The ups and downs of Lanka’s separatist war
Over a third of Sri Lanka’s 75 years of independence has seen a separatist war, one that grew exponentially in four different phases, heaping a colossal financial burden on the people, leaving thousands dead and yet others wounded.
Until then, the military was essentially a parade ground outfit. They showed their impressive public presence every year on Independence Day, displaying their assets, mostly vintage. That done, they were back in their barracks. The mass-scale spit and polish of boots came just once a year.
Paradoxically enough, a gradual march to modernisation was dictated by threats from different Tamil guerrilla groups. Soon, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or the Tiger guerrillas, brutally destroyed their rivals to emerge as militarily the most powerful. At first, it was a ragtag group attacking police stations in the north to seize weapons. The prized assets then were 303 rifles and Sterling sub-machine guns. They also robbed banks to raise funds. They trained in the soil of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
In what is euphemistically called Eelam War 1, the guerrillas introduced the Russian-built AK-47 assault rifles as well as its cheaper equivalent, the Chinesemade T-56. They also mastered the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). They caused enormous death and destruction. They also obtained rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
The Eelam War III saw artillery guns (both smuggled into Sri Lanka as well as those seized from the military). Their ingenuity in smuggling these artillery pieces is noteworthy. They were unloaded off the Mullaitivu coast from one of their own ships (they ran a shipping network). They were pulled by tractors along the beach. From there, they launched it onto a barge lying on a channel they had cut linking it to a waterway and moved it to one of their camps. During Eelam War IV, they set up an “Air Wing.” All this was not as highly sophisticated as in the case of a conventional military outfit. Yet, they were of more than nuisance value and thrust the defence establishment in Colombo into action. They also procured the shoulder-fired Russian-built SAM 7 surface-to-air missiles.
Successive governments had to evolve their own strategies. They were not necessarily cohesive. In executing a war against the guerrillas, perhaps understandably, the government had to impose taxes. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga relaxed procurement rules. Her objective was to ensure time-consuming procedures do not delay urgently needed equipment. This opened the floodgates to bribery and corruption. It created billionaires and millionaires both in and out of uniform. The governments in power ignored exposures and trained their guns only on media personnel who exposed them. They were perceived as the second enemy. They did not hesitate to try to paint one black even before the eyes of their foreign colleagues.
An example: I was invited by the Defence Attaché of the US Embassy in Colombo in 2017 to serve as a media panelist at a Non-Lethal Weapons Executive Seminar (NOLES). It was co-hosted by the Sri Lanka Navy. A group of junior and lower ranks raised questions over the procurement of MiG-27 fighter jets. The questions were pregnant with sarcasm and innuendo to the exposure which was exclusively reported by the Sunday Times. That third parties made good money in this scandalous deal was later confirmed by investigations by the then Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID). The rapidity of the questions gave me the impression that they had been well orchestrated. There was mirth in the faces of some seniors. I responded to them. Later, an officer of the US Marine Corps gave me some friendly advice “do not be discouraged. I know this happens in your part of the world.” Ironically, who was to defend me – an officer of the Sri Lanka Air Force.
Earlier, an elderly man, whose sanity was once questioned, was trained in a
camp in the Wanni to say he was LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s translator. He declared before television cameras that his task included translating what I wrote. If indeed there were any transgressions of the law, the logical course would have been to seek recourse to the law. This was a different trial. The project flopped. The man later named to me those who trained him. The message – drive those making revelations to the graveyard of the frightened and the silenced. There are many more instances.
Military equipment which was of little use was among those procured. There was also procurement of others which never arrived in Sri Lanka. Just two examples: The purchase of a hovercraft for the Sri Lanka Navy. It operated only a few times.
This air-cushion vehicle or ACV is an amphibious one capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. This vessel is now lying idle at the SLNS Rangala, the Navy’s headquarters for the western area. It is located in Colombo. The other is the order placed with a company in Zimbabwe for the procurement of 32,400 pieces of 31mm mortar shells. The money was remitted but the supplies did not arrive. Then there are purchases like for example the MiG-27 fighter jets. There is convincing evidence now that Sri Lanka did not procure these ground attack aircraft from the supplier. It had been sold by a company in Ukraine to a hurriedly setup Singaporean company. That third parties became millionaires from the deal has now been confirmed. There have been many instances of prices of equipment being prohibitively high. One such case has been the purchase of Multi-Barrel Rockets.
All this meant that the separatist war cost much more than it should have. That is not only in terms of procurements but
also the recruitment of manpower. This is why, for example, the strength of the Sri Lanka Army is as much if not more than the British Army. The numbers have swelled in the Navy and the Sri Lanka Air Force, too. On top of that, there is a Civil Defence Force at a time when the police are short of strength and crime is mounting. There is also a Coast Guard when Sri Lanka simply does not have the resources to develop a blue water navy and match India. It was then necessary. Ironically such recruitment has been going on for years after the end of the separatist war. And now, they talk of reducing the military’s strength. Is mismanagement the cause?
This begs answer to the all-important question – why Sri Lanka’s politicians and bureaucrats who directed the war did not think of a proper lessons-learnt project? The United States with whom they are now engaging in close military cooperation could easily help in this task. They have a Centre for Lessons Learnt which conducts a review of the military operations the US carries out. One need hardly say that in Sri Lanka’s case, it has to go beyond battlefield endeavours to procurement, efficacy of the equipment, prices and related matters. It also should examine how people go scot-free if they have powerful connections.
