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Government gives up hope for military solution before polls

by our Defence Correspondent
The government has privately conceded that there is no possibility of ending the war through military means before the General Elections next August. sources in the Cabinet said.

This comes in the wake of the defeat of "operation Rana Ghosha V" two weeks ago, which was meant to capture a large swathe of LTTE controlled territory, but ended up where it started, with the loss of 87 soldiers killed and nearly 700 wounded.

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga summoned a top level meeting of several Cabinet Ministers, Defence Ministry officials, and army generals, at Temple Trees last week, to discuss the impact of the defeat of Rana Ghosha V, sources said.

The president had plainly wanted to know when the next major operation could be launched, and how much more LTTE territory the army could recapture within the next nine months. Campaigning for the General Election will start at about that time.

The generals, who included the top brass of operation Rana Ghosha, The Joint operations Bureau chief General Rohan Daluwatte, and army commander Lieutenant General Sirilal Weerasooriya, replied that no major operations can be launched until replacements are found for the nearly 800 soldiers who were casualties in the last operation, sources said. Until such time, the 53rd and 55th Divisions cannot be considered fit to spearhead a major offensive.

The 53rd and 55th Divisions have led all of the army’s major operations in the north in the last four years, starting with operation Rivi Resa, which captured Jaffna. The army’s only other major strike division is the 54th which is in the Wanni, but played no major part in the last operation.

Asked by the president when most of the 700 wounded will be fit for action, the generals replied that it will be at least 6-8 weeks before the wounded in the lesser injured categories, who form the bulk of the casualties, will be ready.

By that time, the rains of the Northeast Monsoon will be turning the battlefield into a quagmire, and it will be nearly impossible to advance far, the president was told.

Thus, the next significant gain in territory cannot be expected before late January? the generals had said, according to sources.

This effectively rules out any hope of pressurizing the LTTE militarily, to the point where the Tigers will be forced to negotiate unconditionally, before campaigning begins for the next election. The LTTE is well aware of the proximity of the elections, and the likely results, and can be expected to fight a delaying action tooth and nail, to hold out until then.

The Tigers have historically relied on the changing of governments in Colombo, to bring a respite for them, since a new party in power means a new political strategy in the war. This happened when President R. Premadasa took office in 1988, when President D. B. Wijetunge was appointed in 1994, and when the PA came to power in 1994.

Since the LTTE broke the last ceasefire on April 19, 1995, and called off peace talks, the government had relied on a strategy of inflicting heavy military defeats on the Tigers and forcing them to negotiate unconditionally, before the next elections.

This stretegy worked until about 18 months ago with the entire Jaffna Peninsula and large areas of the Wanni being brought under government control, at heavy cost to both sides. But since then, the army has not been able to inflict a single defeat on the LTTE, in terms of numbers of Tigers killed. Nor have any major towns been captured since then, although large areas of the jungles in the Mannar district have been captured.

Several senior People’s Alliance politicians recently reported to the president that both the United National Party, and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna would be using the impasse in the war as the main means of attacking the PA.

The PA members also told the president that voting trends at the recent provincial council elections, together with prevailing sentiment among the public, clearly showed a hung parliament after the next election. Expectations are of significant gains by the JVP (which now has only one seat in the House) eroding into the number of seats held by both the PA and the UNP.

The president ordered the generals to come up with new military strategies, apart from the push northwards in the Mannar district, to make as much gains in territory as possible before the elections.

She has not yet decided on the date for the polls, but the constitution demands that they be held within six years of the last one, which was on August 17, 1994.

Meanwhile intelligence has warned of heightened LTTE activity in Colombo and the east, after Rana Ghosha V, and has cautioned for the need for vigilance against possible bomb attacks in Colombo and other major cities.

Although no air force officials were present at the meeting, the president expressed her displeasure to the generals over the air force’s bombing of a town in the LTTE controlled area on September 16, which killed 12 Tamil civilians and wounded 30, and led to the retaliatory massacre of 64 civilians in the Ampara district on September 18.

She had asked why the army and the police had no guards in the villages there? and was visibly irritated when she was told that the shortage of troops in the east is continuing, due to the operations in the north.

She had said that the army should step up its recruitment drives, but offered no solution for the lack of manpower. Two years ago, the president publicly said the government may consider conscription, but later said she had decided against it. Obviously, conscription is a most unpopular move in any country, and would be the last nail in the PA’s coffin if it is even considered at this time, with the elections drawing near.

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LTTE’s female fighters emerge as macabre warriors

by Amal Jayasinghe
COLOMBO, (AFP) — When almost entire hamlet was massacred in Sri Lanka it was not only the images of children chopped to death that shocked people but also the knowledge that the butchery was led by women.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was quick to deplore the September 18 massacre of 54 villagers and said it had witnessed accounts of separatist Tamil Tiger guerrillas carrying out the massacre.

The worst carnage was inside the home of a farmer, M. M. Premasiri, who miraculously escaped as the attackers failed to break down the room he was sleeping while elsewhere in the house 14 members of his family were cut to death.

"I heard voices in Tamil," Premasiri said. " I could hear women saying something in Tamil. Then I heard them smashing the furniture, then the screams.

"After a while, the screaming died down and I heard the Tamil women laughing as if they had gone mad. I came out only after I heard Sinhalese voices several hours later".

The victims were members of the majority Sinhalese community and authorities believe the massacre was a retaliatory attack for an Air Force bombing raid that killed 22 Tamil civilians elsewhere three days earlier.

The Defence Ministry has denied targeting Tamil civilians but has ordered an investigation and admitted civilians may have been hit accidentally.

International aid officials described horrific scenes after the bombing with many people, including women and children, killed.

Western diplomats here said they were horrified that Saturday’s attackers could have meticulously planned the carnage. Long knives and swords were the preferred weapons. The use of women to cut open women and children shocked people.

United Nations 1998 Human Rights Prize winner Sunila Abeyesekera said the massacre showed that women employed by a fighting machine were no less fierce than males.

"It is fatal to have this idea that women will show kindness. Once they have indoctrinated by a killing machine, be it with the rebels or government forces, there is no difference between men and women", Abeyesekera, a prominent women’s rights activist, said.

"These women may even have a sense of satisfaction that they have done their job well".

Abeyesekera said people should have no illusion that women were somehow gentler and kinder combatants.

In Saturday’s massacre nine children and 17 women, two of whom were pregnant were hacked to death. One pregnant woman was raped before being killed, doctors said.

It was the worst massacre since the May 1995 killing of 45 Sinhalese villagers in the north-eastern coastal area of Kallarawa. There has been no reaction from the LTTE to charges that they were responsible.

As the number of men killed or wounded in combat rise steadily, both the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and government forces are turning to women to bolster their depleting ranks.

The LTTE, formed in 1976, founded its women’s wing known as Freedom Birds in 1986 under a cadre known as Sothia. The most high profile attack blamed on Freedom Birds is the May 1991 assassination of India’s Rajiv Gandhi who as prime minister in 1987 deployed Indian troops in Sri Lanka to disarm the Tigers.

The first woman soldier on the government side was killed in August 1996 when Tiger guerrillas overran a bunker she was manning in the northern peninsula of Jaffna.

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