Polls eve politics and battlefield realities

• An officer who robs the state cheats the very men he is supposed to lead-Kadirgamar

September 3 - "Operation Rivikirana" ends in a fiasco. Phase one leaves 250 troops dead and over 1000 wounded. September 10 - Operation Rivikirana" (phase two) extends eastern defences of Jaffna town. Troops re-capture around six square kilometres at Colombuthurai. September 17 -"Operation Kiniheera" leads to re-capture of Chavakachcheri junction. Troops seize four square kilometres from LTTE control.

September 26 - "Operation Kiniheera" (phase two) leads to re-capture of Puttur - Sarasalai Road. Troops seize 12 square kilometres from LTTE control.  September 26 - LTTE launches "Operation Oyatha Alaikal" (Ceaseless Waves). Army withdraws defence lines 21/2 kilometres to the rear. They give up some 30 square kilometres of territory which they held.  September 30- LTTE launch artillery fire at SF Northern Command areas. Fixed wing aircraft flights temporarily halted.  October 5 - SLAF jets pound LTTE areas in Pooneryn. LTTE retaliates with artillery fire. October 5 - LTTE launches attack on SF defences near Nagarkovil. One officer and seven soldiers were killed but troops repulse the attack.

The 33 day old campaign for Tuesday's Parliamentary general elections, plagued by mounting violence, ended at midnight Saturday.

Though not expressly spelt out, so did a 34 day old costly military campaign in the Jaffna peninsula to oust Tiger guerrillas from positions they seized in April, this year.

Senior Army officials went out of the way to insist that the latest military campaign was not at all linked to the polls campaign. But the accompanying media blitz, with two conducted tours within a week to Jaffna, generated publicity that almost overshadowed other polls issues. The "good news" figured prominently at People's Alliance rallies.

So much so, Prime Minister, Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who spearheaded the People's Alliance polls campaign, declared at a rally in Nildandahinna (Nuwara Eliya district) that troops would even capture Elephant Pass before October 10.

The declaration was reminiscent of what Deputy Defence Minister, Anuruddha Ratwatte, made three years ago. Months after launching "Operation Jaya Sikurui," he confidently asserted that the offensive would soon end successfully and he would shake hands with LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Instead, months later, an entire nation was shocked to learn that all the gains during "Operation Jaya Sikurui," as well as other offensives led to over over 1,000 square kilometres dominated from Army camps at Oddusuddan, Nedunkerny, Olumadu, Ampakamam, Mankulam and Kanakarayankulam – being lost.

Minister's Ratwatte's assertion, whilst personally spearheading "Operation Jaya Sikurui," turned out to be nothing more than mere platform bravado. And now, Premier Wickremanayake's election eve prediction too has turned out to be nothing more than similar rhetoric. His remarks did raise eyebrows in the security establishment since it forewarned the LTTE of military plans.

But underscoring Premier Wickremanayake's bold assertion at Nildandahinna was the confidence the PA leadership had entertained that the security forces, now re-armed with modern equipment costing billions of rupees, would be in a position to speedily evict Tiger guerrillas from positions they seized in April, this year. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who is also Commander-in-Chief, raised the issue herself during a meeting of the National Security Council. This came after "Operation Rivikirana," the very first operation on September 3, ended in a fiasco. The fact that there were no substantial results which would be of political propaganda value, that too on the eve of a general election, has disappointed many PA leaders.

If phase one of "Operation Rivikirana" turned out to be a debacle with more than 250 soldiers being killed and over a 1,000 wounded, the second phase was different. This phase on September 10 helped extend further on the small gain in the eastern defences of the Jaffna town by two and half kilometres. With the first phase, an extent of some three kilometres were seized. Thus, the area re-captured was around six square kilometres.

A more significant gain, the re-capture of the strategic Chavakachcheri junction and surrounding areas, came during the launch of "Operation Kiniheera" on September 17. This led to the re-capture of some four square kilometres of territory. This was followed by a second phase of "Operation Kiniheera" on September 26 during which troops seized the Putur – Sarasalai road, the shortest route connecting the Valikamam sector with Thenmaratchchi. Troops seized an area of 12 square kilometres.

Some of these territorial gains, however, were lost when the LTTE launched phase four of "Operation Oyatha Alaikal" (or Ceaseless Waves) on September 26. This forced troops to withdraw two and half kilometres to the rear of their main defences – the entry point to the peninsula along the A-9 Jaffna-Kandy highway. The original defences were located on a line that began at Kilali in the west and extended through Eluthumaduval to Nagarkovil in the east. The defence lines extended to at least 12 kilometres. With a two and a half kilometre withdrawal to the rear, troops gave up at least 30 square kilometres when they fell back to their second line of defence. After pushing the troops to the rear, Tiger guerrillas launched artillery attacks on the security forces Northern Command Area beginning on the night of Saturday, September 30.

