Is a military
solution possible and/or desirable ?
5 September 1995
The phrase "military solution" is very common now in
the Sri Lankan discourse on the war. It is an euphemism for a very
specific and precise concept, namely, the total military defeat of
the LTTE driving it to unconditional surrender. The unconditional
surrender will entail the surrender of all LTTE forces to the Sri
Lanka army and navy as well as the surrender of all their weapons
and equipment to the latter. When this is achieved the Sri Lankan
state will regain the monopoly of armed force within the island,
which is the indispensable bedrock of a single all-island state.
The first question is - Is this consummation possible? To some the
mere asking of this question is a traitorous offence - the
affirmative answer is a fundamental assumption of both faith and
reason. They regard the very asking of such a question as the giving
of aid and comfort to the enemy. It is an universal assumption that
since the state commands the resources of a state and the LTTE does
not; since the Sinhala are more numerous than all other races on the
island combined; since their collective economic strength vastly
outweighs that of all others combined; since the state has an army,
navy and air force with reasonably modern equipment; since it has a
10 to 1 advantage over the LTTE in troop strength - there can be no
question but that the Sri Lankan state must eventually prevail. Even
if it were to take decades, the final outcome must be in its favour
for the above-mentioned reasons.
These convictions are held universally by the Sinhala people and by
all their leaders of every political stripe without a single
exception. This unanimity is matched by an equally universal lack of
understanding of the very specific nature of the type of war in
which they are engaged. What is going on in Sri Lanka is not merely
a war between the state’s conventional forces and a guerrilla
adversary - it is a nationalist guerrilla war of secession being
fought on the guerrillas’ home ground. This is a very specific type
of war between conventional and guerrilla forces and it has happened
in a few other theatres. In all those theatres, without a single
exception, the state has had all the advantages over the guerrillas
enumerated in the preceding paragraph. In all of them the state’s
objective was the same i.e. the total defeat of the guerrillas
driving them to unconditional surrender.
In no theatre of such conflict has the state succeeded in achieving
its objective. Wherever such wars have been concluded, they have
been concluded with the guerrillas securing their objective of an
independent state comprising the whole or a substantial part of the
territory they claimed. Where such wars have not been so concluded,
the conflicts are still in progress - the oldest (Myanmar) now well
into its fifth decade. Not even the foremost industrially developed
countries have been able to avoid this general pattern (e.g. the
U.K., Russia).
This is the general background. Now let us consider the specific
case of Sri Lanka. We need to ask the question "Can the LTTE be
defeated militarily and driven to unconditional surrender?" because
in the last 12 year period (1983 to 1995) in which there were just
over 10 years of actual fighting the Sri Lankan forces have not been
able to achieve this result. On the contrary, the LTTE is much more
powerful today than it was at the beginning of the conflict the very
opposite of what we tried to achieve.
We can get a reasonable estimate of Sri Lanka’s prospects of
achieving its objective by two comparisons - one with a developed
country which has faced, and still faces, the very same type of
conflict; the other with an Asian developing country with
approximately the same G.N.P. per capita per annum as Sri Lanka and
is also engaged in the identical type of conflict.
THE UK/EIRE.
The first comparison I wish to make is with the UK. In the UK the
Irish waged a nationalist guerrilla war of secession on their home
ground - the island of Ireland intermittently for 300 years. During
most of that period the population of mainland Britain was just over
40 million souls and of Ireland around 2 million. In the latter half
of this period the UK experienced the agrarian and industrial
revolutions, large scale capital accumulation and the acquisition of
imperial possessions overseas. The Irish had none of these
advantages. Nowhere was the disparity in economic and military
strength between the state and the guerrillas greater than in this
conflict. But we all know what the outcome was. The guerrillas could
not be defeated by the state’s best efforts and peace was secured
only by the splitting up of the state into two states in 1922 - The
Irish Free State (now The Republic of Ireland) and the present
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That peace has
endured unbroken for 73 years. It was not disturbed even by the
Irish Republic’s neutrality in the Second World War and its having
in Dublin an embassy of Nazi Germany. When wars of secession end by
separation, the resulting peace lasts.
