India and Sri Lanka’s internal conflict Q & A: Part 4 Dispatch of IPKF and its role in Sri Lanka

Col R Hariharan |28 May 2018

[This is part 4 of the 9-part series of notes used in a telephone interview  with a civil society social group, which aims to “promote pathways for solving the ethnic issue under a federal solution” in Sri Lanka and to address human rights violations committed during the ethnic conflict by both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The interview was conducted in January 2017; its contents remain still valid.]

Q 5: At what specific point in time, after the IPKF were dispatched in Sri Lanka, did the LTTE turn violent?  

I had already answered about the role of IPKF as to ensure the implementation of the Accord by both Sri Lanka government and the Tamil militants to satisfy all the stakeholders. So a token force was initially sent the night after the Accord was signed; more troops were inducted subsequently to cover the two provinces. The LTTE failed to surrender the arms as required by the Accord. While it was dragging its feet, two events that happened indicated the LTTE was nearing the point of no return. The first was the death of the LTTE leader Thileepan, who was fasting to force India to comply with the LTTE demands. Prabhakaran was bitter with India’s laid back response to his coercive tactics.

The touch point came when Sri Lankan Navy apprehended a boat in Sri Lankan waters carrying 12 front line armed LTTE leaders returning from India; in contravention to the Accord they were carrying arms. President Jayawardane refused to release them in spite of India’s request. The IPKF did not intervene as per orders received from New Delhi. When Sri Lanka army tried to fly them to Colombo for further interrogation, they committed suicide. Both the events came as a shock to Sri Lanka Tamils who had high expectations from India.

The two events were also a big loss of face for Prabhakaran, who firmly believed he was the master of Tamil destiny. I remember when Sri Lankan army handed over the 12 bodies to the LTTE under the benign watch of IPKF, I told Mahathiya not to push Indian army to fight, using this as a pretext, because the Indian army could go on fighting forever. I gave the example of the fifty-year long operations against Naga insurgents. He sneered at me and said for every dead LTTE leader, Indian army would pay with 1200 lives (surprisingly at the end IPKF suffered 1250 dead) for the loss of those 12 LTTE men. That triggered the LTTE’s war against India and as a corollary the IPKF.

Q6: What was the relationship between the IPKF and anti-LTTE groups, namely, EPRLF, ENDLF, and TELO?  Why wasn’t the IPKF able to influence these three rebel groups to destabilize the LTTE?

We had good functional relations with EPRLF, TELO and ENDLF. They had supported the Accord as the best option for Tamils and surrendered their arms. (PLOTE was sulking under Uma Maheswaran for its own reasons because it was mending its relations with the Sri Lanka army). Qualitatively, they differed from the LTTE, which was ruthless and highly secretive and paranoid about its security. This probably insulated the LTTE from penetration by other groups. The friendly Tamil militant groups assisted our troops in the operations.  MI operated using sources within the LTTE; they were cadres and leaders unhappy over the confrontation with Indian forces and helped us. I was not privy to special operations of the kind you speak. Special Forces must have planned and carried out such operations.

Q 7: Also, why wasn’t the IPKF able to stop Prabhakaran from killing off leaders in rival factions? For example, the elimination of the PLOTE leadership in Batticaloa by the LTTE. 

During its existence, the LTTE had killed top Tamil political and rival militant group leaders like Sri Sabaratnam of TELO (ignoring the plea of his friend – the DMK leader Karunanidhi to spare his life) and the TULF leader Amirthalingam. This struck fear among leaders who opposed his approach; those who stood firmly against him went on exile or were eliminated. Thus it was an occupational risk for anyone who opposed Prabhakaran’s writ. And the leaders of other militant groups and Tamil political leaders, who supported the Accord were prepared to run this risk because they believed in it and the presence of IPKF reassured them to an extent. On a few occasions, I had passed on information about LTTE dispatching people to kill specific leaders to the affected leaders in advance. While some took precautions and survived while some leaders like Padmanabha were stoic about it, accepting it as part of the bargain for their beliefs.

Intelligence was not involved in organizing personal protection. Probably the Operations branch or formations responded to specific requests. So I would not be able to comment on it, as we had our hands full. However, during the hot war, MI had ensured security and protection by way of advance information to local non-LTTE Tamil militant leaders trapped in the operational area. (To be continued)