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FORMER INDIAN NAVAL COMMANDER SAYS NOT AGREEING TO JOINT PATROLS AND NOT SUPPLYING ARMS TO SRI LANKA INDIA IS HARMING ITS OWN INTERESTS

By Walter Jayawardhana

A former Commander in Chief of India’s Eastern Naval Command Premvir Das has attacked India’s just agreed policy of coordinated sea patrolling opposed to the joint patrolling with the Sri Lanka Navy as an inadequate step to control the illegal navigation by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) marine wing- Sea Tigers and has warned that the government’s present policy of the problem will seriously undermine India’s own national interests.

“Two months down the line, it has become clear that unless we make some major course corrections, our core interests in that country might be seriously compromised,” wrote the former commander who has been closely associated with the Sri Lankan developments in a scathing attack on the policies of the Manmohan Singh government, published in the Indian daily of Chandigarh , The Tribune. Pointing out Manmohan Singh’s policies regarding the supply of weapons to the Sri Lankan armed forces are “indefensible” the former Naval Commander in Chief said the policy would definitely drive out Sri Lanka to find out their weapons needs from else where.

Reminding India that it is of India’s interest that the Sri Lanka’s integrity is maintained and the Tamil Tigers kept at bay Commander Das said due to India’s own wrong policies China has started developing the Hambantota harbor while Pakistan is emerging as an arms supplier.
The following is the full text of what the former Commander wrote: “Two developments have taken place since we last discussed the need for India to be more proactive in Sri Lanka (Tribune 8th April). The Sri Lankan Defence Secretary has been to India for discussions with our officials including the National Security Adviser. Sri Lanka ’s Foreign Minister also met with our Defence Minister at the Shangrila Conference in Singapore .

“Both sought India ’s assistance in combating the LTTE which, on its part, has been more aggressive, launching attacks on the navy establishment at Kyats Island and on an army base in the north, resulting in deaths of many. Two months down the line, it has become clear that unless we make some major course corrections, our core interests in that country might be seriously compromised.

“During the discussions, India agreed that maritime forces of the two countries would engage in coordinated, not joint, patrols in the Palk Straits. The impression being conveyed is that this is something substantive and new and will go some way in controlling illegal movements of the terrorists.

“The facts, however, are different. For the last fifteen years, if not more, India has maintained a patrol in these waters. While the Navy has been operating detachments from seven stations spread through the southern coast of Tamil Nadu and air patrols from its station at Ramnad, the Coast Guard has operated out of its own base at Mandapam. Patrols of the latter have been and are being carried out by regular ships; those by the naval detachments are, by and large, conducted through boats hired from local owners.

“These do not have speed and cannot chase down a fishing trawler much less a fast moving LTTE boat fitted with two or more outboard motors. The air patrols are operative only during daylight hours. Our own fishermen, putting out for their day’s work, are searched to ensure that they, themselves, are not involved in unlawful activity. These operations are restricted to within our own maritime boundary even as our own fishermen, based in these very places, go right up to the Sri Lankan coast.

“The patrols have not been entirely unsuccessful. They do pose deterrence and it can be argued that but for them, illegal movement across the waters might have been more rampant. However, much more than what is being done is needed. It is not difficult for determined miscreants to slip through and many do, often with the help of sympathetic fishermen on our side.

“Medicines, detonators, batteries and associated wiring to facilitate assembly of IEDs, diesel and kerosene are some of the things that have, traditionally, been moved across. There is little reason to believe that this is not happening even today.

“Joint patrolling is quite different from coordinated patrolling. In the latter, both sides go about doing their own thing sharing communications off and on. In the former, both sides operate to a common plan in which patrol areas and responsibilities are well defined and continuous communications established. Intelligence and information is shared in real time so that responses may be immediate as miscreants cross from one side of the boundary line to the other.

“With the width of the Straits being about 25 odd miles, a fast boat can cut across the narrow waters within an hour. A good number of fast craft are needed to counter this movement. The Sri Lankans, exposed as they are to the threat, have them in some numbers; our own contribution is much less and quite inadequate.

“There is urgent need to augment numbers and to convert the operation from being coordinated, a cosmetic word for doing one’s own thing, to joint in which the two parties operate together. We must be more serious in looking at the menace in the Palk Straits and should not allow our coast to be used to threaten the security of a neighbouring nation state of great strategic and geopolitical importance to us.

“The second issue is of supply of military hardware needed by the Sri Lankans in their fight against the LTTE. Our existing approach is indefensible. On the one hand, we say that we can not supply equipment that they need; on the other, we demand that they should not acquire it from any others, say, China or Pakistan .

“While it is not in our interest that the Tamil movement in that country is allowed to be militarily decimated, it is equally disadvantageous to have the security and integrity of the Sri Lanka state compromised. Therefore, we have to supply military hardware, defensive or offensive are only pejorative terms, which will enable the LTTE to be kept at bay.

“Development of Hambantota port in southern Sri Lanka with Chinese aid is only the beginning of a process which may see military assistance to the island nation coming from elsewhere. Pakistan is already on the scene, supplying both arms and expertise, and its influence has, inevitably, increased.

“Concurrently, we must involve ourselves more closely with the political developments that are needed to get the Tamils their due rights and privileges within a unified but federal Sri Lanka . The present attitude of ‘come to us and do not go to anyone else but we will do only this’ can, in the long run, prove counter productive to our own interests.”

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