The time to celebrate the complete annihilation of the LTTE by the killing of its last 3,000 LTTE cadres in 2008 has come... and gone... sans the fanfare one would expect in the era of the Chinthana administration’s Toppigala tamasha at Independence Square in July 2007.

Last Friday, April 18, the total number of Tamil Tigers killed in 2008 — as per the statistics provided by the Defence Ministry — reached 3,000. In just over 200 news stories spread over these short three and a half months, the government reached its target, long before Army Commander, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka’s initial anticipated timeline of August 2008.

By one edition of Sarath Fonseka’s wanting arithmetic, given to the Sunday Observer in December 2007, there were only 3,000 cadres remaining in the LTTE. On February 10, notwithstanding the military brass’ claims that nearly 900 Tigers were killed in the start of the year, the Army Commander changed his estimate, stating that there were 5,000 LTTE cadres remaining. The General’s margin of error in this instance is, put frankly, unbelievable.

Given his December estimate of 3,000 remaining Tigers, there should have been 2,100 remaining by the time of his February 10 statement. That Lt. Gen. Fonseka decided that there were 5,000 terrorists remaining in active service is a margin of error — 2,900 or 97% from his December estimate.

Let’s not even get started about the Army Commander’s declaration to The Hindustan Times in May 2007 that there were 4,000 Tigers remaining at that time and that "if (the LTTE) loses 2,000 cadres they are finished." For the record however, over 2,500 LTTE cadres were killed according to the Defence Ministry between the date of this interview and end 2007.

It is in the public interest to make it crystal clear that the government is politicising the war and the achievements of the valiant young Sri Lankans who die on the frontlines each day, and using it as a diversion to distract an increasingly destitute public from the abysmal disaster that is the Percy Chinthana.

Whilst anyone can see clearly the disaster that is the rising cost of living, the faltering economy, or the unstable security situation in Colombo and the south, the one trump card the Rajapakses have is to tout that "the war is going well." Given the restricted public, NGO and media access to the conflict areas, we are forced to swallow the government’s line on the progress of the war, and it can make charges of thousands of Tigers killed, tens of ships sunk, and territory captured — all going unchallenged.

Once in a while however, the propagandists get caught with their pants down. A fine case in point is that at some point in the last one year, every one of Pirapaharan’s limbs has allegedly been severed in some form of airstrike or another, only for the LTTE chief to appear by the body of slain TNA MP K. Sivanesan with two arms, two legs, and ten fingers and toes — yes, there were five digits to each limb, and none seemed to have been surgically reattached to the body of the world’s most deadly terrorist.

The table on this page illustrates the many words of wisdom espoused by propagandists about the number of cadres remaining in the LTTE, the numbers they claimed to have killed as time passes, and the backpedalling that takes place whenever one particular statement has undergone too much media scrutiny.

From this table alone, it is easy to deduce that the defence establishment is either naive as to the true fighting strength of the LTTE or they are lying to the public for short term propaganda gains. Not all observers have anything to gain from taking an angle however, and of the private intelligence firms worldwide that make millions of dollars for providing accurate and reliable information about various events in the world defence theatre, the foremost would be the London based Jane’s group.

A publication in the roundly respected Jane’s Intelligence Review (Vol. 19, No. 12) estimated that the LTTE had, as of 2008, an estimated fighting strength of 7,000 cadres.

Despite the perpetual lies about the number of LTTE cadres remaining, it is worth attempting to give the military brass benefit of the doubt on their estimate of the number of LTTE cadres they have killed, again despite the various sets of figures quoted.

If 3,000 LTTE cadres truly have been killed over the last three and a half months, it is an astounding achievement and by all measures should signal the imminent death knell of the LTTE. Their elimination is surely nigh. In the entirety of 2007, just over 3,860 Tigers were killed as per the same Defence Ministry reports.

Lt. Gen. Fonseka must be immensely proud as a veteran of the Jayasikurui operation of the last decade, a bold offensive that killed between 3,000 -3,600 LTTE cadres in a space of over two years. To be able to kill a comparable number in just one year (2007) and then repeat this feat by killing 3000 in a matter of months this year, the military must have gotten into solid gear.

Yet here’s the snag. If the Jane’s account of 7,000 remaining Tigers is to be taken as even a ballpark, there remain only 4000 LTTE cadres. Given the phenomenal performance so far this year, it should only take a few more months to destroy the LTTE’s remaining forces. To subscribe to Jane’s Intelligence Review costs nearly US$1,300 annually — few would pay such a sum for inaccurate information.

In this light it is puzzling that the Rajapakse government has denounced all of its earlier timelines for the war’s end. The performance so far has been far better than even their most optimistic predictions. So why did President Rajapakse tell NDTV that it would take about one and a half years to finish the war? There are some possible answers to ponder.

It is well known that the LTTE has one of the most ruthless child conscription policies in the world. That the TMVP is finding it hard to break the habit having broken off from the main group over three years ago, shows how deeply entrenched the LTTE’s culture of child conscription is. The military too has alleged that the Tigers are perpetually sending women and children to the front lines.

