Kilinochchi and Raman’s kiss of death

Bahukutumbi Raman, a retired additional secretary of India’s cabinet secretariat who has set himself up as an analyst of topical issues in some Chennai outfit, has come a cropper again. In one of his regular pieces to the local media he wondered, nay virtually predicted, that Kilinochchi besides being another Stalingrad would be the Sri Lankan army’s fatal kiss.

Raman was suggesting that overrunning the LTTE’s administrative and political ‘capital’ could prove to be fatal. Why? Because, said Raman with assumed sagacity and wisdom, the LTTE had laid sufficient traps for the state security forces and built up enough defences to fight a significant battle to save their capital. Raman saw the forces being lured into a trap that would prove dangerously costly. In fact, resorting to historical analogy Raman saw the then forthcoming battle for the LTTE’s capital as a combination of the battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein in North Africa. He wrote: “The battle for Kilinochchi is a combined miniature version of the battles of Stalingrad in the erstwhile USSR and El Alamein in North Africa.”

Raman was way out on a limb when he cited the example of Field Marshal Montgomery’s defeat of Erwin Rommel as I pointed out in a previous column, for he had actually stood the analogy on its head. Now, having witnessed the fall of Kilinochchi, Raman swiftly changes tack and historical circumstance and tries to draw a parallel with the US army’s unchallenged entry into the Iraqi capital during the invasion of that Arab country post 9/11. Referring to the jubilation shown in many parts of Sri Lanka at the news of the fall of Kilinochchi Raman sees this as a reminiscent of “scenes witnessed after the US army moved without resistance into Baghdad.”

So the former Indian government official now passing himself off as an expert analyst of Sri Lankan affairs, particularly politico-military, takes a great leap forward from El Alamein to Baghdad because he finds the Baghdad scenario somewhat more comfortable than that of El Alamein into which he stumbled or bungled without the slightest knowledge of how Field Marshal Montgomery defended and then built up sufficient strength in men and materiel to launch an offensive. Having made a serious faux pas in assessing the LTTE’s military strategy and tactics with regard to Kilinochchi, Raman could only resurrect whatever credibility he has by praying for a Stalingrad.

The Sri Lankan armed forces do not have to cope with a severe winter as the German forces did on the Russian front- a second front opened by Hitler against the best counsel of some of his senior military men. Nor do the Sri Lankan forces have the same logistical problems such as long and often vulnerable supply lines that faced the German troops who were sucked in further and further into the vast wastes of Russia. These historical comparisons apart, Raman does not explain how it is that Prabhakaran withdrew from Kilinochchi having made the bravura remark that if President Rajapaksa thought that he could capture Kilinochchi he was living in “dreamland.” What the LTTE leader’s rather dismissive observation of the government’s intention implied was that Kilinochchi would be defended with all the strength and military might at the Tigers’ command. Any hope of capturing Kilinochchi would then be nothing more than somebody’s pipe dream.

The situation that faced the Sri Lankan forces that entered the LTTE’s de facto capital might be akin to Raman’s more recent analogy of the American troops entering Baghdad. But then did Raman believe in Prabhakaran’s boast that implied Kilinochchi would never be taken from them. The critical question here is whether Prabhakaran was doing what Goebbels was best known for, the big lie that was intended to mislead by convincing his enemy and the people of the truth of what he carefully propagated.

If Prabhakaran was indeed practising the Goebbelsian art of trying to convince the people of something that is not so, he could have had two reasons for doing so. One was to try and convince the advancing Sri Lankan forces that he was going to stand firm at Kilinochchi and fight. Unlike in General Custer’s last stand, Prabhakaran of course would not be there. His field commanders would have to defend the capital and reportedly carry the can for not staying there and fighting as subsequent news reports suggested.
Also such defiant words by Prabhakaran would shore up the flagging spirit of the diaspora Tamils who had been led into believing in the invincibility of the LTTE forces but were now beginning to doubt their own propaganda fed to them by such umbrella organisations as the British Tamils Forum and others similar to it in the western world. There could be another reason for the LTTE leader’s dismissive words. By saying they would stand and fight in Kilinochchi, Prabhakaran was saying the government forces would have to pay a heavy price. This would lead to more caution and greater preparedness on the part of the government troops. It would also mean more planning to avoid civilian casualties as it has been reported that the LTTE was using civilians as a human shield and as labour. The time gained would be used by Prabhakaran to move the LTTE apparatus lock, stock and barrel out of Kilinochchi and deeper into the northeast jungles.

Pro-LTTE websites reported that the Sri Lanka army “has entered a virtual ghost town as the whole civilian infrastructure as well as the centre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had shifted further northeast.” But in trying to minimise the impact of the fall of Kilinochchi and diminish the role of the Sri Lankan forces, pro-LTTE websites such as TamilNet only exposed Prabhakaran’s words as nothing but hollow and even misled those like Raman who say that the LTTE like any rebel army would be defeated only when it did not have the support of the people and a sanctuary it can fall back on. If Tamil Nadu denies that sanctuary and some of its people deny their support then the objective conditions that Raman speaks of will change significantly.

While it is true that the LTTE will still continue as a hit and run force, one that will harry and harass and engage in acts of terrorism, it would seem right, now that as a conventional army its effectiveness has been drastically curtailed. If the military assessment of experts is correct then what seems like the cornering of the LTTE has a lesson for those western pundits and diplomats. It is necessary to defeat terrorism militarily before acceptable political solutions are worked out to resolve the larger question.
I don’t think that anybody who is seriously intent on solving this problem denies that a political solution needs to be hammered out. The question is when and how. Sri Lanka is trying to show that there are other approaches than those suggested by bystanders who do not have to live with terrorism on the streets.