___________________________________
by Raj Chengappa to India Today
(February 09, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Sri Lankan Army Headquarters in the heart of Colombo is among the most heavily fortified complexes in the country. To get to the office of Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka, commander of the army, one has to go through a confusing maze of security checks.
For good reason—a year and a half ago, a suicide bomb attack inside the headquarters by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) saw Fonseka seriously injured and hospitalised for months.
Yet, that only steeled his resolve to wipe out the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation, whose members parade themselves as freedom fighters for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil population.
(Tamils form 23 per cent of the 20-million-strong population and LTTE has been waging a 30-year war for a separate homeland for them.) Since then, Fonseka and his 1.6-lakh-strong army have inflicted body blows on LTTE.
In less than a year-and-a-half, the army has wrested control of seven districts in the east and the west, which LTTE had previously controlled.
The Tigers now have effective control over only two districts—Killinochchi and Mullaitivu—in the north. This is a rump compared to the vast stretches of coastline where their writ once ran.
The armed forces also recently succeeded in killing two of LTTE’s toprung leaders—Tamil Selvam, the political head, and Shanmuganathan Ravishankar alias Charles, the military intelligence chief—in surprise strikes.
They narrowly missed striking the feared chief Velupillai Prabhakaran in late December, when the Air Force scored a direct hit on a bunker, known as X-ray, that he frequented. LTTE chief PrabhakaranWhen he didn’t make an appearance at Charles’s funeral, they suspected Prabhakaran was injured. Subsequently, intelligence believes that he is alive and in full command of his forces.
Fonseka and his army are not willing to allow that position to continue for long. With Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse formally putting to an end, on January 16, the tattered Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) that a previous government had entered into with LTTE in 2002, the armed forces have stepped up their campaign to tighten the noose they had thrown around the Tiger’s last bastion.
In a major offensive, Fonseka has lined up five of the 12 divisions of his army to engage Prabhakaran and the LTTE army in a decisive operation to wipe out the organisation.
The commander, who announced a policy of killing at least 10 Tiger cadres a day, boasts that of late, he has been able to double that number.With the LTTE army reduced to 3,000-5,000, Fonseka calculates that it can be wiped out in less than a year.
To ensure that he meets the target, Fonseka has brought under siege the dense Wanni jungles that act like a natural fortress to the two remaining districts under LTTE’s control.
He has spent a good deal of time and money in training and equipping his men to fight like the Tigers. Breaking up his battalions into deep penetration units adept at guerrilla warfare, he has surprised LTTE by the capacity of his army to inflict maximum damage with minimum casualties.
To stretch LTTE’s defences, he has launched a four-pronged attack coming in from all directions . While the Tigers engage in conventional warfare by firing mortar, Fonseka’s army moves in small bands of killer units, laying booby traps, gathering intelligence and destroying infrastructure like bridges and communication lines.
Fonseka, who is not willing to rush in and strike, says, “We are taking the territory inch by inch and foot by foot while inflicting heavy casualties on them. It’s only a matter of time before LTTE begins to wilt.”
Part of the army’s strategy is to step up attacks on all LTTE leaders, with Prabhakaran being on top of the list. As Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse—the President’s younger brother—says, “LTTE, being a monolithic organisation, will collapse if we strike at the head, allowing us to finish it with less casualties and destruction.”
The younger Rajapakse has been instrumental in transforming the way the Sri Lankan armed forces fought. A former lieutenant-colonel, who fought against the Tigers in the late-’80s and the early-’90s, Gotabaya believes “it is not the weapon but the man behind it that matters most”.
Prabhakaran (centre) with his cadreTo make sure he has the best men, he has not only doubled the salaries of the existing rank and file in the army, but has also put aside money for equipping them with the latest weapons.
Having the President for a brother helped, as there was no political resistance when he jacked up the defence budget to $1.5 billion (Rs 6,000 crore) in 2007, a 100-per cent increase over the previous year’s budget. Most importantly, he let Fonseka and the chiefs of the other two forces have a free hand.
Fonseka used the unfettered mandate to radically restructure his army. With photographs of lions adorning his chamber, the army commander speaks with a quiet confidence as he describes how he went about shaking up a moribund, ineffective and corrupt force into a fierce army that could take on the world’s most feared terrorist organisation.
He first appointed commanders who had proven themselves in military operations, brushing aside protocols of seniority. Fonseka, who pushed for extensive training of troops in jungle warfare and engineering, was given a carte blanche to buy weapons.
He also started a major recruitment drive that saw close to 40,000 being inducted into the army in the past year, raising five new divisions. “We now have 25,000 new bayonets pointing at LTTE, not to mention the reserve units that can be brought into play if needed,” he says.