Some of the artillery fire began to fall on the outer fringe of the Palaly airfield during the early part of this week. This forced the Sri Lanka Air Force to temporarily suspend fixed wing aircraft flights. Troops were ferried using Mi-17 helicopters. However, the situation was brought under control after SLAF Mig-27 and Kfir interceptor jets conducted a series of air raids on LTTE positions.

Last Wednesday, Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Rohan de S. Daluwatte flew in a fixed wing aircraft to Palaly accompanied by Army Commander Lt. Gen. Lionel Balagalle, Navy Commander Vice Admiral Cecil Tissera and Air Force Commander Air Marshal Jayalath Weerakoddy. The next day (Thursday) SLAF Mig-27s bombed LTTE positions in Pooneryn. According to one of the pilots, a hit triggered off an explosion with smoke billowing sky high. Security officials are still not clear what the target was. However, they say the barrage of artillery fire that followed this aerial sortie indicated that the SLAF had hit a vital target, possibly an ammunition dump.

If the Army has not been able to make large territorial gains in the 34 day long military campaign, to their credit they have withstood attempts by Tiger guerrillas to make further inroads. Since the Army extended their defences east of Jaffna and re-captured Chavakachcheri, they have come under a string of counter attacks. They have withstood them.

On Thursday evening, Tiger guerrillas launched a major attack on the Army's defences at Nagarkovil. An officer and seven soldiers were killed in the attack which was repulsed. Troops in the Jaffna peninsula are on full alert for any surprise attacks by the LTTE before or on polls day. They are determined to hold to their present positions and ward off any attacks. Hence, any new operation for the Army will certainly come only after Tuesday's polls.

If one is to look at the territorial gains in the recent offensives, an extent of 22 square kilometres have been seized from territory the LTTE gained in April this year. This is made up of the following – Phase one and two of "Operation Rivikirana" – six square kilometres, Phase One of "Operation Kiniheera" – four square kilometres and Phase Two of "Operation Kiniheera" 12 square kilometres. In battles to re-capture these areas, more than 300 soldiers have been killed in four different operations and over 1,300 have been wounded, at least half of them suffering minor injuries. Although the LTTE is yet to announce its casualty figures, the Operational Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence statistics place the number of LTTE deaths since September 3 at over 500.

In marked contrast, LTTE's fourth phase of "Operation Oyatha Alaikal" (Ceaseless Waves) has forced the Army to fall back two and half kilometres to the rear in a defence line which extends over at least 12 kilometres. This works out to an extent 30 square kilometres.

Even if senior Army officials denied a link between the PA polls campaign and the four different operations that took place during the election campaign period, quite clearly the troops have been under pressure to keep a deadline. The fact that it co-incided with the polls campaign is no secret. Hence, it has once again become clear that spending millions of dollars or billions of rupees on procurements, not to mention allegations of widespread corruption, alone is not enough. Security forces will have to be allowed to fight the war with no political interference.

Whilst that remains the position in the run up to Tuesday's Parliamentary general elections, there is no doubt both sides will poise themselves for more battles in the coming weeks. And that will assume greater significance in view of the Martyrs' Week in November, where LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, makes his annual policy statement. 

An officer who robs the state cheats the very men he is supposed to lead-Kadirgamar

"An officer must not only be a man of valour, he must be a man of honour," he said during the Convocation address at the Kotelawala Defence Academy on Tuesday. Here are edited excerpts from his address.

"I have chosen as the theme of this Convocation address "The Role of the Soldier in Democratic Society" because it is a subject of contemporary relevance. In a democratic society soldiers are, equally with all others, citizens of a nation State with all the rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities which flow from that status. 

"He should not waver; for there is nothing greater for a warrior than to answer the call of duty. Those words, those concepts – "a noble duty", "a just war" "protect righteousness", "maintain law and order", "the call of duty" – are they still relevant and valid today? I believe they are. They remain the core values of a warrior's calling, philosophy and training, and they will remain throughout a soldier's life the guiding stars by which he plots the course of his professional career.

"To know how to lead one must know how to serve. Leaders in any walk of life must first be proven and trusted servants. They will have to be role models of their men.

"For an armed force to be successful the men must trust and respect their officers. The officers in turn must earn the trust and respect of their men. Trust and respect will not be earned unless the officers possess moral qualities that are admired by their men. An officer whose character is flawed or compromised will forfeit the trust and respect of his men. Without that trust and respect there cannot be loyalty among men who have to stand together in battle. They will fall apart in disarray. An officer who robs or cheats the State robs or cheats the very men he is supposed to lead, for his men are citizens, like all civilians, who wish to see our armed forces led by honest men. An officer must not only be a man of valour, he must be a man of honour.

