Capping it at Baron’s Cap

VICTORY: The much awaited fall of Thoppigala to the Sri Lankan Security Forces had a build-up that was unusual for a military victory.

From weeks before the troops were able to hoist the national flag a top Baron’s Cap, which gave Thoppigala its name, there were attempts to belittle the whole exercise, and allegations of the Government playing politics with the war in general and this battle in particular.

What went unstated was that it was those who were accusing the Government of playing politics with Thoppigala, who deserved to be wearing that cap; for all what they were doing was playing cheap politics with a serious military operation expected to have far reaching benefits for Sri Lanka.

What began as an essential humanitarian operation, after the LTTE decided to block the Mavil Aru anicut and deprive more than 50,000 people of water for drinking and cultivation, proceeded through several phases, seeing the liberation of Mutur, Sampur, Vakarai, Kokkadicholai and many other key locations, towns and strategic junctions until the push of the Security Forces culminated in driving the LTTE out of its key stronghold and nerve-centre of operations at Thoppigala.

The LTTE itself now admits they have lost territory, although boasting that their cadres would be taking to guerilla tactics.

It would be na‹ve for anyone to imagine that the LTTE would accept defeat meekly, or that it would not use its cadres still intact, and fellow travellers, to cause problems in the East and other parts of the country.

That is a situation for which the Security Forces and national military strategists would have planned for when they decided to complete the liberation of the East, for the first time since the LTTE moved there with its war of separatist terror, more than two decades ago.

It was significant that the Government’s response to the fall of Thoppigala to Sri Lankan troops was to give all credit for the success to the Armed Forces and the police.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in addition to his public tribute to the Armed Forces and police, was quick to make personal congratulatory calls to the Service Commanders and the Field Commanders that led the operation, as well as the key personnel of the Air Force, Navy, Special Forces and STF who carried out a well-coordinated and combined effort to rid the East of the LTTE.

The credit due to the Forces was even greater because the success was achieved with the minimum loss of life in an operation that was undertaken with an understanding of the importance of providing for the welfare of the civilian population.

With the gaining of Thoppigala one more step has been taken to strengthen freedom and human rights, bring about more equality among people, improve economic life and give the people of the East the democratic rights they were deprived for so long.

The expectations are that the Government would not delay in making arrangements for local government elections to be held in the East, to bring back the essential participation of the people in the handling of their own affairs, which had been denied to those in the East for nearly 15 years.

Green envy

Green envy were quick to discount the importance of the military gain and humanitarian relief it brought. Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe epitomised the envious seeing politics in every success the Security Forces had on the way to Baron’s Cap. He belittled the success of the troops as nothing significant.

In fact he told a crowd of UNP supporters that there is nothing to crow about gains at Thoppigala because it was just one large forest that had little value.

He also said that Thoppigala had been taken before from the LTTE, hinting that this may not be the last time they would be driven away from it.

In their efforts to downplay the gains in the East, the propagandists of the UNP are following the lead of Ranil to keep repeating mantram-like, that the UNP had liberated the East many years ago. It is not important to them that this is wholly untrue.

If to judge from what Ranil says that it is useless jungle terrain, why did the LTTE fight for so long to keep it? It is obvious that with Thoppigala Ranil Wickremesinghe finds himself between a rock and hard thing, but is unable to recognise either. Why is a large forest useless?

Does he not know the value of forests, especially when global warming is the most oft discussed topic today, although possibly not among the ranks of the UNP. Or, is he saying the forest at Thoppigala should not have been captured as it provided a good haven for the LTTE’s terror cadres to operate from, in their incursions to destroy civilian life in the East?

Strangely, Ranil’s disenchantment with the capture of Thoppigala is not shared by his new Mango political buddy, another of the choir boys who sings loud about politicising the war, but still makes it a point to give all praise to the Armed Forces for the great operation they carried out, with blood, sweat and tears to ensure the fall of this Tiger stronghold into Sri Lankan hands.

The two obviously do not see eye to eye on such an important issue of the day; but such is the stuff of which alliances of contemptible convenience are made.

From Elara

As for those who keep shouting themselves hoarse that the East was liberated before by them, it would be well to remind them that long after that so-called liberation with the jungle terrain of Thoppigala left intact, the LTTE’s currency was very much in circulation in the East, and the people there knew what the jackboot of the fascist Tiger was, whether it was carrying out a massacre in a Sinhala village or driving out a whole village of Muslims with guns and swords pointing at them.

Whatever clearing they may have done in the past, the UNP must be living in a strange world of isolation from political reality to forget the threat posed to the Trincomalee Port by the LTTE’s positions that were established within firing distance of it, under cover of, or with the assured protection of the Cease Fire Agreement signed between Ranil W and V Prabhakaran in February 2002.

It fact it matters little whether any place was liberated before this, and by whom it was done, when the fact is the LTTE was very much in Thoppigala until last Tuesday night, and it required considerable Armed effort to oust them from that terrain.

It may be of more than academic interest to tell the people who speak of who liberated the East first, that, when the UNP was in power in the 1980s, with Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Cabinet, the writ of Colombo applied in effectively Mullaitivu and all of the Vanni too.

One might as well say that the LTTE should not be driven out of any place today, because Dutugemunu had defeated Elara more than two millennia ago. Such political bunkum cannot survive in the sunshine of exposure. One needs a person who is really green in experience to accept such political hogwash.

BBC

Just for the record the LTTE’s military spokesman Rasiah Ilantheriyan admitted to the BBC last Wednesday that the LTTE has received a defeat at Thoppigala.

His response to the BBC’s Roland Burke, when asked whether the LTTE has received a defeat was, “In a way yes. From a point of view it is a defeat.” He admitted the LTTE’s disadvantage in terrain.

But there is green envy at the BBC too. Roland Burke was asked by the presenter in London what the international community was doing about the government’s activities in the East.

It was tendentious targeting at its worst. All Burke could say was that there were many diplomatic efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement in Sri Lanka instead of a military solution.

The BBC presenter of Asia Today gave the impression she thought Thoppigala and the East of Sri Lanka was still part of British colonial territory like the Falklands, and the Sri Lankan Government an agent of the Malvinas or Argentina.