Timing no coincidence

The timing of Lt. Gen. Fonseka's foreign media address was not a coincidence. The military had just joined together two of its three battlefronts (Mannar and Vavuniya) and begun a broad-scale advance against terrorist held areas.

Indeed, over the last two weeks, the Defence Ministry has claimed that the army had captured massive swaths of land and killed nearly 600 Tigers. There are two major paradigm changes here in the way that the war is being reported by the government.

Firstly, the claims of captured land have increased tremendously, indicating that the LTTE are withdrawing from territory much faster in the face of a military onslaught. However, surprisingly for such rapid retreats, the number of Tigers claimed killed by the Defence Ministry weekly on average, has more than doubled from 100+ per week to 200+ per week.

Yet despite this massive surge in conventional performance since he spoke, the Army Commander was unusually modest during his address. "Maybe," he began, using that word for the first time in his performance predictions, "a maximum of one year from now onwards the LTTE should lose large areas" to the army.

Although Lt. Gen. Fonseka did not elaborate on why he used the word "maybe," the LTTE's past track record provides some clues. Fighting as a conventional force has largely been alien to the group considered by the FBI as "the world's most ruthless" terrorist group.

The only two victories that the LTTE have achieved in conventional warfare over the last decade have been the trouncing of the ill-conceived Jayasikuru campaign and the onslaught on Elephant Pass, both in the late 1990s.

Unconventional

In the same period however, their tally of 'unconventional' strategic and propaganda victories has been immense. The Tigers have assassinated two Tamil cabinet ministers - Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar and Highways Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle - and wreaked havoc in two airbases, Katunayake and Anuradhapura.

The LTTE managed to bring their air wing to operational status, and fix the 2005 presidential election to ensure the installation of Mahinda Rajapakse as the executive: a move that has over the past 30 months brought the Sri Lankan government nearly as much into the international black-waters as the LTTE itself.

In trade the Tigers have been felled of their dominance of territory in the Eastern Province and some areas of the Northern Province. Which side is closer to victory, however, is a close call. This government has never understood that it was always a long shot for the LTTE to accomplish its goals by just achieving military dominance over the north and east and then declaring an independent Eelam.

Before they attempt any significant military campaign in a post 2001 September 11 environment, it is necessary for them to be recognised in the eyes of the world as a legitimate group of "freedom fighters" battling against an oppressive regime.

Poor show

Any such attempts would have been impossible up to 2005 because of the UNP led peace process and thereafter due to the watch of late Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who as an ethnic Tamil himself, campaigned tirelessly around the world to expose the sugar coated brutality of the LTTE.

In the years following his assassination however, we have been treated to foreign ministers of the ilk of the goofy Rohitha Bogollagama, who had the hollow-headedness to lie on record to BBC's Hardtalk programme in 2007, outright denying that armed paramilitary groups existed in Sri Lanka.

Since this gaffe - one among many - Karuna's and Pillayan's Tamileelam People's Liberation Tigers (TMVP), whose name bears an eerie resemblance to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam bar the word 'People,' has provided ample evidence to demonstrate the Foreign Minister's fib.

Karuna himself, on his return to Sri Lanka told media that the Tigers cannot be defeated "in the next few months" and that the government and TMVP will "have to work together to win this war." It is safe to assume that the militia leader and former LTTE eastern chief was not offering sticks and stones to the government's war effort, but armed military support.

What both Lt. Gen. Fonseka and Karuna seem to have come to suddenly realise, is that the war is about to enter a very protracted phase, and its political value to the Rajapakses will plunge when the public realises that their government will not be able to summarily banish the LTTE as promised.

Pronouncements

However sober the Army Commander's most recent predictions; his credibility has already been lost thanks to his repeated 'the war is almost over' pronouncements. It is noteworthy that not long after Fonseka's last set of deadlines - where he stated in February that the war would be over by April/May this year - a retired veteran, Maj. Gen. Janaka Perera was to tell The Sunday Leader in an interview that he "hopes this deadline is met for everyone's benefit."

Maj Gen. Perera was, however, expressing more than the general desire of the country's populace for the war to be over and done with. The battle-hardened General was instead worried that if the war continued for more than another 18 months, factors "such as mental fatigue, physical exhaustion and economic burdens" would tax soldiers too tremendously for them to function as an effective fighting force.

"We have been in the battlefield from July 2007," he highlighted, soberly. "If it drags on and spreads over a year the soldier suffers both mental fatigue and physical exhaustion. If he continues to remain in the battlefront, it is difficult to get the quality of a focused soldier from a fatigued and pressurised man."

The former General's words of caution echo both his battlefield experience and his Sandhurst military training, wherein no doubt he studied the effects of fatigue and stress on soldiers who took part in prolonged combat operations in World War II and the Vietnam War.

An example

A more recent example of how battle fatigue has crippled a modern army is the toll that military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken, leaving 10,000 British army soldiers - 10% of their 101,800 strong army - "unfit to serve" in combat operations.

Our army is remarkably large compared to that of the United Kingdom. The UK's 101,800 strong army is drawn from a subset of about 22 million people who are fit to serve, giving them an active army comprising of just four thousandths of a percentage point of the their available manpower - which is an even tinier fraction of their population of 60 million.

The Sri Lanka Army on the other hand comprises of over 270,000 personnel, out of a militarily fit population of just nine million - enormous when compared to the size of the United Kingdom's army. The UK's Telegraph newspaper reported in June that "every one" of the British army's infantry regiments has been affected by the prolonged engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since access to the front lines of Sri Lanka's conflict is extremely limited for journalists, it is impossible to obtain a realistic - non 'Chinthana' doctored - first hand view of the effect that the last year of continuous combat and counter-insurgency operations have had on the individual soldiers who hold the front lines, man the checkpoints, and press the army's advances against the Tigers.

