LTTE Air Strike on Katunayake - An Assessment,
B.Raman, South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG) 27 March 2007

"The TAF's [Tamileelam Air Force's] air strike was well-planned and equally well-executed. It was a night operation taking advantage of the weak capability of the SLAF for night operations. It was a precision attack, which carefully avoided causing any casualty or damage in the international airport, which could have roused international ire. There were no civilian casualties----targeted or collateral. As a result, it would not be possible to characterise the attack as an act of terrorism. It was pure and simple a conventional air strike...

The LTTE should not be allowed to retain its TAF. The matter should be taken up in the UN Security Council under Resolution 1373 and an ultimatum issued to the LTTE to surrender its planes to observers appointed by the UNSC. If it fails do so, the bank accounts of all members of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora suspected or known to be funding the LTTE should be frozen as a first step to make it see reason. If it continues to be defiant, other measures have to be considered like knocking them out. These measures have to be combined with pressure on the Rajapakse Government to initiate a political process towards a federal solution. Unilateral action only against the LTTE without simultaneous action against the Rajapakse Government or vice versa will prove counter-productive."

The Sri Lankan Government has imposed a total black-out on the losses suffered by it from the conventional air strike launched by the Tamil Eelam Air Force (TAF) of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the air base of the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) at Katunayake outside Colombo on March 26,2007. The air base is located adjoining the international airport. The black-out is meant to hamper any damage assessment by the media and other analysts -from Sri Lanka as well as outside. One has to therefore, depend on source reports.

2. The only information which the Government has given out is that two helicopters were damaged. It has tried to create an impression as if there was no damage to its fighter aircraft. Source reports, on the other hand, indicate that the TAF air strike has severely damaged, if not destroyed, at least a half of the aircraft holdings of the SLAF. The truth will be known only if and when the SLAF resumes its operations in the Tamil areas. If the Government's contention that there was no damage to its fighter aircraft is correct, then there would be no impact on its air operations in the Tamil areas. If the source reports' contention is correct, one would see a marked decrease in the SLAF's air operations in the days to come.

3. The TAF's air strike was well-planned and equally well-executed. It was a night operation taking advantage of the weak capability of the SLAF for night operations. It was a precision attack, which carefully avoided causing any casualty or damage in the international airport, which could have roused international ire. There were no civilian casualties----targeted or collateral. As a result, it would not be possible to characterise the attack as an act of terrorism. It was pure and simple a conventional air strike. The bombs targeted the hangar or hangars at the base inside which the aircraft of the SLAF are normally parked at night. Three SLAF personnel were killed and about 20 injured. It is not yet known whether they were the maintenance people or whether any of them were pilots. Maintenance casualties can be easily replaced, but not pilot casualties.

4.Some worrisome questions arise. Even professional pilots of a State Air Force need regular flying practice. You can't just assemble or take out an aircraft from a hide-out and fly out on a bombing mission. Where were the TAF pilots doing their flying practice? How come the Air Force intelligence set-ups of Sri Lanka as well as India missed detecting these training flights of the TAF? One needs fuel for the aircraft. From the way the LTTE has been warning of more air attacks, it seems to have an adequate reserve of fuel. Where from it got the fuel? Hopefully, not from India. Since April last year, when the Government of President Mahinda Rajapakse started using the SLAF, the latter has been claiming that it had repeatedly bombed the air strip of the TAF. When an air strip is bombed, it takes time to repair it. How did the LTTE manage to repair it without any problem? Or, does it have another air strip, which has not come to the notice of the Sri Lankan intelligence?

