LTTE: missteps, misdeeds, and 33 years later

Interview with Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90.

By Udara Soysa March 13, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian

1. What do you think the main difference between the operational realities between current Eelam War and the IPKF conducted war against the LTTE?

There is no comparison between the two situations except that we were fighting the same opponent. Indian army was fighting for an objective that was not clear in a foreign country. India's goals had international influence. So it was primarily not a war against the LTTE or Sri Lanka. The war was thrust upon the army by political leadership who could not think through the problem. So our war did not enjoy broad political support in the home country and courted a lot of suspicion in Sri Lanka. In fact, the Indian operation in Sri Lanka became a victim of the political divide among three major political entities - a waning Congress, a rising BJP in league with other opposition groups, and rising regional satraps who had no common agenda on Sri Lanka. It finally led to the establishment coalition politics in New Delhi giving a big clout to the regional parties in national mainstream that continues to this day.

The LTTE was learning its craft, trying out various methods of fighting and survival with nascent conventional capability. It realised the value of Sri Lanka Tamil expatriates to build up its movement as other Tamil militant groups had become political parties. The LTTE also benefited from Tamils' disappointment when India failed to deliver as per their high expectations. The LTTE also cashed in on the downgrading of Indian influence among Tamils. LTTE was less ambitious and more realistic in those days; and probably listened to international community more intently to win their sympathy.


Military operations were less modern as Indian army did not use air force to its full potential. Similarly Navy was employed purely to support logistics as the LTTE naval wing was in infancy. Considering that our operations were the first ever in a foreign country after independence, they had the hall marks of hasty planning at Army HQ. It was a good learning opportunity for the services as a whole on planning and conduct of operations overseas. Troops at ground level did achieve results over a period of 18 months of intense counter insurgency operations for which they were not primed initially. But politically it left India confused.

2. How do you see the current military balance in Sri Lanka?

I confess I have inadequate inputs on both sides' performance and current status to assess "military balance." It is difficult to assess the military balance between a regular armed force and a insurgent force that has probably lost its conventional capability. As the LTTE is probably revamping itself into unconventional mode we need to see how the SLSF responds to the LTTE in the coming months when LTTE steps up its guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings after the current spell of war is over. But as of now the LTTE appears to be terribly weakened by the SF; the LTTE's future will depend up how the Sri Lanka government regains the trust of Tamil population which is feeling insecure at present.

3. What were the key factors that affects and affected the current military balance ? Can you comment particularly on international, military, political and leadership factors?

This will require a major assessment exercise for which adequate inputs are not available with me. It will take some more time when the background information surfaces. After that only we can evolve a reasonably accurate picture. But few things stand out even now: President Rajapaksa's solid political support to the armed forces, Gen Fonseka's flexible approach to planning and conduct of war while sticking to end goals, and the limitations of international community to influence wars in South Asia when the rulers dig their heels and stand firm. It holds valuable lessons for South Asian nations on national mobilisation for war and its fall out on fundamental freedoms of citizens.

Basically, LTTE failed to strategise on its unconventional strengths by its grandiose dreams of having a conventional capability. Non state actors require national commitment from another country to build a conventional capability. Taml insurgency in Sri Lanka requires at least a neutral India, if not support, to succeed but Prabhakaran burnt his boats when he plotted to kill Rajiv Gandhi. That act hurt India's pride.

4. How do you see the current LTTE strength ?

Inadequate inputs makes the guess hazardous. I wonder whether Prabhakaran himself will have a clear and accurate idea of LTTE strength in numbers as it is in a state of flux. If the body counts are honest, I presume the LTTE strength will be around 3000 cadres dispersed all over; you may add a few hundreds to a thousand in and around their area of control.

5. What was the biggest mistake LTTE did during the current Eelam war?

The LTTE's mistake was made before the war in not correctly assessing the changed mindset of Sri Lanka national and military leadership. Probably, it was difficult becausethe national leadership probably evolved a clear cut vision on future course only after its (unexpected?) military success in the east. So the LTTE was probably lulled into complacency in not reading the dynamic situation.

6. How was your experience in the ground during the IPKF operation times in late 1980's?

Question is not very clear. IPKF experience was not the first war experience for me. From a soldier's point of view all wars are the same. But Sri Lanka experience was the first time I saw the armed forces frustrated as the national leadership palmed off its responsibility to the army to tackle non military issues at which it was a novice. It was the only war where political expediency at the home country and the host country took our army for a ride. I hope our army has become wiser now.

7. Can you comment on Prabhakarans personality and his contributions to the LTTEs augment of power over the decades?

This is the subject for a book which I do not propose to write now. He is still a powerful personality influencing a lot of Tamils - both combatants and non combatants; that is how suicide bombers are still motivated to die to fulfil his command.