THE UK/NORTHERN IRELAND
There is another facet of Irish/U.K. relations which is of equal
relevance to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Irish nationalism, which
regards the whole of the island of Ireland as the Irish homeland,
was not satisfied with the peace of 1922 which left 6 Irish counties
and 2 county boroughs (Belfast and Londonderry) within the UK. The
Irish Republican Army ( IRA) which was the main guerrilla group that
had fought for and won an independent, sovereign Irish state,
continued to exert pressure for the secession of the 6 counties and
2 county boroughs which comprise Northern Ireland from the UK and
for their joinder to the Irish Republic. All negotiations towards
this end having failed, the IRA commenced guerrilla warfare in 1968.
Soon the Royal Ulster constabulary (RUC) had to be backed up by
troops of the British army. The two combined fielded just over
30,000 men against nearly 300 hard-core guerrilla fighters of the
IRA - a ratio of 100 troops to 1 guerrilla. The conflict went on for
26 years despite the best efforts of the British army until the
ceasefire of August 1994 . No settlement has been reached as yet,
indeed all-party negotiations have not begun at the time of this
writing. All 3 parties to the conflict - the IRA, the British army
and the Protestant paramilitary remain in possession of their
respective arsenals of arms and explosives.
Throughout this long-drawn-out conflict it is estimated that the IRA
had the support of only a minority of the Roman Catholic population
(itself a minority of the total population) of Northern Ireland. The
backing of a minority of a minority, supplemented by support from a
part of the large Irish population of the USA (estimated currently
at around 40 million) enabled the IRA to defy successfully the
British army’s best efforts to defeat them militarily and drive them
to unconditional surrender. In the latter stages of this conflict
the British government spent on it 3.25 billion pounds per year or
8.9 million pounds per day. (At the exchange rate of Sri Lanka
rupees 76 = l Pound, these figures translate into Rs. 247 billion
per year or Rs. 676 million per day.) This enormous expenditure on
warfare in Northern Ireland is an important factor in the UK’s
relative backwardness in comparison with its fellow members in the
European Union - in the league table of G.N.P. per capita per annum
the UK is in 11th position among the 15 members of the European
Union. Military expenditure on a protracted war has a severely
debilitating effect on the economy.
Let us now compare this effort with the corresponding effort in Sri
Lanka. Northern Ireland is 5482 sq. miles in land area; the
north-east province is approximately 7,600 sq. miles.
Northern Ireland is mostly gently undulating, open farmland with an
excellent road and telecommunication network; the north-east
province is topographically very rough, especially in the eastern
province, heavily wooded south of the Jaffna peninsula and endowed
with a road network of the most appalling primitiveness which is by
itself a death-trap for motorized vehicles and with no
telecommunication network worth speaking of. In Northern Ireland the
IRA’s guerrillas number around 300 according to the best estimates;
in the north-east province the LTTE strength is estimated at around
12,000. The British forces in Northern Ireland fielded 100 troops to
1 IRA guerrilla; in the north-east province the ratio is, at best,
10 troops to 1 guerrilla. The IRA never acquired naval or missile
systems during its 26 year struggle; but in 12 years the LTTE has
both.
On the 30,000 troops in Northern Ireland the British government
spent Rs. 247 billion per year; on four times that number, 120,000
troops, deployed against the LTTE the Sri Lanka government spends,
say, Rs. 35 billion per year - one-twenty-eighth the comparable
amount.
The U.K. produces domestically everything required for the war in
Northern Ireland; the Sri Lanka government produces domestically
nothing required for the war in the north-east province and has to
import it all in desperate buying sprees abroad after every major
encounter.
In Northern Ireland after 26 years of fighting the British army’s
own estimate was that the IRA was better armed and better led than
they were at the beginning; in the north-east province the conflict
has lasted only 12 years and likewise it is well known that the LTTE
is better armed and better led than at the beginning.
No one in the UK, from the Prime Minister downwards, believes the
IRA can be militarily defeated and driven to unconditional
surrender; in Sri Lanka everybody from the President downwards,
believes the LTTE can be militarily defeated and driven to
unconditional surrender, with Col. A. Ratwatte declaring this can be
achieved by the end of 1995.
The Northern Ireland experience holds important pointers for the
future in Sri Lanka. The IRA never held any territory in defiance of
the state; they existed among the civilian population and
successfully fought a long-drawn-out guerrilla war against a modern,
battle-hardened army with the support of only a minority of a
minority of the resident population. In Sri Lanka the LTTE holds
substantial extents of populated territory in defiance of the state.