5. The air strike was a daring operation. The TAF aircraft were air-borne for a little over two hours. There was every danger of the aircraft being intercepted and destroyed by the SLAF. The fact that the LTTE leadership decided to face this risk speaks of a certain desperation behind the decision to launch the air strike. One could detect a similar desperation in its efforts to smuggle material required for improvised explosive devices (IEDS) from Tamil Nadu. Since November,2006, a number of consignments of ball bearings, aluminium and similar material intended for smuggling to the LTTE-controlled areas have been intercepted by the Tamil Nadu Police and the Coast Guard. "The Hindu" of March 24,2007, has reported that one of the arrested persons admitted during the interrogation that one consignment had managed to reach Sri Lanka. (see item titled " Two Held in Iron Balls Seizure Case" on Page 8). Two conclusions emerge: First, the LTTE is so desperate for replenishments from Tamil Nadu that it is prepared to face the risk of the arrest of some of its collaborators in Tamil Nadu. Second, if one consignment managed to avoid detection and interception and reach the LTTE, there is a strong possibility of more consignments having reached the LTTE. This reveals gaps in our counter-LTTE security measures.

6.This desperation has arisen from the LTTE's fears that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces were planning to launch an offensive in the Northern Province after having ejected the LTTE from nearly 85 per cent of the total territory in the Eastern Province. If the SL Armed Forces score similar successes in the Northern Province, that could deal a severe blow to the LTTE's political objectives. LTTE spokesmen have been repeatedly hinting that any offensive in the North would lead to a blood-bath in areas outside the Eastern and Northern Provinces.The Sri Lankan Armed Forces and their Foreign Office were treating these warnings casually as the dying gasp of the LTTE. Through its daring air strike, the LTTE has conveyed a credible message that it may be down, but not out. It still has a lot of daring, fight and innovative ability left in it.

7.The Sri Lankan Armed Forces would be stupid to over-estimate the significance of their successes in the Eastern Province and under-estimate the LTTE's capabilities in the Northern Province. The successes in the Eastern Province were largely due to the role played by Karuna and his men, and the ruthless use of the SLAF and the heavy artillery of Pakistani origin. Karuna is a former commander of the LTTE from the Batticaloa District of the Eastern Province, who deserted from the LTTE in March 2004 due to differences with Prabakaran.

The LTTE did not consider it necessary to use the TAF to prevent the set-backs in the Eastern Province. It is facing a serious shortage of anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition, but still has some, which have been kept in the reserve for use in the North and to prevent a decapitation strike against Prabakaran. The Sri Lankan Army will have to operate in the North without the support of Karuna and his men, who are detested there as Sinhalese quislings. Moreover, the LTTE's soldiers will be fighting in their own area with which they are familiar. Any operations in the North will see the LTTE fighting ferociously----possibly making full use of its air and anti-aircraft capability. It will hit out against the Sinhalese in the rest of Sri Lanka. It is not doing so presently due to fears of a backlash against the Tamils living in the Sinhalese majority areas, but a desperate LTTE will not be inhibited by such considerations.

8. The demonstrated air attack capability of the LTTE poses immediate, short, medium and long-term threats to Sri Lanka and medium and long-term threats to India. The first immediate threat is to the security of President Rajapakse and other VIPs. The ability to use an aircraft---either conventionally or through a suicide mission--- will enable the LTTE to circumvent access control measures. Without effective access control, there is no effective VIP security. The second immediate threat is psychological---the negative impact on foreign tourists and investors. This impact will be enhanced if the TAF carries out attacks on economic targets.

9. The third immediate impact is also psychological on the minds of the Sri Lankan Tamils. Prabakaran is stated to be a voracious reader. He reads everything that is available on guerilla warfare, covert actions etc. A favourite quote of his from one of these books is:" Those, who dare, win". It is said that this quote is exhibited in all training centres of the LTTE. The TAF dared on the morning of March 26 against tremendous odds. It succeeded. There was elation among the Sri Lankan Tamils all over the world. Many champagne bottles were broken by members of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. An added reason for this elation is stated to be the fact that all the TAF pilots are from the diaspora. One could see a fresh flow of volunteers to join the LTTE from Sri Lanka itself as well as from the diaspora. And a fresh flow of funds.

10. To neutralise these psychological impacts, the the SLAF has to demonstrate quickly that its capability and morale have not been affected. Can it do so? It is very important.

11.The short, medium and long-term threats to Sri Lanka will arise if as a result of this demonstrated air capability of the TAF, the SLAF loses its present air superiority. If that happens, the SL Armed Forces and the LTTE will be more evenly matched on the ground than they are today. That means continuing bloodshed and the danger of Tamil Eelam becoming a reality one day.