8. How do you see the current situation in Eastern Sri Lanka?

Loss of a good opportunity given to the government to show the Tamils that they would be better off in peace and tranquility which are yet to gain a firm foothold in the east. It is a discouragement for Tamil leaders who would like to wholeheartedly join the national mainstream. It reinforces the suspicion of sections of Tamils who doubt the "ulterior motive" of the political leadership in Colombo in waging war.

9. Do you believe that the current war can end within this year? If so, what can Sri Lankans expect after the end of the war?

It will end in its present form and after some time come up perhaps on a much smaller scale in other forms. To determine the time frame for this, much depends on how the leadership on both sides play the scene after the end game.

10. What type of political solution do you think is ideal for Sri Lanka?

No one can really lay down a magic formula. Ideally the right political solution will have to be "owned" by most of the people where they see a part of their aspirations are met and one which has the largest chances of ushering in peace. Considering this, adequate ldevolution of powers (I know it is a bad word for some Sri Lanka politicians) to the provinces will be a good idea where people not only pay taxes but also have a say in the development of their own areas. And it can do with a less visible presence of the military.

Labels: India, International relations, LTTE, Military intelligence, Sri Lanka, Terrorism

posted by ஆர். ஹரிஹரன் @ 9:47 AM 0 Comments
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Sri Lanka: War gets dangerously close for trapped civilians:

The battlefronts of the Eelam War IV in Sri Lanka is dangerously getting close to civilians trapped in the war zone as well as the narrow strip of safety zone on the coast where some of them have taken refuge. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) warning on March 4, 2009 that 150,000 civilians there were in desperate need of help right now has not come a day too soon. Human Rights Watch’s statement also said that more than 2,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict and thousands more injured. And the numbers would only grow bigger if urgent action is not taken to get them out as the war is growing in intensity.

The security forces claimed killing around 100 LTTE cadres in the last 48 hours as the LTTE was marshalling its strength to breakthrough the frontline. Though the security forces’ casualties were not officially released but it would be high, considering that the LTTE did make an initial breakthrough at least in one case in its desperate bid to stem the Sri Lankan onslaught. However, this minor breakthrough north of Puthukkudiyiruppu was broken up later.

According to the defence sources, the increasingly constricting battlefront around has now reduced the LTTE area to a tiny 50 sq km. The frontline now extends from Palamathalam on the northern edge of the safety zone, to north of Puthukkudiyiruppu, and across to the western edge of Mullaitivu lagoon. The security forces have built a formidable line up for the “final kill” – 55 Division north of Palamathalam, 58 Division north of Puthukkudiyiruppu, 53 Division west of Puthukkudiyiruppu, Task Force-8 west of the lagoon and 59 Division in Mullaittivu. And more task forces and divisions are in depth.

The security forces have made steady progress with vital gains along the coast south of Chalai virtually limiting the coastal strip available for the LTTE to make a “final” get away through the sea. Already the navy is deployed off Mullaitivu coast to intercept fleeing LTTE boats. 55 Division had claimed sinking 10 Sea Tiger boats when it thwarted an attack by 20 Sea Tiger boats under Soosai on February 27, 2009. Since then the LTTE had repeatedly been trying to make offensive forays along the battlefront.

This would indicate the LTTE’s dogged mindset to fight on till the bitter end, regardless of civilian casualties. Considering this, the defence report that the LTTE was using area four km south of Puthumathalam as launching pad for its offensive action is likely to be correct. But the danger is that the LTTE has sited its mortar and artillery batteries within the safety zone in the midst of dense civilian concentration. The lives of these civilians are totally in the hands of the LTTE and the security forces who would suffer casualties if they do not take retaliatory action to silence the LTTE batteries.

Unlike over 20,000 combatant casualties of the war, civilian deaths during the last few months were avoidable if only both sides had shown more compassion and humanitarian considerations. But the totally militarized environment has given way to cynicism and callousness on both sides. Inevitably military priorities are overriding humanitarian considerations as the security forces are tightening the noose around the LTTE which is fighting a life and death battle.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has successfully ferried some 2,400 civilians from the war zone during the last three weeks, has also called for the evacuation of all civilians. The ICRC head of operations for South Asia, Jacques de Maio, has described the Vanni situation as "one of the most disastrous" he had experienced. In his view it would be possible to avoid further unnecessary suffering and death by allowing civilians who want to leave to get out of the area. He has also asked for more aid to be allowed to reach the civilians.

Sri Lanka had been facing mounting pressure and criticism of on this issue from international community. Many countries including the U.S., UK and India have called for a ceasefire to save the civilians. In India, the jerrybuilt ruling coalition applecart is being rocked severely with the Tamil population’s strident demand for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka. Had these calls come before the LTTE came embarrassingly close to defeat, they would not be suspect in the eyes of Sri Lanka. So it is no surprise that Sri Lanka rejected the calls for ceasefire outright; however, it reiterated its offer to call a halt to the war if the LTTE laid down arms.

