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On the road again, this time it’s the right one

by Our Defence Correspondent
In August of 1996, a top-level meeting of army generals was held at the Ministry of Defence. Eight army officers, including the commander of the army, were there to discuss warstrategy. The hush-hush meeting was chaired by Deputy Defence Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte.

Jaffna had just been captured by the army. Starting with Operation Rivi Resa I, the 50-day onslaught on Jaffna town from September to December of 1995 and ending with Rivi Resa III, the capture of the rest of the peninsula in March of 1996.

Now, the urgent need was to secure a land route to Jaffna. The commander of the navy had already cautioned that he needed many more gunboats to fight off Tiger assaults on the tenuous sea link from Trincomalee to Kankesanthurai. And the airforce still needed the help of Lion Air’s planes to keep the air route to Palali viable.

The army’s frontline divisions had now recovered sufficiently from the Jaffna operations, and were ready to go into battle again. Where they would be sent was the topic of discussion.

There are three roads to Jaffna and all three were discussed.

One route was from Trincomalee north through Mullaitivu. But the army garrison in Mullaitivu had just been wiped out by the LTTE, with the armory looted, and 1,240 soldiers killed. Trying to capture this route would mean marching north from the army camps at Weli Oya and Kokilai and Naiaru on the coast and attacking the string of LTTE camps in the Mullaitivu district. It was too much to expect.

In addition, the route would cross several lagoons, serviced only by ferries. This would hamper transporting anything to Jaffna. The route was abandoned, with everyone’s agreement.

Another route was the very long road, called the Jaffna-Kandy road, through the heart of the Wanni jungle from the Vavuniya through Mankulam, Kilinochchi and Paranthan. It would be a tough project, and troops would always be exposed to LTTE attacks from both east and west, which would make the road very difficult to defend while convoys carried supplies to Jaffna.

The third route was to march from Medawachchiya to Mannar, link up with the garrison there and proceed north along the coast up to Pooneryn. There were many advantages in this, since the Medawachchiya- Mannar road was not known to be heavily defended by the LTTE. Capturing this road would ease pressure on the border villages of the Puttalam district where the army was being forced to maintain outpost. that were frequently attacked.

Best of all the huge population of Mannar, isolated from the rest of the country since 1990, would be linked up. The large Mannar garrison would be released for work on operations.

The Mannar-Pooneryn road was also not heavily defended at the time, with few large LTTE camps on this coast. Once the road was captured, troops would only have to defend the land side of it, and would always be assured of seaborne reinforcements from Jaffna to ward off Tiger attacks.

The Mannar-Pooneryn route looked the most promising, but Ratwatte preferred the Mankulam-Kilinochchi route. He pointed out that the army could attack from the northern side with troops and artillery support from Elephant Pass, as well as from the southern side from Vavuniya.

At the time, the army was beginning to feel the lack of manpowers. The Jaffna operations had taken a heavy toll, and the wholly unexpected loss of 1,240 men at Mullaitivu made matters much worse.

Thus, the saner course would have been to take Mannar route. But Ratwatte, flushed with victory in Jaffna and angered by criticism over the Mullaitivu debacle, wanted to finish off the LTTE quickly. Taking the Vavuniya-Kilinochchi road would split the LTTE’s ground forces in two, and the army could then go after the two groups and destroy them one by one.

The generals in the room didn’t disagree much. Ratwatte was the man whom President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had placed in charge of the war, and he had shown that he would remove any general who didn’t want to follow orders, by transferring one general who advised against capturing Jaffna.

The end result, was Operation Jaya Sikurui, the bloodiest operation in the history of the army, which cost nearly 3,000 soldiers’ lives, and wounded 7,000. It ended in failure, with only two-third of the road captured after two years. President Kumaratunga effectively rebuked Ratwatte over it, by personally taking over control of the war effort.

When Jaya Sikurui was called off, the army needed a new strategy. The PA was facing a series of elections, culminating in the General Elections and Presidential Elections in the year 2000 and it was certain that the UNP would make capital of the failure to link Jaffna by land.

The Mannar-Pooneryn route beckoned. Already, part of the road had been captured, from Medawachchiya to Mannar, in a bloodless operation in March 1997, which was meant to divert the LTTE from Jaya Sikurui. But the LTTE, short of cadres, chose to retreat from that offensive and concentrate its forces against Jaya Sikurui.

This, then, set the stage for the series of operations, now ongoing, code-named Rana Gosa.

When the army advanced on the Madhu area in March, the LTTE treated, trading land for time, while it prepared its defences. The army moved from Madhu-Periyamadhu area up to Vidattaltivu on the coast 11 kilometres north of Mannar.

But this week, the LTTE resistance stiffened. No longer can the Tigers ignore the troops who are hammering at their back door. Allowing the army to capture the Mannar-Pooneryn road will not only allow land supplies to stream to Jaffna, but will cut off all LTTE access to India.

This would have enormous ramifications which would sound the death knell of the LTTE.

Although not much comes from southern India in terms of weapons and ammunition, Tamil Nadu fishermen are still by far the biggest source of fuel for the LTTE. Diesel, petrol and kerosene are brought in barrels on board Indian trawlers, with the boat owners being paid several lakhs per trip.

Cut off the route and all of the Tiger’s tractors, lorries, trucks and other vehicles will ground to a halt. The LTTE will have to depend on fuel supplies through the much more dangerous route through Mullaitivu. But the navy, with gunboats released from the Palk Strait where they will no longer be needed, will concentrate all its forces on the Mullaitivu coast.