Another area which has remained neglected is media relations. At least in hindsight, it has become clear that it was woefully inadequate. Take, for example, the final stages of the separatist war that ended in May 2009. The Colombo-based media were debarred from the battle zone. Information for them was disseminated from Colombo. Troops fighting the war were tasked with putting out news releases. They raised serious credibility issues. The cumulative effect it had can be seen
from what has been transpiring over the years before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. A new Secretariat is now probing human rights as well as humanitarian law violations, among others, during the penultimate stages of the separatist war. Wouldn’t allowing the media with limited restrictions (due to battles) and permitting them to report not have minimised the damage? That it was allowed for a selected few from overseas shows that the government’s message has not reached the outside world as it expected.
In distancing the vast segment of the media, almost entirely local, it seems ironic that only a handful of the acts of heroism of the troops at the ground level were highlighted. Some were even by default. The credit for most others for being heroes went to others, perhaps most deserving but a few were not even on the battlefield. This reminds one of what General Norman Schwarzkopf, the US commander of the war in Iraq, said, “It does not take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” An official review would have brought out much more heroes from the soldiery or their equivalent in the other forces.
There is no gainsaying that terrorism or violence, whether locally or from those abroad, could be condoned. That notwithstanding, the men and women whom the troops fought were also citizens of Sri Lanka. They were compatriots. The only fears of a foreign invasion came during the food drop by India on Monday, June 3, 1987. I happened to be the only local journalist from Colombo to remain in Jaffna and saw a firsthand account. It was with the approval of Defence Secretary, General Sepala Attygalle and General Cyril Ranatunga, Joint Operations Commander (JOC).
As President Ranil Wickremesinghe once told me, a decade after the food drop, the news was conveyed in New Delhi by India’s State Minister for External Affairs, Kanwar Natwar Singh, to Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner Bernard Tillakeratne.
In Colombo, at noon on Monday, June 1, 1987, Indian High Commissioner Jyotindra Nath Dixit called at the Foreign Ministry. He told Foreign Minister A.C.S. Hameed that “the Government of India proposes to send urgently needed relief” by sea to Jaffna City starting June 3, 1987. A note he handed over gave the purported reasons for the move. It claimed “the population of Jaffna, already suffering extreme hardship under the five-monthold economic blockade imposed upon by their own government are now becoming the victims of an all-out military assault. (The reference was to Operation Liberation which ended a day earlier with the capture of the Vadamarachchi sector of Jaffna). Thousands have already been killed and hundreds more are dying….
A fleet of naval patrol craft led by the surveillance command ship SLNS Edithara moved into the Palk Strait -- the waters of the Indian Ocean dividing India and Sri Lanka -- on the night of Tuesday, June 2. In command was Captain Mohan Samarasekera, who was to later become the Commander of the Navy. This exercise was codenamed “Operation Jelly Fish.”
Aboard the SLNS Edithara which lay within Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, they observed echoes on their radar coming from the direction of the island of Kachchativu. “We observe you are coming towards Sri Lankan territorial waters. Please refrain,” said Captain Samarasekera on the radio. Moments later, the Indian Coast Guard vessels Vikram T 33 and a tug belonging to the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Commission were visible. A flotilla of 19 boats stood around the tug whilst Vikram T 33 moved, circling the flotilla.
From Vikram T 33, an Indian External Affairs Ministry official responded by radio to Captain Samarasekera’s call. “We are bringing food for the starving people of Jaffna,” he said. Replied Captain Samarasekera “Please give them to the starving people in Tamil Nadu. In Jaffna, the armed forces are distributing food. The Sri Lanka Red Cross has not sought relief. If you still want to give, please hand it over to the government of Sri Lanka.” When the official was invited on board the SLNS Edithara, he said he wanted to come with the representative of the Indian Red Cross Society and media representatives based in India. “Please do not lay down conditions to my invitation,” said Captain Samarasekera. The dialogue went on till Tuesday night.
At that point, the captain of Vikram T 33 came on air and told Captain Samarasekera they were not coming to Sri Lankan waters. He said they were returning. Thereafter, the relief was airdropped for 20 minutes on Wednesday evening. The planes were escorted by Mirage fighter bombers. The packages contained rice, boxes of matches, wheat flour, and sugar. The exercise was titled “Operation Eagle”.
Thirty-seven years later, India became Sri Lanka’s saviour during the economic crisis that brought bankruptcy. It unhesitatingly rendered assistance to the tune of US$ 4 billion, unlike others who are offering smokescreens. If supplies were to come from Tamil Nadu for the food drop, they came again, this time under peaceful circumstances for the people of Jaffna.
Captain Samarasekera, a seasoned and respected officer, rose to the rank of an Admiral and was the 12th Commander of the Sri Lanka Navy.
The near-three decades of separatist war, the guerrillas called the shots. As a result, they modernised the military and made a sophisticated fighting force out of them. As for the guerrillas, they raised money in one theatre, procured weapons in another to fight in a third and lost militarily. With that, their dream of an Eelam faded away.