Of course, even if Sri Lanka does not accede to such calls for halting the war, its problem on this count is unlikely to diminish. The only saving grace in Sri Lanka’s action so far is that despite huge superiority in numbers, the security forces are not rushing through the final offensive apparently to enable more civilians to escape the LTTE gauntlet. In the coming days the security forces will be using less and less of artillery fire as they neutralise LTTE pockets of resistance set amidst teeming civilians one by one. As the battle spills more and more among civilians, casualties will increase dramatically. Ultimately when the military juggernaut moves in for the final battle, even if it wants it would not be able to distinguish between the LTTE and civilians.

The LTTE is an insurgent force that had repeatedly used terrorist tools with little consideration for civilian lives even when it was not fighting a war. So it is unlikely to make saving of human lives as its first priority. Nothing shows this than the cavalier way the LTTE political wing head B Nadesan handled the call of Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee to the Sri Lanka government to seize the opportunity offered by the LTTE’s readiness for a ceasefire as an opportunity to evacuate the civilians from the war zone. Significantly, in this particular statement the Foreign Minister did not include his earlier call to the LTTE to lay down arms. Yet Nadesan rejected the call outright because evacuation of civilians was unacceptable to the LTTE.

Why is the LTTE not allowing the civilians to exit from the battle zone? There are a few reasons for this. Many of the civilians there have family connections with the LTTE or its hard core supporters. There would also be LTTE casualties of war. Moreover, there are also LTTE’s administrative auxiliaries who are helping out the frontline cadres as well as the families. All of them have legitimate fears about their fate if they go over to the areas under the control of “Sinhala” armed forces as they see it. Inevitably, they will have to be screened to exclude potential LTTE killers infiltrating along with them or escaping the battle. So the security forces have to exercise vigilance and control in some form or other over them when they are held in temporary camps. Unless their future safety is guaranteed by a neutral agency, these civilians are unlikely to walk out even if a safe passage is arranged to get out of the combat zone.

Of course, there must be civilians among them who do not fall under these categories. And the LTTE would not allow them to leave as it could induce an uncontrollable urge in everyone to escape.

So what the LTTE wants is a ceasefire, with no changes in its agenda. That means the LTTE essentially wants to continue as an independent armed military entity with control over its domain. It is this attitude of the LTTE that makes its calls for the international community’s help the trapped civilians suspect. In short, it wants everyone to forget the physical, geographical and political changes that have been wrought in Sri Lanka in the last three years of war. The LTTE, which is quite savvy in international ways, knows this is not a realistic expectation. But yet the LTTE wants India to go the extra mile to do so! If the LTTE expectation from India is to help it survive, it would find few takers despite all the emotions stirred up in Tamil Nadu.

The anguished cry of Tamils all over the world on this issue is not getting the unbiased attention it deserves thanks to the LTTE’s continued callousness and the Sri Lanka state’s reluctance to change its stance. In this bleak scenario, the arrival of Indian medical team in Sri Lanka to help the civilians in the north is welcome news. But it looks too little considering the magnitude of the problem. The mute point is can the international community do anything to get the people out of this logjam?

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cnotes6%5Cnote501.html

Labels: India, International relations, LTTE, Sri Lanka, Terrorism

posted by ஆர். ஹரிஹரன் @ 8:31 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Former army chief speaks loudly on military pensioners struggle

Retired Indian army chief Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury (Retd) now a Member of Parliament
in a hard hitting article titled "For ex-servicemen, parity in rank, pension long overdue" has highlighted the struggle of ex-servicemen who had been surrendering their medals in thousands to the President of India, the supreme commander of armed forces, as a protest against the non enforcement of "one rank one pension" for the veterans promised long back.

Unfortunately, when this protest started the media by and large ignored it without realising the implications of the struggle on the serving soldiers. They are silently watching the military pensioners struggle slowly picking up national attention. Indian armed forces have a hoary history of accepting the dispensation of the government without demur. And the pensioners were also soldiers in the past years who had this discipline ingrained in them. Why are they complaining loudly now? To understand the issue, Gen Roychowdhury's article is reproduced here:

In this context, perhaps India is an island in South Asia, where the armed forces had been the bulwark in ensuring the security of the democratic nation. And people respect the army for its unflinching loyalty. But are they looking after the guy who stands duty in harsh conditions along the icy mountains of Siachen Glacier or the scorching deserts of Rajastan bordering Pakistan? Time they did.

