LTTE reeling from Double-Whammy

Dushy RANETUNGE

LTTE FAILURES: The LTTE's mis-adventure in the Jaffna peninsula has singularly failed with massive LTTE casualties. As the attacking force the LTTE was expected to sustain significant casualties, but the scale of LTTE losses perhaps stem from the desperation that engulfs the organisation.

Its actions in the North were doomed with failure considering the capacity of the armed forces in the peninsula.

For a long time the LTTE have been boasting that it has 'liberated' a large percentage of its 'homeland'. The prospect of losing territory which is very much on the cards has sent the organisation into frenzy.

As the LTTE was evicted from Maanel Aaru, the LTTE carried out a diversionary attack in Muttur, but were convincingly evicted. Now smarting from successive defeats the LTTE has tried its latest adventure by mounting attacks in Jaffna to restore its lost credibility.

The LTTE is aware that the security forces are ready for war and that the army that it will meet this time in the field will be a far more formidable force, backed up by a determined military and political leadership.

The LTTE depriving water to farming communities in the East, has enraged the Sinhalese community and mobilised them in favour of a military solution. In the face of such opposition, repeated terrorist initiatives seem in total disarray.

Like in Muttur, initially the LTTE succeeded in overrunning some Security Forces defences in Muhamalai and establishing a beach-head in Delft Island, but by Sunday morning it was a different story with the LTTE chased back to their original positions with significant loss of cadres. It was another humiliating eviction and now a double-whammy, first in the East and not in the North.

The LTTE's Jaffna adventure was a carefully planned operation with the Norwegians being approached first, communicating the LTTE's willingness to enter peace talks.

The Norwegians passed on the information to the Peace Secretariat and the government eager for peace accepted the LTTE's offer, without realising that the LTTE planned to launch a military operation on Jaffna within a few hours and grab a chunk of territory.

The offer for "peace talks" was an advance strategy like the CFA, to consolidate territory it hoped to acquire over the weekend. The concept of "peace" which was to be used as a weapon of war, and the "Norwegians" were to be tools for LTTE's latest attempt at real estate acquisition.

Unfortunately for the LTTE its best laid plans went pear-shape. By Sunday morning the combined strategic and military prowess of the LTTE had run out of the parts of the Jaffna peninsula it had invaded earlier, and those who remained were being hunted down.

The Military High command is convinced that it was a major attempt at overrunning the peninsula, but the lack of robustness of the LTTE initiative and its miserable failure indicates the dire straights of the LTTE.

The LTTE has been making various promises to the Tamil Diaspora that they will take Jaffna back in 10 years, by the end of the last millennium etc., but all of them have remained broken promises, upon which funds have been collected.

The eviction of the LTTE from the Jaffna peninsula in the 1990's has seriously scarred the psyche of the Ilavars as a humiliating defeat. As to how long the LTTE can carry on in light of its recent repeated military and political defeats is anyone's guess.

Since the LTTE chose the 1st death anniversary of the Kadirgamar assassination to launch its latest military failure, it's apt that this article ends with one of Kadirgamar's favourites by John Donne. "No man is an island, entire of itself; therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

In Maavil Aaru, Muttur, Nagar Kovil, Muhamalai, and Delft, the bell tolls for the "sole representatives".