As long as they hold such territory they fight a partly
conventional/partly guerrilla war. If and when that territory is
recovered by the state and the rule of the state is restored in it,
the LTTE could revert to the normal type of guerrilla warfare which
proved impossible to suppress in Northern Ireland. Indeed, in Sri
Lanka itself that experience was realised when the IPKF captured
Jaffna in October '87. It was thereafter that they suffered the
worst bloodletting of all and it lasted over a prolonged period
right up to their departure. The facile conclusion that the war will
be over if and when, Jaffna is captured by the Sri Lanka army only
shows the lack of understanding of this particular type of war and
of the very recent experience of other countries and our own.
The other significant feature of the Northern Ireland experience is
the important role played by the Irish Diaspora in the USA. Not only
was it a vital source of funds for the IRA, it was very effective in
mobilizing diplomatic support for the IRA. The British government
enjoys, supposedly, a "special relationship" with the US government
but despite that the pressure of its own citizens and voters in the
USA counted for more. The Tamil Diaspora is in exactly the same
position. It is a continuing and growing source of funds for the
LTTE as well as an increasingly influential lobby through their
elected representatives. The feeble diplomatic efforts of the Sri
Lanka government, often orchestrated by sycophantic political
appointees, are not, and can never be, a match for voter pressure
through elected representatives. Anything smacking of the genocidal
in the government’s military effort could rouse a dozen hornets’
nests and result in irresistible international diplomatic and
economic pressure. A foretaste of that in 1987 precipitated the
Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord of that year. There could well be more
of the same.
MYANMAR
Let us now turn to the second comparison. Myanmar (formerly Burma)
is an Asian, Buddhist country with a G.N.P. per capita per annum
almost the same as that of Sri Lanka i.e. just under US$ 600.00 . It
is 10 times larger in land area than Sri Lanka and enjoys a more
abundant and varied resource endowment than Sri Lanka. It is
self-sufficient in food and has proven petroleum deposits on land.
Its population of 43 million is 2.5 times that of Sri Lanka. it has,
currently, an army of 380,000 men due to rise soon to 500,000. The
present strength is over 3 times that of the Sri Lanka army. Since
independence in 1948 the army has been engaged in war with the
guerrilla forces of the several tribal peoples living on the
western, northern and eastern peripheries of Myanmar, who are
fighting for their independence from Myanmarese rule. The failure to
subdue these guerrilla uprisings and the need to Marshall all the
state’s resources for the war effort led to the overthrow of civil
government in Burma, as it then was in 1962, and its replacement by
a military dictatorship which exists to this day. All the different
guerrilla forces, even if combined, are vastly outnumbered by the
Myanmar army. Nevertheless the latter has failed after 47 years of
unremitting effort, with the army in command of all the state’s
resources, to quell the guerrillas and to drive any one of them to
unconditional surrender.
The staggering cost of this effort to the citizens of Myanmar is on
full and open view to anyone who visits that country. I have been in
both Yangon (formerly Rangoon) and Mandalay (the northern capital)
and can testify to the truly spectacular display of degradation and
decay that meets the eye. It beggars description and has to be seen
to be believed. Myanmar is not a far country on another continent;
it can be reached easily from Colombo via Calcutta. Everyone
seriously interested in what the future holds for Sri Lanka should
make this short journey and see with their own eyes what prolonged
and unwinnable war with separatist nationalist guerrillas can do to
a poor country.
The tribal guerrillas who have confronted the might of Myanmar’s
army have the great advantage of mountainous and rugged terrain
which has no parallel in the north-east province of Sri Lanka. They
are adept at using all the advantages of that terrain which is their
home ground. Nevertheless they cannot be compared by any stretch of
the imagination to the LTTE in respect of military sophistication,
organisation, logistical capability and generalship. They do not
have missile systems nor a naval arm - not even the Karens who have
a coastline. They have no supporting international elite Diaspora.
Yet they have kept at bay a professional, battle-hardened army of
380,000 men for 47 years and show not the slightest sign of
weakening let alone caving in. Their fight for independence from
Myanmar rule goes on.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF ESCALATION
From these 3 comparisons it should be abundantly clear that with the
war as it is now conducted with an army of 125,000 men, yielding a
troops to guerrillas ratio of 10 to 1, in the rough terrain of the
north-east province it is manifestly impossible to defeat the LTTE
militarily and drive them to unconditional surrender. The last 12
years experience is compelling proof of this. All the army’s
outposts in the north-east province have to be supplied by sea
through ports which are ill equipped for handling heavy cargo such
as tanks etc. The cargo vessels and their naval escorts are harassed
by Sea Tiger attacks. The needed increases of troop strength and
heavy armament in the area will multiply the strain on the sea-borne
supply lines.