Here is the text of Gen Roychowdhury's article:
---------------------------

Three hundred or so weather-beaten old military veterans returned their medals to the President of India on February 8 as a mark of protest against official apathy in the matter of “one rank one pension” (OROP) a feeble flapping of wings by an irrelevant group which barely made any ripples in the public domain. Nevertheless, it should serve as a small, perhaps minuscule, reminder of the continuing dissatisfaction and unhappiness of a forgotten community. It is, of course, no secret that the defence services have been bitterly resentful of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission with respect to pay scales and, perhaps, more significantly in terms of downgraded equivalence with their civilian counterparts.

Whatever dissatisfaction on these and other aspects may have been expressed within the services, they did not find their way into the public domain, and the service chiefs too maintained a stiff upper lip, though they were undoubtedly concerned about its effects on their respective forces and with good reason. They jointly chose to highlight their unhappiness with stunning and totally unprecedented gesture of not accepting the new pay scales until anomalies had been looked into and ironed out and chose to continue with the existing pay scales in the interim period, a unique “Gandhigiri” in uniform, something unheard of earlier, which must have caused a flutter in the bureaucratic and ministerial dovecotes of South Block. Some in the print media, and at least, one irascible former diplomat were perhaps nudged to fume and splutter that it was really uppity for the services to “demand” pay scales, parity of service and protocol with the civil servants and all that — bad for discipline, don’t you know! Better keep these soldierwallahs at heel!

The moral courage of the service chiefs was exemplary during their undoubted crisis of conscience, and fully in consonance with the second stanza of the Credo of the Indian Military Academy — “The honour welfare and comfort of the men you command come next”, which ranks below the safety, honour and welfare of the country, but well above “your own ease comfort and safety” which comes “Last — Always and Everytime”.

Ex-servicemen were most supportive, anxious and fully concerned, but wisely refrained from raising issues pertaining to their serving comrades who were best left to the official hierarchy. They focused on issues pertaining to ex-servicemen for which they adopted the prevalent customs of the strange world outside the service — meetings at Jantar Mantar, processions, slogans, fasts and even intended self-immolation. All this was alien to their traditional environment and something that many within the community were themselves uncomfortable with. Throughout the whole proceedings, the armed forces — the “Fauj” — maintained total impassivity, but their silence was deafening in its own context. They watched, listened and noted because the present generation of soldiers no longer conform to the traditional public stereotype of dumb-driven cattle. They are intelligent, highly-trained and highly-skilled craftsmen in a deadly trade. They are not mercenaries or contract soldiers fighting for pay.

The government came out with two amazing statements: The government did not have the resources to grant OROP and if granted to ex-servicemen, the public sector, the paramilitary forces and the civil establishment would also want the same.

To take the second point first — ex-servicemen of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force are not, repeat not, from paramilitary forces, the public sector or the civil establishment. In their own time, they constituted the “Ultima ratio regis” — the King’s last argument, India’s last resort when all else has failed, and they have the track record to prove it. Comparisons are, therefore, ill-informed and odious and should not be made.

As for availability of funds, India is no longer a “poor” country and while financial resources at the disposal of the government may not be unlimited, there is certainly no crippling shortage either.

Extensive investments have been made in the social sector and it is, indeed, right that this should be so, yet it is also undeniable that there is massive haemorrhage of public funds from flagship projects like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. With proper supervision and oversight, funds for OROP can certainly be found if the haemorrhage is staunched, and proper accountability enforced.

The OROP movement by ex-servicemen is perhaps not a desirable development, but there has to be some other credible alternate method of drawing attention of the government to an intrinsically social issue. However, it is the possible long-term implications of such agitations which should be of concern to present and future governments — its effects on the serving soldiers, sailors and airmen, including their officers, who constitute the rigidly-disciplined world of defence forces. The relationship between the serving and former soldiers is umbilical and their perceptions and values fundamentally identical. The OROP agitation by ex-servicemen presents a complex paradox of service values and ethos impacted by the realities of the world outside the services. At this stage all that can be said is that matters are seriously wrong and require to be looked into.

In the midst of all this comes Mumbai 26/11, with its 24x7 breaking news coverage of commandos from the Special Action Group (SAG) of the National Security Guard (NSG — all Army, by the way) dropping onto Nariman House and excited chatter about surgical strikes against Pakistan on chat shows. Also around this time, almost unnoticed, the “Bharat sarkar” makes an announcement granting, amongst other benefits, a separate Pay Commission for the defence services, one of the very long-standing demands of the armed forces hitherto dismissed out of hand by the bureaucracy.

Coincidence? Am I reading things into it or might there be (as is whispered) a connection between Mumbai 26/11 and the sudden change in attitude of the government on Sixth Pay Commission awards to the defence services?

Meanwhile, reports out of Pakistan indicate that the Taliban are on the move and are headed our way. So be glad India, that you have one of the finest armed forces in the world — on land, sea and air. Look after them, even pamper them a little, but above all, be thankful, because if you have to call upon them again, they will be there.