Book Review:

Documenting Gota’s contribution

Title: Gota’s War
Author: C A Chandraprema
Genre: War literature
Publisher: Ranjan Wijeratne Foundation. 2012.

Author CA Chandraprema deserves appreciation for having taken time and trouble in his untiring effort to dig deep into the trauma and tragedies of the three-decade war between the Tigers and the Sri Lanka armed forces.

Lieut. Col. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s active service in the Gajaba regiment and his subsequent role as defense secretary in 2005 in prosecuting the war to a finish are faithfully portrayed. The author concludes his Introduction thus: “Without Mahinda there would have been no decision to wage war. Without Gotabhaya no victory.”

Lapses

Former army commander Sarath Fonseka’s contribution of service is fairly documented. However, a serious lapse in the author failing to interview him, despite his incarceration, inevitably reminds one of Jon Lee Anderson’s 814-page tome, Che Guevara, where he fails to interview Fidel Castro! Maps were useful to assist the reader, but the absence of an index was a serious drawback in this voluminous 504-page publication.

Death

The swell and recurrence of deaths occurring in every gun battle over the years is astounding. The depth of such tragedy is especially felt during the final push, when the task forces and divisions begin their protracted but powerful advance and convergence through several townships and forests, amidst mosquito-infested marshes, facing monsoonal rains, trudging over vast paddies, in the north at the expense of contracting malaria, chikungunya and death in droves.

Terrorism

LTTE massacres at Arantalawa, Kattankudy masjid; Weli Oya, open prisons at the Dollar and Kent Farms, fishing villages in Kokilai and Nayaru, the Central Bank bombing… the LTTE slaughter of 600-odd policemen ridiculously ordered by the RP government to surrender!... the shocking supply of arms by the same government to the LTTE!… the JOC-HQ bombing, epic operations at Vadamarachchi, Kilinochchi, Pooneryn, Muhamali, Elephant Pass…hold the reader spellbound.

History

Abortive suicide attacks on Fonseka on April 25, 2006, and Gota on December 01, 2006, have been dealt in Ch-51 and 56. The LTTE’s extensive use of Claymore mines and C-4 explosives is startling. The author strangely fails to mention JRJ government’s arrogant but covert involvement in the July 1983 holocaust, notwithstanding its execrable attempt to shift the blame on the JVP.

The book begins with the watershed of 1956. Narayan Swamy (Tigers of Lanka) and Prof. Rajan Hoole (The Arrogance of Power) began their respective masterpieces from post Independence Feb-1948. Hence, readers of Swamy and Hoole would be subject to trekking on somewhat familiar ground in the political and military paths recounted by the author.

The parlous political agendas of the floundering CBK and RW governments, abjectly appeasing to LTTE demands with their P-TOMS and CFA, vis-à-vis terrorism at its peak in the 1994-2005 decade, are shocking.

A frightening framework of near-collapse of those governments prevailed, while hundreds of poor soldiers on the terrain lost their ‘expendable’ lives!

The sorry states of affairs which existed then strikes the reader head on, realizing at the same time the sheer apathy of the so-called western democracies, now crying foul!

Chapters-59, 62, 68 and 77 are interesting in their accounts of the traitors and LTTE moles operating in Colombo. The Tuesday meetings presided by Gota amongst the TID, CID, CCD, SIS, Police Special Branch, WPID, NIB, and directors of army, navy and air Intelligence, all falling under a central chief of National Intelligence, brought about a smooth sharing of intelligence amongst all agencies.

LRRP

The daring and dangerous work - in line with Ian Fleming’s James Bond with a licence to kill - undertaken with significant success by the LRRP’s covert operations in Ch-71 is amazing. Its most spectacular hit was on LTTE air wing chief Shankar at Puthukudirippu in July 2000, under Capt Lalith Jayasinghe, who, sadly, was killed in a similar undercover operation in 2008.