"The soldier and discipline. In the early part of the last century, the concept of discipline in the western armed forces – rigid adherence to rules, regularity, subordination and devotion to established government; the concept that a soldier's duty was to do and die for his country, not to question why – began to change to the concept that military discipline and authority should not be authoritarian; they should rather be based on persuasion and group consensus.

"In the armed forces of today "command" has given way to "leadership" in the language of the military. 

"The soldier and his conscience. A soldier is trained to kill. He may be ordered to, or he may order others to do so. He can commit, in the course of duty, an intensely personal act the memory of which may haunt him for the rest of his days. As many of us know only too well, he may hold the enemy in the sights of his rifle and then watch him fall. In simple terms this – the act of killing – poses the soldier's ultimate moral predicament. No one can escape the dilemmas, thus posed, whether he be a four-star general or a rifleman, a man or a woman.

"The whole poignancy of the predicament is heightened when we are committed to internal security operations within our own country. We are then no longer fighting an external, identifiable enemy; we face our own fellow citizens. The moral dilemmas are more painful. Furthermore, not only the public, but also, of course, the soldier himself is now far more aware and far better educated than in the past. He tends to be more quizzical of authority. But the conscience is difficult to define.

"How, then, shall we tackle this elusive but absorbing subject? First, by looking at the law, in the broadest sense, within which a soldier deploys his conscience. Second by examining the moral pressures within these legal boundaries – in short, the conflict between morality and military necessity. Third, by assessing how the antidote, the classic soldierly qualities (or the age-old warrior virtues), impacts on this conflict. And, finally, by drawing the strands together and discussing how the whole debate impinges on the soldier's position in society today.

"The whole nature of war has changed – utterly. The innocent are no longer immune. In insurgency the peasant by day is the guerrilla by night, and in general war the weapons of mass destruction speak for themselves. All attempts to outlaw war have failed. But the United Nations General Assembly has tried to distinguish between the legal and the illegal use of force.

"This takes us straight into my second question: superior orders as a valid defence. The nub of the soldier's problem is not the existence of the law itself but rather whether "a moral choice is in fact open to him". Yet his duty demands that he obey orders instantly and without hesitation. Any legal encouragement to disobey, strikes at the very roots of military discipline. But in the heat of battle, things are necessarily and rightly done which later, in the frigidity of the law court, may seem outrageous – for war is a rough game. The law of the land, especially in a democratic society, usually acknowledges this fact.

"In essence, then, the soldier when answering to his conscience must remember that he not only has the right, but he also has the duty, to disobey an unlawful order. It is one of his privileges for serving a democracy, as it is one of his burdens that he must answer for his own action. We cannot have one without the other.

"A soldier's refusal to conform may spring from a wide variety of motives, ranging from sheer exhibitionism to cowardice, or even to masochism. But what we are talking about here is his refusal to do something which he reckons to be wrong. The rarity of his deliberate refusal says much for the normal legitimacy of the soldier's orders and also for the exceptional moral courage which the actual act of refusal demands.

"Now to the last and most disputable of the moral pressures, the mandate that the end justifies the means. The arguments range between two extremes, the purist and the ruthless. 

"Second, the soldier must reject brutality because by matching the terrorists at their own method the soldier will only be playing into their hands. The threshold of violence will escalate. Ultimately he will find himself using methods so outrageous that not only will they revolt his own conscience but they will also attract the hatred of the very people whom he is protecting and whose support is vital to him.

"Under these circumstances, the end can never justify the means, however, expedient it may seem at the time.

"Yet there will be other situations when the moral dilemma is more blurred, as anyone who has been in the intelligence game knows only too well. But it can also be far more acute.

"Conscience is a voice within a soldier long before it becomes a force. It is during this embryonic phase that it can be influenced. Although principles cannot be breached, potential collisions can be averted. And it is here that the classic soldierly qualities have their effect and can hold the pressure at bay.

"The need for professionalism is clear. It breeds, or should breed, the thinking man. But if the soldier is left to his own, he can misinterpret the rationale behind his orders. 

"The taking of risks is innate to the soldier. His conscience is something dulled by the sheer professional challenges and by the hectic tempo of operations. Both can erode judgment. And a soldier must beware the loss of judgment.

"The ultimate test of willpower surely is the ability to dominate events rather than be dominated by them. A true leader stands his ground, coolly and imperturbably, when chaos surrounds him. 

Bravery is the quintessence of the soldier. But moral courage – the strength of character to do what one knows is right regardless of the personal consequences – is the true face of conscience. Sacking your best friend, facing up rather than turning the blind eye, accepting that the principle at stake is more important than your job … such actions demand moral courage of a high order.

The Fifth Column

Editorial/ Opinion Contents