The route from Mannar to Pooneryn is 80 kilometres, of which the army has captured only 11 so far. So victory is not quite imminent.

But the LTTE is in a corner, forced to commit its precious cadres in defending the road, where they can be pounded by the armed forces. This prevents the Tigers from going on the offensive elsewhere as well.

This week’s operations saw some impressive gains by the army and air force.

The army broke out into LTTE territory near Vidattalivu sooner than the LTTE expected, with the assault spearheaded by the 55th and 53rd Divisions, ironically, the same ones which captured Jaffna and were the mainstay of Operation Jaya Sikurui.

More than 100 cadres were killed on the first day of fighting in this phase, which was on June 26, as the LTTE struggled to withdraw precious equipment from Viddattaltivu. The army recovered 97 bodies of cadres.

This evacuation during daylight proved disastrous, since air force Y-12 reconnaissance planes were hovering overhead the whole time, calling in bombing raids repeatedly.

Time after time, pairs of Kfir jets took off from Katunayake, streaking in five minutes to Vidattaltivu where they unloaded their 250 kilogram bombs.

Among the confirmed hits on Monday was the destruction of a 122 millimetre artillery gun, one of two which the Tigers captured at Mullaitivu. The gun, which has a range of 18 kilometers, had been repeatedly used to attack army camps in the Mannar area in recent months.

It was being towed away from Vidattaltivu by tractor when it was destroyed.

Three LTTE cadres were also captured, a rare occurrence.

The LTTE’s preparations to defend the road were also well evident, since the army captured more than 200 anti-personnel mines, a dozen anti-tank mines, which had not yet been deployed. In addition, an anti-tank rocket launcher, a 81 millimeter medium sized mortar launcher, a 12.7 mm gun used by the LTTE’s anti-aircraft unit, and a five-zero heavy machine gun, were captured by troops. The fact that the Tigers left behind so much precious hardware clearly indicates the disorganized state of their defences.

The operation has not been without fairly heavy casualties on the army side, although they are insignificant when compared to the LTTE losses. Up to Thursday, 16 soldiers had been killed, including three officers, two second lieutenants and a first lieutenant. Forty-seven soldiers were wounded.

A Russian manufactured BTR-80 armoured personnel carrier was destroyed by rocket fire by the LTTE.

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Sri Lankan army shifts focus after bloody failure to seize highway

by Amal Jayasinghe
The heaviest fighting this year in Sri Lanka’s separatist war shows the government has not abandoned goal of capturing a vital land route despite suffering enormous losses in an earlier military push, analysts said Wednesday.

Fighting in the northwest since Saturday has claimed 350 lives on both government and Tamil rebel sides, making it the bloodiest since the army called off a campaign to capture the A-9 highway six months ago.

That offensive, ironically code-named named "Sure Victory," saw around 20,000 soldiers fighting to wrest control of the strategic road leading to the Jaffna peninsula from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Although troops seized Jaffna itself three years ago, the rebels continue to hold land access to the northern peninsula, forcing 40,000 soldiers and 400,000 Jaffna civilians to depend on expensive sea and air transport.

‘’Opening a road to Jaffna is a must if the government is serious about rehabilitation and reconstruction there," an aid worker said.

"What we are seeing now is probably a move to open that road "

The European Union recently complained about the slow progress of foreign aid-funded development projects in Jaffna. The military blamed the lack of progress on difficulties in transporting men and materials.

The "Sure Victory" drive was called off in December after the army had taken about two-thirds of the A-9 highway linking Jaffna with the rest of the country.

The LTTE said it lost 1,300 cadres during 18 months of fighting, while the defence ministry placed government losses at about 1,500 killed. However, diplomats said both sides may have suffered more casualties.

More than 55,000 people have been killed in fighting over the past 27 years in Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern regions, where the Tigers are fighting to establish an independent Tamil homeland.

Observers said one of the drawbacks of "Sure Victory" was the explicit nature of its goals, which gave the Tamil Tigers time to prepare their defences in thick jungle along either side of the A-9 highway.

But this time the army is content to make piecemeal gains instead of launching a full-scale assault, they said.

The top military commander in Jaffna, Major General Lohan Gunawardena, told reporters there last month that the lack of a land route to the peninsula was a major impediment, but the army would "soon" try to fix it.

Officials in non-governmental agencies operating in rebel-held areas said recent military manoeuvres pointed to a new thrust along the western flank of the northern region.

Since March, the army has been making steady inroads into LTTE-held territory in the northwestern district of Mannar, which is to the west of the A-9 highway.

"The Tigers still have the ability to gather a large force and carry out a concentrated attack on an army camp," a field commander said "But they can’t afford to tie down men and women to defend a frontline that is now extending to several hundred kilometres (miles)."

Both the LTTE and the army are pressed for fighters.

The new army chief, Srilal Weerasooriya, has said he needs another 20,000 men to wage a major campaign against the LTTE. But the Tigers too are suffering from a shortage of combatants, he added.

The LTTE, which is regarded as one of the world’s most effective guerrilla organisations, was sending younger ill-trained fighters to the front and some were surrendering, Weerasooriya said earlier this year.

However, he admitted the Tigers still had hard-core fighting units which could devastate military camps, as they proved by wiping out an army garrison in the northern town of Kilinochchi in September.

And while the army has shifted its focus to the northwestern coastline, the Tigers appear to be anticipating a military drive and are reported to have moved their fighting units and heavy artillery to the region. — (AFP)

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