the major changes in India's political landscape after the recent general elections has yet to be seen).

The only remaining loophole in the military strategy, in the government's view, was the huge financial support the LTTE was getting from the Tamil Diaspora; hence the allocation of massive funds by the Sri Lankan government to launch an unprecedented propaganda campaign to undermine that link. The Foreign Minister with a Tamil name had to set out on a globe-trotting mission of shuttle-diplomacy to convince the governments of those countries where Tamil expatriates reside in significant numbers that the government was at the verge of defeating the LTTE totally only if the foreign states led by the US took decisive action to clamp down on LTTE activities in their countries so that the flow of funds to LTTE coffers can be drastically curtailed. The fact that those foreign political advisors in Colombo, who brief their relevant governments, had already swallowed the Sri Lankan government's interpretation of its military advancement, was of enormous use to the foreign minister, Kadiragamar, in carrying out his global mission.

Part-2