Pincer Island

The conquest of the East, in mid-2007, was facilitated by Col Karuna, the LTTE’s renegade commander, after the Lankan army engineered a vertical split among the rebels in 2004. The liberation of the East was preceded by securing its legal demerger, undoing the clubbing of the Northern and Eastern provinces as the homeland of the Tamils enabled by the 1987 India-Sri Lanka Accord (ISLA).

Even then few believed Rajapakse would be able to replicate the military success of the East in the North, where there was no Karuna to help the army. The initial strategy of attrition involved liberation of territory where the Tigers were spread thinly and fighting conventionally on a broad front. It was then that a military victory appeared within the grasp of the army, once described by its former chief as funk.

The military’s transformation included doubling the army’s strength to 2,00,000, providing it the wherewithal to fight—the defence budget was raised by 35 per cent over the last three years—and placing a halo around the soldier. A folk hero now, some international figures have referred to Fonseka as the world’s best general.

In 2007-08, Lanka had established its supremacy over the LTTE navy, which had lost seven ships from their arms replenishment fleet. The Tigers were deficient in anti-aircraft weapons and munitions, and their capacity to find funds and fervour among the diaspora was curbed through deft diplomacy. Drawing a distinction between the LTTE and civilian Tamils, projecting the war as a fight against terrorism rather than as ethnic conflict, and describing the offensive as a humanitarian operation to liberate Tamils from the clutches of the Tigers—all this took a bit of creative semantics.

The all-out offensive was executed with unprecedented politico-military resolve, and Rajapakse gave a free hand to the military. India’s backing was critical. Delhi provided vital intelligence, enhancing the air supremacy of government forces, which pushed the Tigers into a corner. And, when an Indian demarche forbade Sri Lanka from seeking weapons from specific countries, Colombo pressed ahead—Beijing provided military aid and Islamabad crucial training and customised ammunition for precision-guided air attacks.

The LTTE’s principal handicap has been Prabhakaran. Because of him, the Tigers missed several opportunities for a political settlement—from the devolution package accompanying ISLA to even better offers later from president Chandrika Kumaratunga and prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Chasing the chimera of Eelam, Prabhakaran became a liability.

Delhi and Chennai couldn’t force Colombo into a ceasefire, as they had in 1987, because India was never serious about it. The humiliating defeat of the Tigers is the price Prabhakaran has paid for assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE media calls it India’s war and Sonia Gandhi’s hour of revenge. With 1,00,000 civilians trapped in the conflict zone, a humanitarian operation has become a humanitarian tragedy, fuelling emotions in Tamil Nadu. Though the Americans offered to evacuate trapped civilians by a marine force, Colombo was unlikely to permit a third country presence on its soil without India’s nod. Instead, Delhi was allowed to deploy a military field hospital at Pulumoddai, north of Trincomalee, marking the return of uniformed soldiers after the ipkf’s exit in 1990. Invoking ghosts of the past, some Sri Lankans described it as a possible Indian Trojan Horse.

The last conventional battle, termed the world’s largest rescue operation, is to remove the LTTE from the no-conflict zone. Obviously, the bigger prize is capturing Prabhakaran. No one is sure where he is. But dead or alive, he will live on with the idea of Eelam unless Rajapakse can find a political solution to the Tamil problem. That seems unlikely.

Maj Gen (retd) Mehta was GOC, IPKF, South.