Prediction

The Army Commander has astutely predicted that an LTTE fighting force (read a la Baghdad) could "survive even another two decades" due to the survival of those he termed as "people who believe in Tamil nationalism."

To put his warning into context, since the war has gone on for about 25 years to date, Lt. Gen. Fonseka is telling Sri Lanka that we are just over half way through fighting off the LTTE in a best case scenario. That is long enough for President Rajapakse to serve a second term of his presidency and be followed by a successor who serves two terms before the Tigers are eliminated as a military force according to the same Army Commander who oft pronounced that 'the end is nigh.'

If that were not bad enough, the General's worst case scenario certainly is. On top of the two decade long fisticuffs he predicts with a 1,000 cadre guerrilla group, he warned that the war "might continue as an insurgency forever," kindling memories of NATO's endless engagement against the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Comparing our issue with that of Britain once again, yields interesting parallels. The UK spends around US$ 60 billion per year (2.6% of its GDP) on defence expenditure whereas we spend a relatively paltry US$ 1.2 billion, which works out to 3.2% of our own GDP.

Corruption

Although the requirement for battling the LTTE must be a significant contributing factor to our relatively high defence budget, recent exposures on the procurement of MiG bombers, naval guns, sonar systems and ultra-luxury Mercedes cars (likely a drop in the ocean of the deals that get by), has left little doubt that graft and corruption are a significant reason for our high spending in government.

Corruption is not the only sin that the establishment has been accused of. Last week former speaker of parliament, opposition MP Joseph Michael Perera charged in parliament that the recent attacks on the media have been masterminded by the Army Commander. He said he was "told by those in the army itself that journalists are abducted and subjected to grievous injury by none other than a special unit under the Army Commander."

This newspaper is also in exclusive possession of letters written to former IGP Chandra de Silva and Chief Justice Sarath Silva by a foreign national resident in Sri Lanka, alleging that he was under threat by a renegade group of naval commandos who were involved in abducting Tamil citizens. Although the allegation was never substantiated, the individual concerned has since been arrested and detained by the police. It would not be prudent to expand due to security reasons.

Allegations such as these support the view that the problems faced by NATO in Kabul are far closer to a solution than our own ethnic conflict, as long as the government continues with its current approach.

Analysis

Elsewhere in this week's edition of The Sunday Leader, we have published an analysis of a poll conducted by the Centre for Policy Alternatives that has shown that the vast majority of Tamil people feel intimidated by the fact that they are constantly persecuted by an almost exclusively Sinhalese army and police force. No one is particularly impressed either with plans to soak up a brigade of former Tigers (the TMVP militia) as the first Tamil police force recruited in several years.

Despite no realistic end to hostilities in sight at the military's own admission, it is despicable that the government continues to beat the war drums and take cover behind the soldiers on the frontline in order to avoid all its problems.

The most recent example was that of Defence Spokesman Minister Keheliya Rambukwella stating that the only way to alleviate the workforce from the staggering cost of living is to "cut the defence expenditure which is Rs.127 billion. But the government will not cut defence expenditure at this time when the security forces have launched a strong attack on terrorism."

Despite all these patriotic cries, the government has taken an enormous effort to hide the sombre ugliness of its battlefields from hitting too close to home. Yet just outside parliament, a monument has been erected, as promised by President Rajapakse on NDTV, in honour of the 1,255 Indian soldiers who were killed in Sri Lanka. All their names are to be listed on the monument, visible on every MP's entry to the house by the Diyawanna.

Mark of respect

In the House of Commons - as a mark of respect to those lost in battle - the names of every single military serviceman killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are read out while parliament is in session, providing British MPs with a regular, personal, first hand picture of the dastardly cost of war on the blood of its countrymen.

This tradition is in stark contrast to the virtually mumbled reply to the odd oral question raised in Sri Lanka's parliament about our military's casualties in what is now looking to be a conflict without end.

Over 1,700 servicemen have given their lives so far in the latest eruption of hostilities under President Rajapakse. If this administration genuinely empathises with their sacrifice, then the government should follow the British example and honour our army's fallen by not just confessing the monthly toll of soldiers killed, but by reading out the names and birthplaces of all those killed in battle.

If there is - by some spare chance - any humanity left in Sri Lanka's politics, such a move would bring home to the 225 elected representatives of the people, the true level of sacrifice undertaken by the children of 'other' parents. President Rajapakse's coterie of ministers would then have to deal with their conscience before cowering behind heroes for their political survival by supporting an endless and costly conflict.

Opposition

The realisation that all is not fun and games may also galvanise the ineffective opposition out of their current pathetic slumber and into some form of effective, real opposition to the unchecked rampage of the Rajapakse government.

The last thing that Sri Lanka can afford, especially in the throes of its current economic crisis, is to have to re-learn the mistakes of other countries who can more effectively afford to make them. Before the war in Iraq began, a former US Army Colonel, now a professor at Boston University, Andrew Bacevich, warned that the American approach to solving the Iraqi problem was ill-conceived.

Col. Bacevich warned that the US government was "so comfortable with the use of force and so confident about the US military to get things done that that sort of becomes the first option to solve problems rather than the last one."

We can only wonder how many more will have to die before the Rajapakses' stop shoving Sri Lanka though the landmine-ridden footsteps of their 'other' home country.