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Cornering the Tiger before taming him

There's a very simple way to defeat the once invincible LTTE.

Take away the civilian population under the control of the LTTE, from which the Tigers recruit their fighters.

No more civilians to recruit from, means no more recruits. As existing cadres are killed in battle, the LTTE gets smaller and smaller, until one day, it will be too small to hold on to any significant land area.

Over the last four years, since April 1995, many people have urged the government and the generals who matter, to take up this strategy. This column also repeatedly urged that this be the strategy. We've said it 'till we're blue in the face.

But those in power were too busy with short-term political objectives to glorify themselves, like carving roads to Jaffna, which ended in miserable failure due to their utter predictability by the Tigers.

It took some time for the top brass to get the right idea into their heads, but it looks like they finally have.

The stunning success of Operation Rana Ghosha I and Rana Ghosha II in the past two weeks have underlined that this is the right strategy, and put to shame all of the failed tactics used earlier.

With hardly a whimper, the Tigers have fled from the advancing forces, giving up nearly a thousand square kilometres of land and more than 40,000 civilians, while putting up only the slightest resistance.

For more than 12 years, the LTTE hid among the civilians of the north, confident that the army would not risk a massacre of civilians by attacking them in civilian areas. During all that time, the army did exactly that, avoiding the heavily populated areas because officers didn't know how to attack them without a bloodbath.

But what the generals failed to realize is that just as the army doesn't want a civilian massacre, neither does the LTTE. For how can the Tigers stand and fight, with women and children being butchered in the crossfire around them?

The first sign that the LTTE is not willing to risk the wrath of the Tamil people by starting battles in civilian areas was seen in Jaffna in November of 1995. There the LTTE withdrew, taking the civilians with them, rather than try to fight.

Five months later, this strategy was proven beyond doubt when the LTTE abandoned the entire Jaffna peninsula, leaving 550,000 civilians behind, as troops advanced from Jaffna town.

But then the army changed track, preferring to go for the glory of political objectives, than trying to finish the war with a concentrated effort. Called Operation Jaya Sikuru, it ended in a defeat foretold by many.

But then we saw again last December at Oddusuddan, where the Tigers pulled out of the town, leaving nearly a thousand civilians behind.

And now, Rana Ghosha.

Of course, this isn't always going to be the case. There will come a day when the LTTE will be in such bad shape that they will disregard their own civilians and fight back. But for now, this hasn't happened.

As for the civilians, while many will run away from the bombing and shelling, in fear for their lives, almost none want to continue living in some of the worst conditions on earth, which exist in the LTTE controlled areas. The northern people have learned the bitter lesson that one cannot continue to live in squalor and bring up one's children almost as sub-humans.

So an ever-increasing number will remain as the army advances, and gladly come under the control of the government.

This in turn reduces the LTTE's recruitment base, and that organization gets smaller and smaller. When one examines the history of LTTE mass attacks in the north and east, a clear turning point can be seen after half a million civilians crossed to government lines in Jaffna. Robbed of the ability to replace its cadres at will, the LTTE staged fewer and fewer attacks. The fighting quality of its cadres also diminished.

If the army had continued with that strategy, and wrested more of the populated areas to its control, the war might be over by now.

But intent on a road building task that it never realistically hoped to achieve, the army ignored the western side of the Wanni for too long. In its small towns, the LTTE ruled.

But these towns in the jungle have proven almost undefendable, since they are connected by a good network of roads and jeep tracks which allow the army to move in from several directions.

In the past two weeks, a large number of these towns and villages have fallen to the army. Madhu, Palampiddi, Periyapandivirichchan, Periyathampanai, Iranailluppaikulam, Mundumurippu, Uilankulam, Sinnavil...the names are many.

None of them defendable, for they are each isolated in the jungle, with many ways in which to attack them. Defenders would simply be trapped.

Critics warn that the Tigers may only be gathering strength to launch devastating attacks elsewhere. But there is no evidence to support this. Indeed, there have been no strategically significant LTTE attacks in more than six months, which clearly shows that the LTTE has been considerably weakened.

On the weapons front, the Tigers are also known to be running out of surprises. While such weapons as heavy artillery and missiles caused much alarm and altered the balance in 1995 and 1996, the LTTE has not been able to pull such rabbits out of its hat in recent years.

In fact, with the ever-increasing fleet strength of the Sri Lanka Navy being concentrated on the northeast coast, the LTTE has found it more and more difficult to bring in its arms ships.

Even the use of Multi-Barreled Rocket launchers in recent weeks, though a new weapon in Sri Lanka, did little on the battlefield, since these weapons are essentially World War II technology. And the few launchers that the Tigers have, made little impression on the battlefield. Rocket launchers are effective against cities and fixed defences like buildings and bunkers, but are useless against an army on the march.

The move into the western Wanni also stretched the army's line of advance so that the Tigers will find it almost impossible to tell where the troops will strike next. Unlike on the Jaffna-Kandy road, where you either went up or came down, troops can now strike anywhere.

Mullaittivu is always under threat now, with troops in Oddusuddan being only 15 kilometers away. The Sea Tiger bases at Chalai and Alampil near Mullaitivu are just as exposed. In the north, the army could always come south from Elephant Pass and attack Kilinochchi again. Or troops in Jaffna can cross the lagoon and land at Pooneryn.

Meanwhile, troops on the Mankulam axis could march north to threaten Iranamadu, or go west towards Mallavi which is the main LTTE area now. Or those in the Palapiddi-Madhu area could go deeper into the jungle and take more small towns. Then there's always the Mannar front, where a very large garrison could move out at any time and head north along the coast. And last but not least, the navy now has the capability and fire power to land thousands of troops amphibiously to cut off the coastline between the Jaffna Peninsula and Mannar, a vital supply route to India for the Tigers.

The Tigers are being cornered more and more, and burdened with civilians, they have fewer and few options now.

Only politics can save them now. One wonders whether the political wheels of fortune will once again dash the army's efforts and save the LTTE.

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