Lasantha Wickrematunga

Ch-72 deals exclusively with the horrid and dastardly unsolved murder of the undaunted Sunday Leader editor-in-chief Lasantha Wickrematunga on Jan 08, 2009.

Jackal

Ch-45: Aug-12, 2005: the LTTE’s 3-man hit team in a Jackal-type operation took out Foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, using subsonic ammunition with a sophisticated silenced gun with telescopic mount on a tripod, in Colombo-7. Kadirgamar was guarded by a hundred army commandos plus an MSD police team! However, a crack SIS team arrested LTTE’s Colombo handler ‘Aiya’ who revealed the plot, in May 2009.

Winning the War

The recurrent cry of a political solution over that of a military one from many a quarter vaporized after the onslaught towards Mullaitivu really got underway. Incomparable to WW2, but the remarkable turnaround in this civil war ending victoriously at Nandikadal, after the Mahinda Rajapaska government took office backed by Gota as defense secretary, reminds one of the terrible Nazi German bombardment on Great Britain which indefatigably withstood the onslaught, emerging victors after operation Overlord on D–Day June-06 , 1944. The LTTE’s shutting down of the sluice gates of the Mavilaru anicut in July 2006 was the writing on the wall.

Misjudgements

The concept of top commanders misjudging a crucial eventuality in the tide of battle is reminiscent in Lieut-Gen. Sarath Fonseka going on leave with his family to China at the tail end of the war before it was concluded, similar to Field Marshal Rommel, just before the tremendous D-Day Operation cascaded across the Channel, going on leave! Another inexplicable tragedy is the explosion of the vehicle at Araly Point in Kayts on Aug-08, 1992, where the dynamic Maj.-Gen. Denzil Kobbekaduwa travelled with a group of senior officers in one vehicle!

U.S. Defense Dept Reports

Extracts of two 2002 U.S. Defense Dept reports on the Sri Lanka armed forces and on the LTTE – requested by the RW government - are found in Chapters 46 and 47. The author opines such reports prepared by a team of U.S. Pacific command specialists “would inspire many of those who played a key role in the defeat of the LTTE.”

Gota’s prudent proposal sometime in 2006 of a two bloc troika: Basil-Gota-Lalith interacting with Shivshankar Menon-Vijay Singh-MK Narayanan, on any one-to-one basis 24/7 sans protocol proved a tremendous “ground-breaking arrangement… …in the annals of bilateral diplomatic relations” especially during the crucial endgame of the war.

MR’s adept political manoeuvres to maintain a majority in Parliament against a hostile Opposition in the midst of waging this war added to political stability.

Apart from several exchanges of visits with the mandarins from New Delhi during 2008, pressure from the West to halt military operations came in the form of a visit by Kouchner and Milliband on April 29, 2009, under the guise of ‘humanitarian concerns,’ which were strongly stifled by Gota and MR. So was the IMF’s suspension of a U$500-million facility in Feb-2009, which saw MR attempting to arrange for a bilateral loan from Libya. However, with India threatening to provide the funds, the IMF backed down and granted the facility only in July, 2009, avoiding a serious financial crunch.

Credit

Hence, the armed services commanders take equal credit for the respective parts played by the army, its special forces and commando units, its 8-man SIOT teams, the LRRP, the navy and air force, the police department, STF, CDF, and other intelligence agencies, all under the overall commander-in-chief, MR. Gota’s active participation in the various theatres of war, facing the horrors of terrorism, served him well in his present position in which he showed remarkable results. Apart from their continual contribution towards the war effort, the destruction of four LTTE cargo ships by the Sri Lanka navy in Sep-Oct 2007, and the air power support extended by the Sri Lanka air force in the Vanni especially its extensive surveillance via four Israeli Blue Horizon UAVs, were phenomenal landmarks in winning the war.

Peace

The cost in lives and funds of winning this wanton war was prolific and profound in as much to serve as a salutary warning never ever to allow the scourge of terrorism to raise its ugly head again in this resplendent isle, which is now finally at peace.

- Firoze Sameer