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"Lions led by Donkeys"

Attributed to Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) German general. Referring to British troops' sacrifice in the field matched only by the military incompetence of their commanders, in World War I.

Nothing encapsulates better the current levels of military and political leadership being offered to the people and the armed forces of Sri Lanka than this pithy quote.

Since the political and economic survival of Sri Lanka as a functioning multi-ethnic state will be determined by events in the battlefield, the scope of this article will be restricted mainly to the sphere of military operations.

Even as the LTTE has been 'decisively halted' or have 'temporarily paused' - depending on whose version of events you choose to believe - the Sri Lankan government and military establishment (with a few honourable exceptions) have yet again managed to delude themselves that a disastrous military situation has been brought under control. Like all previous catastrophic military defeats suffered by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, the destruction of the strategically vital Elephant Pass base, its' satellite bases and the immense loss of lives and military ordnance to the LTTE will soon be whitewashed in the official record. A fog of collective amnesia has already descended over the Establishment.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, "To lose one base may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose two seems like carelessness"

The LTTE's stated policy objectives are almost never taken at their face value. For instance, one of their key objectives for 2000, "The Year of War", has as usual been ignored by the Establishment. Similarly, the LTTE's objective of 're-taking Jaffna' appears to be treated with mixture of fear and unconcern. By examining the nature of the LTTE's past military operations, they will continue their operation to re-take Jaffna at a time and place of their choosing.

After almost 15 years of continuous military operations, why has the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and command structure evolved to operate at a high level of incompetence?

Only by examining the decisions taken in some key areas of military operations over the past 15 years will we able to see clearly how the current situation has evolved to its disastrous state.

Arms procurement

Why do the Sri Lankan Armed Forces require the services of arms merchants and middlemen? The services of these individuals may have been necessary in the past, when concern over the Government's 'human rights' record may have made official arms procurement from the Western bloc, difficult. In the current climate of a much improved human rights record, arms procurement should be a relatively straightforward government-to-government transaction. There is absolutely no place in the military arms procurement infrastructure for private arms dealers of dubious loyalty. The failure to prosecute any senior military officials for corruption related to arms procurement is eloquent testimony to the deep-seated malaise within the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the Government.

The purchase of equipment unsuitable for the prevailing local conditions has been extensively documented elsewhere to require repeating. However, a heavy price has been paid for these useless weapons - the needless deaths of thousands of service personnel. When vital equipment has been procured, for instance artillery locating radar, they remain unserviceable.

Even when military officials are involved in the specification and purchase of weapons systems, they display staggering levels of naivety and ignorance that would be laughable if the results of their criminal negligence were not so serious. The most recent case involved senior military officials, travelling in Eastern Europe, on an emergency buying mission being 'distracted' by other more pressing matters (women?). Again, their incompetence resulted in needless delays in procuring ordnance resulting in more unnecessary deaths of service personnel.

Indeed, a useful research project would be to calculate the number service personnel needlessly killed due to delays in the purchase of essential equipment.

Military Strategy

In a display of military incompetence almost unparalleled in the post-World War II era, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces have demonstrated one consistent organisational trait. The ability not to learn from mistakes. To examine just one failed strategy, that of creating small, isolated camps, which are then attacked and overrun by numerically superior LTTE forces. This particular strategy was tried by the French in Vietnam and found to be equally useless. Often the LTTE forces are concentrated from many areas for a single attack.

It must also be noted that frequently, these strategic errors are often due to operations being carried out at the behest of barely educated, ill-informed politicians who have ordered the armed forces to carry out senseless, high-visibility missions to boost their own prestige with a cowed electorate.

The Sri Lankan politico-military establishment has consistently underestimated the intentions and purpose of the LTTE. Whilst this may be understandable in the first year of an insurgency, to continue to do so after fifteen years is comprehensible only via a mindset that refuses to see the ground realities as they are and not as they would like them to be.

There has been a concomitant lack of serious examination of the LTTE's tactics and woeful lack of preparation for the LTTE attacks.

The Sri Lankan military establishment seem intent on trying to disprove a famous military maxim of "you win wars not by dying for your country but by making the other bastard die for his".

One of the key functions of an army at war is to destroy its enemies. Even in this age of NGOs, peace activists and other elements of the war support industry, to achieve this objective requires the killing and destruction of the enemy forces, until their ability to offer further resistance is destroyed. The LTTE understand this immutable fact of warfare well.

Sri Lankan politicians however still talk of sending messages to the LTTE through the armed forces. This is quite futile; if they wish to send messages, they can avail themselves of many messengers clogging up the 4-star hotels in Colombo. The armed forces should be used for their primary purpose, of destroying the enemy and not as armed messengers.

This unlimited capacity for self-delusion by the Sri Lankan establishment is again being demonstrated in the current 'advance' by the armed forces. The LTTE retreats only in order to fight again with more ferocity. As usual the political leadership will be lulled into a false sense of security that Jaffna is 'safe'.