The statements of the close advisers of Rajapakse before the air raid including those of his Foreign Minister show considerable naivete. They seem to think the LTTE can be defeated militarily. The only instances in recent history where terrorist organisations have collapsed without achieving any of their stated objectives are those of the Khalistanis and of the Western ideological groups such as the German Red Army Faction. They collapsed or withered away because they had no support from the people for whose cause they claimed to be fighting.

The LTTE has considerable support from the Sri Lankan Tamils---in Sri Lanka as well as abroad. Unless they are weaned away from the LTTE through appropriate political measures, a military victory is doubtful. Repeated bombing raids by the SLAF on Sri Lankan Tamils in order to intimidate them are not the way of winning over the Tamils.

Barring the US, which has been heavily using air strikes against the Neo Taliban in Afghanistan and the terrorists and resistance-fighters in Iraq, without any significant success, and Israel, which did so in the Lebanon in July last year, no other country in the world uses air strikes for counter-insurgency operations in such a ruthless manner as the Rajapakse Government has been doing. At the least the US and Israel have been bombing foreign people in foreign territory, but the Rajapakse Government has been bombing from air its own people in its own territory.

12. There is no immediate security threat to India. The medium and long-term threats will arise from the likelihood of copy-cat terrorism and the LTTE one day using it against an Indian target. India has any number of terrorist and insurgent organisations active in different parts of the country. Some of them might be tempted to emulate the LTTE. Successful development and use of an independent air strike capability by a terrorist organisation is largely conditional on its having territorial control over the rural areas. Purely urban terrorist organisations would find it difficult to develop an independent air capability. In India, the Naxalites (Maoists) have effective control over large parts of rural areas. One has to be careful about them.

13. India is no stranger to air terrorism. The plane hijackings by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Khalistanis, the blowing-up of the Kanishka aircraft of Air India by the Babbar Khalsa of Canada and the clandestine air drop of weapons by a plane manned by a mercenary crew in Purulia were instances of air terrorism. In the early 1990s, a member of the Babbar Khalsa trained by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had stated during his interrogation that the ISI had asked him to join the Mumbai Flyting Club, take a trainer aircraft up and crash it on the Bombay High Oil platform. Such instances of air terrorism can be prevented by effective physical security on the ground.

14. But when an insurgent or a terrorist organisation acquires an independent air strike capability, the task of countering it becomes much more difficult. Preventive intelligence is an effective way, but it totally failed in the case of the LTTE. It was able to hoodwink the intelligence agencies of many countries---including those of India, Sri Lanka and the European countries--- get its pilots recruited from the diaspora and trained in foreign training institutions ---like Al Qaeda did-- and smuggle the aircraft in dismantled forms to the areas controlled by it.

15. The LTTE should not be allowed to retain its TAF. The matter should be taken up in the UN Security Council under Resolution 1373 and an ultimatum issued to the LTTE to surrender its planes to observers appointed by the UNSC. If it fails do so, the bank accounts of all members of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora suspected or known to be funding the LTTE should be frozen as a first step to make it see reason. If it continues to be defiant, other measures have to be considered like knocking them out. These measures have to be combined with pressure on the Rajapakse Government to initiate a political process towards a federal solution. Unilateral action only against the LTTE without simultaneous action against the Rajapakse Government or vice versa will prove counter-productive.
 

Comment by tamilnation.org  - Mr.Raman is right to point out  in LTTE Air Strike on Katunayake - An Assessment that "unilateral action only against the LTTE without simultaneous action against the Rajapakse Government will prove counter-productive."  It may be that Mr.Raman is only too aware of something which  Professor Johan Galtung said recently -

 "..But imagine it happens: Killinochchi is flattened, Mr P is dead, LTTE dissolved. Will the Tamil dream of a Tamil Eelam die? Of course not. It will be revived, and new cycles of violence will occur. And probably new CFAs. And possibly the same mistake, confusing ceasefire with peace, using it as a sleeping pillow to do nothing..."

