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Fooling around on the battlefield

By our Defence Correspondent
Some god or saint must be having his work cut out for him, protecting Anuruddha Ratwatte and his top brass.

The question on everyone's lips these days is: ``Why does Ratwatte have to go so close to LTTE positions, where he can easily be killed?'

Another, and just as important question is: ``Why does he have to take all the service commanders with him, as well as other top generals?'

Ratwatte's answer, as he told a press conference on Monday, was: 'It's a part of the occupational hazards of my job. This experience will not deter me from visiting the frontlines in the future as well.'

This has to be one of the stupidest statements ever uttered by any person who was leading a military campaign in any country at any time.

Any military officer will tell you, that there is little use in politicians running around and attending poojas at places of worship within mortar range of the enemy.

While there may be some slight boosting of soldiers' morale to see their leaders braving danger, there is no need for the sort of grandstanding that we saw on Sunday, where dozens of journalists, including TV crews, were taken to broadcast Ratwatte's visit to Oddusudan, like a conquering general of the middle ages entering a town in shiny armor on a white horse.

Ratwatte seems to enjoy playing with death, and practically inviting the LTTE to kill him. Well, we are telling him that the rest of the country is not amused by his daredevil nonsense.

Frankly, our lives are tense enough, waiting for the next bomb blast in Colombo, without having an irresponsible Deputy Defence Minister joyriding around on the battlefield as well.

How close did Ratwatte come to being killed?

He and the service chiefs flew by helicopter from Colombo to Nedunkerni,10 miles east of Mankulam, on Sunday morning. There he held discussions with the area's top brass, who included Major General Lionel Balagalle, the Operations Commander, and his deputy Maj. Gen. Neil Dias.

Nedunkerni was captured more than a year ago, and is considered relatively safe, since the LTTE is not known to have any artillery or heavy mortars within range.

Ratwatte also met with nearly thirty journalists who had been brought from Colombo by a special plane to Anuradhapura, and then by road to Nedunkerni, clearly to cover his meeting with the citizens of Oddusudan, or the 700 who were still remaining.

It was clearly more like an election campaign rally, with all the attendant publicity, than an event of military worth.

Leaving the journalists to follow later on, Ratwatte headed for Oddusudan at about noon, in a special convoy of armored cars and jeeps. Ratwatte himself was in one of the armored cars. With him were the service chiefs, Lieutenant General Rohan Daluwatte, Air Marshal Jayalath Weerakoddy, and Vice Admiral Cecil Tissera, as well as Maj. Gen. Balagalle and Maj. Gen. Dias.

At 1 p.m., the journalists also left for Oddusudan.

In Oddusudan, the 700 people had gathered to see him. To Ratwatte, this may seem like a great mark of his popularity, but in military terms, it means that the general population knew he was coming. Since the LTTE would surely have kept a few of their cadres among the 700 people who stayed behind in Oddusudan, this means that the Tigers knew that Ratwatte would be within the range of their guns.

The range of the 120-millimeter mortars possessed by the Tigers is about five kilometers. Their 126-mm artillery can lob shells as far as ten kilometers away.

Another well-known fact is that the Tigers have measured and marked most landmarks in the northern battlezones. From five kilometers away, they know exactly how to train their guns on a particular building in Oddusudan.

The kovil to which Ratwatte hastened, where a poosari conducted a special pooja for him, would have been a definite mark for the LTTE gunners.

Ratwatte may have believed that the close presence of 700 Tamil civilians would deter the Tigers from attacking. He was said ly mistaken. The LTTE has never cared tuppence about killing civilians, be they in Jaffna, Colombo, or India.

They would definitely consider a few hundred civilians to be expendable, if hey could bump off Ratwatte. Thus, they had positioned two 120-mm mortar tubes near the town.

As the minister and the service chiefs walked from the kovil to the armored cars, the first two mortar shells exploded near him. Ratwatte later said one was only 15 yards from him, although it was possibly a few yards more.

Behind him, the generals sprang into action, shielding him with their bodies and bundling him into the armored car.

Two more shells landed as the convoy then raced back out of the town, and streaked towards Nedunkerni. In one armored car, Maj. Gen. Dias was bleeding from a light wound to his nose.

Behind them, four soldiers were dead, including a junior officer attached to the Defence ministry staff. One more was dying. Forty-two wounded soldiers were lying groaning on the ground. Five are still in critical condition.

The support vehicles of the convoy were filled with the dead and wounded, and rushed back to Nedunkerni, where SLAF MI-17 helicopters evacuated them to Anuradhapura hospital. The chopper pilot did not want to take any chances by trying to land in Oddusudan.

On the way back, they met the journalists, and turned them back as well.

Ratwatte later continued with his day's program, opening a lighting project of the Lakdhanavi electricity company at the Ruwanweliseya in Anuradhapura in the late evening, before returning to Colombo.

Ratwatte's behavior is most maddening because he is well aware of the dangers, like a teenage boy on a motorcycle, trying to impress his friends by doing dangerous stunts.

If it is so important that the government gain propaganda from its victories, it would make far more sense for a more junior minister to go. The Cabinet has some two dozen ministers, and there are twice as many deputy ministers, most of whom seem to be twiddling their thumbs. The president, the prime minister, and Ratwatte should not be doing it.

We quote from yesterday's Daily News:

'The Minister felt that the LTTE were aware of his movements when they fired 120 millimeter mortars at him soon after he left a kovil in the area, after addressing 750 Tamil civilians who had taken shelter there for about an hour.'

He further said that he considered this sort of exposure to enemy fire as normal, as the troops in the frontline were generally exposed to this sort of fire almost daily.'

The Minister also said that the 'Poosari' of the Temple where these 750 Tamil civilians were housed at Oddusudan, held a 'pooja' for him, and the civilians had requested him to take them out of the area and relocate them elsewhere, so as to escape from the LTTE's mortar fire.

The Minister further said that he was well aware of the LTTE raining mortars at Oddusudan even before he visited that place and was advised by the military in Nedunkerni not to embark on that journey.

Had the LTTE's aim been dead on, what would have been the situation? It would have taken the defence top brass in one fell swoop demoralising the troops irrecoverably much to the advantage of the enemy.

While Ratwatte's critics may claim that his loss would have meant but little, there is no doubt that the deaths of the country's top military commanders would bring the entire war effort crashing to a halt at least temporarily.

It would take months for new officers to take over these key posts, and with that happening, the entire command structure of the armed forces in the whole country would change, as officers are given new appointments. This means that more time would lost while they become familiar with their new jobs.

Meanwhile, the LTTE would seize the initiative, launching attack after attack on the security forces in the north and east. Bombs would surely explode in Colombo as well. In short, chaos would reign.

It's time Ratwatte, and his top brass started acting a bit more responsibly. If they need to go close to enemy lines, fine. Go ahead. But don't go together. Let Ratwatte go with just one or two generals. Not the whole lot.

The most maddening thing is that we saw this same situation before. Two years ago, a helicopter carrying Ratwatte, the three service chiefs, and the IGP, ran out of fuel and had to land in an LTTE controlled area when the pilot got lost over the north.

While the Tigers hunted high and low, the group, with their bodyguards, walked several kilometers to freedom, and was met halfway by an army group sent out to find them.

At that time, this column berated them all for putting the country in such a situation. Looks like they didn't learn their lesson. And from Ratwatte's words on Monday, he still hasn't.

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