Thus it is possible that a lot of these ‘kills’ are actually these poorly trained and ill-equipped ‘buffer kids’ being sent to the frontlines by the Tigers at gunpoint. If that is the case, is the war going to go on until the entire Wanni runs out of women and children? Is it only then that the real elite battle hardened LTTE cadres will show themselves? Such a hypothesis is likely, as ridiculous as it sounds.

The far more likely option, supported by facts and precedent, is that just like everything else, the government is lying about the number of LTTE cadres it is killing, and lying big time. There is little doubt that these figures are inflated — by well more than the current inflation rate of 28%.

To begin with there exist several versions of ‘official’ government reporting on the war’s progress. The most easily accessible are the websites of the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) www.nationalsecurity.lk and the official website of the Defence Ministry www.defence.lk. Apart from wondering why on earth the Defence Ministry would run two websites that each report the same news, we are more than a little amused that they both publish some quite different figures.

The Sunday Leader uses the reports from www.defence.lk for its records and reporting as it has a very reliable and comprehensive archival system, allowing news to be retrieved from as far back as when the news service got underway in April 2006. It would appear that Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapakse’s days spent as a ‘computer systems administrator’ in Los Angeles have paid off in this respect.

One interesting aspect of all the defence reporting is that no casualty figures are even guessed at for the 40 plus airstrikes that have been announced so far this year. Many of the reports list severe damage to equipment but startlingly few provide even estimates of the number of LTTE cadres killed in attacks on these many ‘key’ installations.

None of this is to say that the government is fighting an ill-fated battle to ‘recapture’ or ‘liberate’ the north from the LTTE. Given the military’s vastly superior firepower, such a territorial conquest is imminently possible in the next several months. Yet history has not shown that the LTTE is dependent on holding territory for its survival.

This is highlighted in Jane’s Intelligence Weekly as follows: "This does not yet suggest an end to the conflict or a military defeat of the LTTE. While it may lose territory, a reversion to guerrilla warfare in the east will likely be matched by a similar tactic in the jungles of the Wanni. High-value political and military targets will be attacked with suicide squads and bombers, and intermittent light infantry raids will be carried out on military stations. Weaponry will be supplied by theft from security forces, with the LTTE’s estimated 7,000 fighters offering substantial resistance for years ahead.

"The movement’s demise has been predicted several times since its inception in the 1970s, and the group has proven adept at jungle fighting in previous years. The current crisis could yet prove to be the catalyst for lethal new innovations on the Sri Lankan battlefield."

By even the most modest estimates, over 170 civilians and 220 soldiers have died due to this war in the first few months of 2008 alone. The year has also seen us lose as many as six Members of Parliament — four due to targeted assassinations.

The year began with the killing of UNP MP Thiagarajah Maheswaran. Minister D.M. Dassanayake was felled in a claymore attack not two weeks later. Sri Lanka has not suffered such a rapid loss of legislators for over one and a half decades.

The government has clearly also forgotten that several hundred thousand of its own citizens live in the areas that it ruthlessly bombs in ‘precision airstrikes’ targeting ‘enemy installations’ of one sort or another.

Granted, the Allies bombed Germany. The Americans bombed everywhere from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain bombed the Falklands. But never in the history of air forces have countries bombed areas inhabited by their own people on their own soil.

Even during the most ruthless of the JVP uprisings, where civilians and civil servants were slaughtered in hundreds for merely stepping out of their houses, the Premadasa government did not send out the air force to ‘precision’ bomb ‘identified JVP targets’ in strongholds such as Hambantota. And boy, were there plenty available.

It is this distinction, coupled with the shoddy treatment of Tamil civilians throughout the country by the government as a whole that nurtures a perception of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude at the Chinthana administration’s decision making table. Mass arbitrary arrests of Tamils and last June’s attempted deportation of Tamil lodge occupants from Colombo, didn’t help, to say the least.

There must come a time that conscience, if nothing else, makes the Rajapakse brothers stop their practice of trading kills and conquests for political capital, and instead come out with a legitimate strategy for preventing our country from spiralling to the depths of the next forgotten, war-torn, sectarian, pariah state. They must remember that this is precisely what the LTTE wanted of them in 2005.

The people of Sri Lanka, and more importantly the soldiers who are making the supreme sacrifice have a right to know the ground reality so that corrective steps can be taken where necessary rather than be fed with ego boosting statistics which are neither here nor there.

In the run up to the November 2005 election, the Tigers characterised the two main candidates. Mahinda Rajapakse was called the seerikkadikkum naham or strident cobra, who hisses and draws attention before biting. Ranil Wickremesinghe on the other hand, they said, was the more feared seeraamal kadikkum pidaian — the viper that would strike them silently out of nowhere.

A war torn, internationally dismissed, economically ravaged island is what the LTTE wanted to achieve in Sri Lanka by ensuring a Rajapakse victory in November 2005. It is under these conditions that they would have the freedom to wage the unrestricted guerrilla warfare that would bring about their dream of an independent state.

The architects of the Chinthana would do well to remember where their loyalties lie and avoid falling into such a trap. It is still not too late to take the LTTE head on, by showing the world the difference between the conduct of a democratically elected government and a terrorist organisation.