Training

It now seems almost axiomatic the Sri Lankan Armed Forces are 'badly trained and badly led'. How has this situation been allowed to develop with the armed forces having been engaged in almost continuous combat for almost 17 years?

Do the armed forces lack a cadre of trained and experienced officers and non-commissioned officers or have they simply been killed by enemy action or 'retired' due to political reasons?

Officers are sent on expensive training schemes in the USA and other Western bloc countries. Perhaps they would be better trained at the Vietnamese military colleges, it being one of few countries in Asia with a proven record in fighting and winning both guerrilla and conventional wars.

Leadership

Based purely on battlefield results, there appears to be a direct correlation between increasing military incompetence and an inability to learn from past mistakes. The Sri Lankan Armed Forces again prove the theory, which postulates that, in large organisations, managers are promoted one level above their level of competence. The only difference is that, in the Sri Lankan context, they are promoted to three or four levels above their level of competence. The few shining exceptions (like Janka Perera) only serve to illustrate the woeful leadership qualities of the majority of senior personnel in the armed forces.

One example serves to illustrates the virtual absence of leadership and sense of responsibility towards the front line troops. By any objective measurement, General Sri Lal Weerasooriya, as chief of the armed services is directly responsible for the debacles at Elephant Pass and its associated disasters. He bears ultimate responsibility for the lack of strategic thinking, contingency planning, equipment procurement failure, shambolic logistics and failure to explain military reality to politicians - a sustained failure of leadership which has resulted in the destruction of these key bases accompanied by the massive loss of soldiers' lives and equipment. In any other functioning state, after a suitable board of enquiry followed by a court-martial, he would be stripped of his rank and pension and would be considered to have lucky to have escaped with his life. In the Alice-in-Wonderland banana republic that is today's Sri Lanka, news reports suggest that he will retire from the army and be given an ambassadorial post.

The current defence minister, Ratwatte, is another good example. His official title is General. How did he achieve this exalted rank? Did he end his military service at this rank, or did he buy it at a discount store? The strategic blunders (and the resultant loss of lives of service personnel) caused by this vainglorious politician has probably made him the LTTE's most valuable (if unwitting) ally in the Sri Lankan establishment.

The failure in military leadership has resulted in current standard operational practice of allowing politicians to set unachievable and totally ridiculous military objectives.

Many foreign and local commentators attribute to the LTTE almost superhuman combat abilities. However this is quite wrong and their successes must be seen in the context of the quality of their opponents - specifically the leadership of the armed forces.

It must not be forgotten that until the Indian intervention in the mid 1980's, under able and skilled leadership, the Sri Lankan armed forces had almost annihilated the LTTE, who would not have enjoyed such a sustained run of military success without a similarly sustained level of incompetence in the Sri Lankan government and military structures.

Intelligence

That there has been an almost complete absence or misuse of military intelligence in the armed forces is another sad understatement. It seems to extend from the smallest skirmish to the largest set-piece battle. When useful intelligence is received, in typical Sri Lankan fashion, bad news or impending bad news is wished away.

A revealing news story following the recent Elephant Pass battles provides the prefect metaphor for this failure of intelligence. An officer defending Jaffna was quoted as saying that he was "…waiting for the enemy…" as he did not know where they were. This statement demonstrates explicitly a lack of knowledge, on a local tactical level, about the enemy's positions and an almost complete absence of reconnaissance capabilities amongst front-line troops. Are the soldiers so demoralised that they simply wait in their bunkers, waiting for the LTTE to attack? The fact that this leaves the military initiative with the LTTE hardly needs to be stated.

Black Lions

The LTTE's Black Tiger suicide detachment is rightly lauded for their skill, dedication and bravery in fulfilling their one-way missions. Yet most commentators fail to notice an equally brave yet unlauded group of soldiers within the Sri Lanka armed forces; the front-line troops who are sacrificed in PR-related offensives. They are not accorded the honours customarily accorded to sacrifice in war, yet quietly forgotten until the next debacle.

War and Peace

The futility of engaging in meaningful peace talks (perhaps better renamed 'resumption of war talks) with the LTTE has been proven beyond any reasonable doubts. The LTTE has repeated ad-nauseum that it will only settle for eelam. No evidence exists that the LTTE has changed its position on this key point; contradictory statements are strictly for the consumption by the gullible wishful thinkers. Again, only destructive offensives launched by the armed forces with the sole aim of destroying the fighting units of the LTTE will enable the political reforms to proceed.

The uncertain future

In this vista of incompetence stretching over almost fifteen years, there are some hopeful signs. That the armed forces are still functioning after their continued misuse by both major political parties is a testament to their resilience. Similarly the lack of any serious attempt at a military coup or take-over again shows that the concept of subordination of the military to civilian authority still holds true. But if the Sri Lankan political establishment continue to throw away the lives of the defenders of a multi-ethnic unitary state, through its long tradition of incompetence, they alone will bear responsibility for the creation of an ethnically cleansed Tamil state.

The Donkeys will have led the Lions to slaughter.

Jan 2001

by twinspark156@email.com

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