Flashbacks to war

Monday 30th December, 2024

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorial lecture 2024, delivered by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe in New Delhi over the weekend, was interesting, insightful, and had some takeaways on history, Indo-Lanka relations, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and recovery efforts, and most of all, the circumstances that led to the signing of the 2002 ceasefire agreement between the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the LTTE, India’s support for Sri Lanka during the Eelam War IV and at the height of the economic crisis here in 2022.

True, the LTTE had scored a string of battlefield victories by the time the Norwegian-crafted ceasefire agreement was inked in 2002, as Wickremesinghe has rightly said, but some newly acquired weapons systems had enabled the military to resist the LTTE offensives effectively. It was Pakistan that equipped the Sri Lanka army with multi-barrel rocket launchers which helped outgun the LTTE. The army also carried out several highly successful deep penetration operations which the ceasefire agreement required the GoSL to suspend immediately.

What went without mention in Wickremesinghe’s lecture was that the fragile truce enabled the LTTE to make preparations for the Eelam War IV and gain international legitimacy. The LTTE committed countless ceasefire violations, but the truce monitors and the self-appointed Co-Chairs of Sri Lanka’s ‘peace process’, namely the US, Norway, Japan and the EU, did precious little to rein it in. It continued to stockpile weapons, train cadres and infiltrate Colombo and even other areas as never before. The Co-Chairs made the implementation of a USD 4.5 billion aid pledge contingent on the progress in the ‘peace process’, and thereby put the GoSL in a straitjacket.

Making the most of the ceasefire and the partiality of the truce monitors, the LTTE moved more of its heavy guns to the areas south of the Trincomalee harbour and the Palali airstrip with a view to pounding the two strategically important targets with artillery barrages, disrupting supplies and troops movement, and forcing the military personnel in the Jaffna peninsula to surrender. An intelligence report warned of the LTTE’s grand plan, and the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was wise enough to act on it; former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar visited New Delhi and briefed the Indian government on the impending danger. The Island gained access to the intelligence dossier at issue, and reported on it. The UNP-led UNF government threatened to strip Kadirgamar of special security provided to him in view of LTTE threats to his life, claiming that he was trying to derail the ‘peace process’. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and the UNF changed its mind. Subsequently, President Kumaratunga took over the Defence Ministry and went on to sack the UNF government and hold a snap general election, which the SLFP-led UPFA (with the JVP as a constituent) won in 2004.

The UNF government laboured under the delusion that it had won over the international community (read the US-led western bloc) by adhering to the truce, which in fact stood the LTTE in good stead. It would not have been possible to defeat the LTTE without India’s support, but the question is whether India would have allowed military operations to go on in the Vanni if the LTTE had not turned against it. The general consensus is that the war would have been over way back in 1987 unless India had intervened to save Prabhakaran, who was trapped in the North, with the army closing in, and to coerce the then President J. R. Jayewardene into signing the Indo-Lanka Accord. But for India’s mistake of creating terror groups, such as the LTTE, Sri Lanka’s economy would have grown at a faster rate, and perhaps a foreign currency reserves crisis would not have come about.

Sri Lanka would not have been able to defeat terrorism even with India’s support in 2009 if the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa had given in to western pressure and suspended military operations. The UK and France rushed their foreign ministers here in a bid to scuttle the war and save Prabhakaran and other Tiger leaders. Wickremesinghe’s informative narrative of the war would have been more comprehensive if the aforesaid facts had been included.

Sadly, the Rajapaksa government launched a witch-hunt against former war-winning Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who turned against it at the behest of some crafty Opposition politicians including the JVP and UNP leaders. After the 2015 regime change, the UNP-led Yahapalana government carried out a vilification campaign against the war-winning Navy Commander Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda and other battle-hardened senior naval officers.

Ironically, the JVP-led NPP government has reduced security provided to Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose unwavering political leadership for the war made the defeat of the LTTE possible. The NPP would not have been able to conduct its election campaigns in the North and the East, much less win seats, if the LTTE had been around. Today, the voice of the people in those parts of the country is heard, and children can go to school without fear of being abducted on the way and turned into cannon fodder.