By Our Defence Correspondent
President Chandrika Kumaratunga has appointed the commander of the army, Lieutenant General Rohan Daluwatte, as General Officer Commanding the Joint Operations Command affective August 3, defence ministry sources said.

One of the first headaches which Lt. Gen. Dakluwatte will have to cure, is how to stop the LTTE from hijacking merchant ships carrying merchandise to Jaffna, and stealing not only the cargo, but also the ships themselves.

Last week’s fiasco over the "MV Princess Kash," is the third time that the Tigers have hijacked a ship and got away with it.

The problem that the security forces face is that it is difficult to figure out whether a ship has been hijacked, until it actually approaches the LTTE held stetch of coast at Mullaittivu. Until then, they cannot fire on the vessel, since it would cause severe problems if the navy or air force were to attck a normal merchant ship.

The standard practice, in any country, when a ship or plane is sighted in an unuaul position or behaving in a strange manner, is to challenge it by radio on internationally accepted channels.

But no ship’s captain can tell the world that he has been hijacked, when he has a Tiger holding a gun to his head. So ship masters can only say over the radio what the LTTE wants them to say, which is only enough to stall for time that the hijackers want.

The government has a standing order that merchant ships should stay fifty miles away from the beach. But no matter how far from the coast the merchant ships go, it only takes a single LTTE boat a couple of hours to speed out to the sea lane in the darkness, unseen by the patrolling warships of the Sri Lanka Navy and the Indian Navy.

The helpless ship is then hijacked, and in the darkness, it is brought to Mullaittivu.

If it is sighted and challenged on the way by gunboats, the Tigers can easily make the captain say that he is having engine problems, or his hull has sprung a leak, etc, and that he is getting closer to the shore just in case he has to abandon ship, for the safety of the crew, or some such story.

Sailors throughout the world have a time honoured tradition of helping a ship in distress, and a gunboat captian who mistakenly fires on a ship which is really in distress would be committed a heinous crime.

The Tigers have proven to be extremely crafty, and when a hijacked ship is spotted by the armed forces, they usually obey naval orders and move back out to sea. The gunboat would then move on with its patrol, ansd the Tigers would wait a while and bring the ship in again.

It is only when the ship is definitely known to be heading towards Mullaittivu that the armed forces would fire on it. Even then, the laws of the sea dictate that warning shots be fired across the ship’s bows, and other measures be taken before a ship is actually sunk.

But it takes a long time for the navy’s gunboats to sink a steel hulled ship. Our gunboats were meant to chase down and sink small boats, not 6,000 ton merchant ships. The heaviest gun in the navy is the 37 milimeter gun, whose shells need to hit hundreds of times before a ship will sink.

Even this can take hours since the shells would start a fire on the deck, or destroy the superstructutre, which would not sink the ship. A ship’s engine room is deep within the hull.

This has been demonstrated time and time again, when Sri Lankan navy gunboats have tried to sink LTTE arms ships. In the two times that this has happened, it took several hours of gunfitre to sink the vessels.

If the ship reaches the safety of Mullaittivu dyuring this time, it is extremely difficult for the gunboats to move in for the kill. They would come under heavy fire from LTTE artillery and mortars on shore. A single hit from an artillery shell would destroy any of the navy’s warships.

In addition, the Sea Tigers usually have a large fleet of small boats ready to greet the gunboats with machine gun and shell fire.

Our readwers will recall what happened in August of 1995, when the LTTE hijavcked a ferry carrying 120 civilians to Jaffna, anchored it off Mullaittivu, and then lured navy gunboats to their destruction. Two Dvora fast attack craft were sunk there, and 18 sailors killed.

Incidentally, that ship is still in the hands of the Tigers, although the peple were released.

Another problem which complicates matters is that Sri Lanka’s government and our local shipping lines do not have enough ships to supply food and other items to the 600,000 people in Jaffna. Thus, most of the ships are foreign owned, and therefore have foreign crews.

Sri Lankans have long regarded foreigners as more valuable than locals, and this makes things more difficult.

The easiest way to destroy a ship is for the air force to bomb it. But this too is not quite as easy as one would expect, since the Tigers may carry missiles with them when they board the ship.

This is what happened to the unfortunate Princess Kash. Carrying a cargo of motorcycles, bicycles, motor spares and other items, it sailed from Colombo on Tuesday.

The fact that it was sighted off Mullaittivu at 10 p.m. on Thursday means that it did not have enough time to stop anywhere and load or unload items.

When it was sighted by the navy and challnged, it moved away, back out to sea, as though it had strayed too close to the beach by mistake, as many ships do every day.

But it then moved back towards Mullaittivu, unseen by the gunboats in the darkness.

Only the next morning, at eight o’clock, was it sighted anchotred off Mullaittivu.

This is where things went wrong.

Gunboats tried to move in and were fired upon from both the ship and the shore, and had to withdraw.

Planes were fired at with several missiles and couldn’t get close for a long time.

Menawhile, LTTE boats streamed between the ship and the shore, only a few hundred yards away, carrying the cargo to land.

By the time the air force’s Israeli built Kfir jets from Katunayake finally managed to get close enough and bomb accurately, it was 2 p.m. The ship sank in the afternoon.

It can be expected that much of the cargo had been unloaded and is in the hands of the Tigers.

A Cabinet Minister publicly said that the ship’s crew is suspected of having been working for the LTTE, which is the reason the armed forces couldn’t stop the hijacking. He also said that the ship had surreptitiously changed its name.

This is rubbish.

All shipping firms which carry cargo to the north are selected through a tough tender process by the Ministry of Shipping. One has to be registered with both the Shipping Ministry and the Ministry of Defence to even apply. Such registtration requires that the complete history of the ship be provided, and details of captian and crew. If there had been any hanky panky, then Defence Ministry officials would be guilty of either negligence or corruption.

Ships do change their names often, but all these details should have been with the Defence Ministry and the Shipping Ministry.

This partuicular shipping firm has been probably the unluckiest operating in the north, having lost three ships to the Tigers.

The first was the "MV Ocean Trader," which was sunk while anchotred off the army camp in Vettilaikerni in 1994. The second was the ferry "Misson," which was hijacked off Mannar in 1996. Some of the crew are still in LTTE custody.

If there are any suspicions regarding any shipping firm, the CID and NIB shopuld investigate and the owners can be charged in court, since they maintain offices in Colombo.

What is vclear is that the armed forces don’t have the capability to prevent ships from being hijacked. Neither can they prevent them from reaching Mullaittivu. Once there, it is difficult to sink such a ship.

The LTTE are well aware of all these facts, so they will definitely try this taxctic again. After all, piracy on the high seas has been a lucrative business since man first went to sea.

It is up to the new JOC to figure out what can be done and lay down a specific plan. Otherwise, every ship which sails to the north does so at great peril.