Again it may be that Mr. Raman is not unmindful of the story line in the  Marlon Brando film Queimada -

"... The young boy who guards the captured (rebel leader) Dolores stays with him and provides (Director) Pontecorvo with a means of allowing Jose Dolores to give his ideas expression through dialogue. Jose Dolores does not assail his captor; he tries to inspire and convert him. He tells the young man that he does not wish to be released because this would only indicate that it was convenient for his enemy. What serves his enemies is harmful to him. "Freedom is not something a man can give you," he tells the boy. Dolores is cheered by the soldier's questions because, ironically, in men like the soldier who helps to put him to death, but who is disturbed and perplexed by Dolores, he sees in germination the future revolutionaries of Quemada. To enter the path of consciousness is to follow it to rebellion..."

Mr.Raman is ofcourse,  right to point out that the "statements of the close advisers of Rajapakse before the air raid including those of his Foreign Minister show considerable naivet� - they seem to think the LTTE can be defeated militarily."

But then, it seems that Mr.Raman also displays some considerable naivet� in suggesting that a Sinhala Government can be pressurised to "initiate a political process towards a federal solution"  - unless ofcourse by 'federalism' Mr.Raman had in mind  something akin to the comic opera 'reforms' of the Indo Sri Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment.

Here, Mr.Raman may gain some insight into the 'legitimate aspirations' of the people of Tamil Eelam and even 'enter their path of consciousness' by re-visiting the words of the Gandhian Tamil leader S.J.V.Chevanayagam more than 30 years ago in 1975 -

"Throughout the ages the Sinhalese and Tamils in the country lived as distinct sovereign people till they were brought under foreign domination. It should be remembered that the Tamils were in the vanguard of the struggle for independence in the full confidence that they also will regain their freedom. We have for the last 25 years made every effort to secure our political rights on the basis of equality with the Sinhalese in a united Ceylon."

"It is a regrettable fact that successive Sinhalese governments have used the power that flows from independence to deny us our fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of a subject people. These governments have been able to do so only by using against the Tamils the sovereignty common to the Sinhalese and the Tamils."

"I wish to announce to my people and to the country that I consider the verdict at this election as a mandate that the Tamil Eelam nation should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free."

The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is not about the LTTE (or about what the LTTE may have or may not have  done) - the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is about freedom from alien Sinhala rule. Mr.Raman is right to point out that "the LTTE has considerable support from the Sri Lankan Tamils - in Sri Lanka as well as abroad." But Mr.Raman may want to recognise that that support has come about because of the steadfast commitment  of the LTTE to the goal that Thanthai Chelva articulated so eloquently in 1975. And as for "weaning" the People of Tamil Eelam from their thirst for freedom, Mr.Raman may want to address his mind to the words of Aurobindo, a hundred years ago, in Bande Mataram -

"The mistake which despots, benevolent or malevolent, have been making ever since organised states came into existence and which, it seems, they will go on making to the end of the chapter, is that they overestimate their coercive power, which is physical and material and therefore palpable, and underestimate the power and vitality of ideas and sentiments. A feeling or a thought, the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be estimated in the terms of concrete power, in so many fighting men, so many armed police, so many guns, so many prisons, such and such laws, ukases, and executive powers. But such feelings and thoughts are more powerful than fighting men and guns and prisons and laws and ukases. Their beginnings are feeble, their end is mighty. But of despotic repression the beginnings are mighty, the end is feeble... But the despot will not recognise this superiority, the teachings of history have no meaning for him. ..He is deceived also by the temporary triumph of his repressive measures.. and thinks,

�Oh, the circumstances in my case are quite different, I am a different thing from any yet recorded in history, stronger, more virtuous and moral, better organised. I am God�s favourite and can never come to harm.� 

And so the old drama is staged again and acted till it reaches the old catastrophe..."

Mr.Raman may then begin to understand something about the deep felt feelings of Tamils living today in many lands and across distant seas - feelings encapsulated in their oft repeated aspiration: தமிழரின் தாகம் தமிழ் ஈழத் தாய் அகம். And that thirst is not for 'weaning'.