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Will the J.O.B. do the job?

by our Defence Correspondent
Our readers will have gathered by now that President Chandrika Kumaratunga, in her capacity as Minister of Defence, has created a new entity called the Joint Operations Bureau (JOB) to co-ordinate the war effort against the LTTE.

Former Commander of the Army, Lieutenant General Rohan Daluwatte, has been appointed to head the JOB.

Many readers may be scratching their heads, wondering why the JOB was created now, and also whether it isn't merely duplicating the work of other such departments which have been set up since the early eighties, to co-ordinate the war.

The creation of JOB, which looks remarkably similar to the Joint Operations Command which has functioned on and off over the last 14 years, is actually a clear indication that the President is highly dissatisfied with the way the war is being run, and wants drastic changes at the top.

It is also further evidence that the President has scrapped the grand plans of her Deputy Defence Minister, Anuruddha Ratwatte, to grab control of the road to Jaffna.

Simply put, the JOB has taken control of operations away from Ratwatte, and placed it back in the hands of a senior armed forces officer.

This comes on the heels of the President taking personal control over the war effort, following the disastrous Operation Jaya Sikuru, which formed Ratwatte's main strategy to win the war.

The JOB is in fact, the same thing as the JOC, since it will be in charge of all operations, and it will be commanded by an officer senior to the three service chiefs.

In effect, control of operations and the direction of the three armed forces have been placed back in the hands of the services, under Daluwatte, who will report to Ratwatte and the President.

Whether this will be a turning point in the war, and help to end it, or be merely a cosmetic change in the command structure, is yet to be seen.

The history of such combined command structures goes back to 1984, when President J.R. Jayewardene felt the need to co-ordinate the activities of the armed forces, and created the Joint Operations Command (JOC). This was located on Sir Ernest de Silva Mawatha (formerly Flower Road) in Colombo 7.

Its first commander was General Cyril Ranatunga, whose official title was ``General Officer Commanding the Joint Operations Command.'' Ranatunga had just retired as Commander of the Army.

Before this, the practice had been for the heads of the three armed services and police to co-ordinate activities amongst themselves, loosely directed by the President.

A few years later, Ranatunga moved to another post and his place was given to Lt. Gen. Tissa (Bull) Weeratunga, who had also just retired as Commander of the Army.

However, in the late-eighties, President R. Premadasa disbanded the JOC, with control and command being given to his firebrand State Minister for Defence, Ranjan Wijeratne. President Premadasa himself had no experience in military matters, although the constitution required that he be the Minister of Defence.

Orders now went from Premadasa or Wijeratne to the service chiefs and IGP.

But in March 1991, Wijeratne was killed in a bomb blast on Havelock Road in Colombo.

At the same time, the then Army Commander's term was expiring, and a heated battle was raging for control of the army, between the commander, Lieutenant General Hamilton Wanasinghe, and the Chief of Staff, Major General Cecil Waidyaratne.

Wanasinghe's supporters were urging the President to extend his term, but that would have forced Waidyaratne to retire, since his three-year term as a Major General was ending. Waidyaratne needed to be promoted to stay on.

So Premadasa re-activated the JOC, promoting Wanasinghe to the rank of General and making him GOC of the JOC. Waidyaratne was made Commander of the Army, and with it he was promoted to Lieutenant General.

Ranatunga was by then Secretary to the Ministry of Defence.

At the time, the JOC was directly involved in planning and directing operations against the LTTE. So much so that at the height of the army's advance north of Vavuniya in 1991, the LTTE blasted the JOC headquarters with a lorry packed with explosives. The offensive sputtered and died, as its command was destroyed. The headquarters of the JOC was then moved to Army Headquarters at Galle Face.

This continued until Ranatunga was appointed Ambassador to Australia, at which time the Additional Secretary of Defence, former air force chief Air Marshall Walter Fernando, was briefly appointed Secretary.

But Fernando quit after a month, and Wanasinghe, the long running GOC of the JOC, was made Secretary of Defence.

With that, the JOC died a natural death, which passed virtually unnoticed, since all major operations against the LTTE had ceased by then and the war had turned into a stalemate.

When the ruling party changed in 1994, there were wholesale changes at the top. Wanasinghe resigned, Waidyaratne left at the end of his term as Army Commander. Both have been charged in court with corruption. Ranatunga was recalled from Australia as part of President Kumaratunga's cleanup of political appointees >from the Foreign Service.

Direction of the war was placed in the hands of Anuruddha Ratwatte, who was a retired Colonel. As the President was already talking peace with the Tigers, there weren't any major operations going on, on the battlefield.

But shortly after the Tigers broke off peace talks and went back to war in 1995, the need was felt for greater co-ordination among the services, which were seeing a fair degree of conflict among themselves.

So the JOC was relaunched, this time named the Joint Operational Headquarters (JOH) of the Ministry of Defence. Later, the main headquarters was moved to Anuradhapura, to be closer to the action, and named the Forward HQ of the JOH. A smaller unit functioned in the Ministry in Colombo, called the Rear Headquarters, which had mainly the functions of keeping the President informed and disseminating propaganda. Its spokesman, then Colonel Sarath Munasinghe, became quite a well-known television personality.

But the JOH lacked the control of an officer who was senior to the commanders of the three armed forces, and was not taken as seriously as it should have been. This led to the creation of a post in the army, known as Overall Operations Commander (OOC) of the North and East. The post was given to a serving Major General, who had powers to direct any unit of all three armed forces in the northeast, while keeping the service chiefs informed. This officer could speak directly to Ratwatte.

However, with the government concentrating its war efforts in the north, the OOC post became too wide in its scope, and it was replaced by the new post of Security Forces Commander of the Wanni.

Interestingly, army officers have always occupied all these posts. This is quite understandable, since the bulk of the offensive operations are on land.

However, shortly before the creation of the JOB, the President considered the re-creation of the JOC, with the senior service chief at its head. It was then that rumors surfaced that the Navy Commander, Vice Admiral Cecil Tissera, would be given the job, since he is the most senior. To his credit, Tissera always denied the rumors, and was much embarrassed by people calling up to congratulate him, after erroneous newspaper reports.

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