For any credible performance against the LTTE the strength of all
three arms of the military - army, navy and air force needs to be
increased many fold. Even a factor of 10 only provides the ratio of
troops to guerrillas which failed in Northern Ireland. But even that
will raise annual military expenditure to around Rs. 350 billion.
Such a large sum cannot be found from increased taxation of incomes
and corporate profits. It can come only from the cessation of
subsidies to the general population and the termination of large
areas of social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals which
are the biggest elements. Such drastic surgery on the body politic
cannot be carried out by any elected government. It can be achieved,
as in Myanmar, only by a military dictatorship as ruthless as that
now prevailing in the north-east province or even more so. Even such
military dictatorships have failed to defeat and drive to
unconditional surrender nationalist guerrillas fighting on their
home ground for secession. Col. Mengitsu’s extremely ruthless
military dictatorship in Ethiopia failed to crush the Eritrean
nationalist guerrillas. On the contrary Ethiopia itself collapsed
and the war was ended by the Eritreans securing for themselves, in
1993, a sovereign, independent state of their own. In Myanmar the
military dictatorship has succeeded only in keeping the war going,
not in ending it. It is equally unlikely that a military
dictatorship in Sri Lanka will fare any better in respect of the
LTTE.
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
The conflict in Sri Lanka has been crowded out of the world’s
television screens by that in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In that state the
Bosnian Serbs, who represent about 45% of the population, are
fighting for independence from the Bosnian (Muslim-led) government
and for the establishment of an independent state of their own where
they constitute the majority of the resident population. After 4
years of warfare, which has produced large cross-border refugee
flows, it is now agreed by all parties that peace can be achieved
only by partitioning the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina into two - with
the Bosnian government getting 51% of the land area and the Bosnian
Serbs the remaining 49%. The difficulty of implementing this is due
to the fact that these percentages can be aggregated only by
discontinuous and non-adjacent parcels of territory on the basis of
the present residence of each ethnic group. Only large-scale
population transfers within Bosnia-Herzegovina can produce compact
land areas for each new state-to-be. Neither the international
community nor any of the parties involved in the conflict directly
or tangentially regard it as a practical possibility to defeat the
Bosnian Serbs militarily and drive them to unconditional surrender.
Not even the USA, whose warplanes from the USS Theodore Roosevelt
bombed the Bosnian Serbs in the heaviest air raids in Europe since
the end of World War II, holds the view that the Bosnian Serbs can
be militarily defeated and driven to unconditional surrender.
THE DESIRABILITY OF THE MILITARY SOLUTION
For those who believe that the "military solution" is possible it is
but a short and logical step to conclude that it is also desirable.
Since the vast majority of the Sinhala people and all their leaders
without a single exception believe that a "military solution" is
possible the prevailing view among them is that it is also
desirable. This illustrates how the long period of warfare has begun
to obscure any clear understanding of the causes of the conflict.
The LTTE is regarded as the product of one man’s wickedness and
bloody-mindedness. The phenomenon of Tamil nationalism, the forging
of it into a sharp weapon on the anvil of war, its durability and
growing vigour both in the present and for the future, seem to be
entirely beyond cognition within Sinhala society. There is the
facile assumption that when the LTTE is militarily defeated and
driven to unconditional surrender, Tamil nationalism itself will
disappear. The lesson of history is that nationalism thrives on war
and even on military defeat. In two decades after the end of World
War I, German nationalism reared its head again with a vengeance.
After the end of World War II the evil day has been postponed only
by the vanquished winning the peace so resoundingly. The
desirability of the military solution is a view that can be held
only by ignoring the greatest and most pervasive international trend
of 20th century history - the rise of Irredentist ethnic
nationalism.
The agenda for ending the war and for the way ahead in the 21st
century demands an acknowledgment of Tamil nationalism and a
rational, humane, viable rapprochement with it. To our cost we know
how fatal it has been to oppose it. Our future lies in acknowledging
and heralding the nationalism of our great neighbour and in
developing a modus vivendi for both nations within the island and
within the larger international comity of nations. The only
‘sacrifice" we have to make is to cast off the comforting
mediaevalism which has proved so worthless a shield. |
