Fighting A War On Multiple Fronts (Within)

As a young man growing up in Sri Lanka I had a fascination with our majestic history. Every time I visited cities like Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya etc I am always awed beyond description. What caught my eye was the elaborate defensive layouts spread across the lands the king of the day had to prevent invaders getting through. Our history has several records that detail how hostile invaders occupied the North Central region for centuries, one Chola king was Elara. He was defeated comprehensively by the majestic Sinhala king Dutugemunu and this feat by our military in the second millennia should be held in similar esteem.

It took corresponding level of planning, patience and raising an army that can break through fortresses. However, times have changed, we are not sure if king Dutugemunu had to endure terrorism to the scale we have today. More significantly, many will not realize that we are currently equipped with the minimal war machinery that a nation facing terrorism today. Sri Lanka is the poorest nation that has the lowest war budget having to deal with the most ruthless terrorists today. Yet, we are conquering all odds against us externally and internally. I wonder whether we have enough knowledge to compare the achievements of the yesteryear conquests and what we achieved today.

Though victorious on all fronts, a few missteps in the Wanni campaign caught my attention. This issue of so-called “bund,” the earthen wall with a trench, is worrisome. Overcoming these land barriers has been extremely contentious ever since the army countered these at every front as they moved forward. That is because they did not know how to deal with it effectively. We have an air force with unmanned aerial reconnaissance capabilities which should have given the army advance notice of the earthen walls that hampered the free movement of troops. In fact, the air force had videos showing how the LTTE using excavators digging these trenches and piling up earthen walls broadcasted on defence.lk for the whole world to see. But nothing followed up to stop the LTTE from doing their desperate actions. For example, the air force could have send the MI-24s to disable the earth moving machinery to aid the army’s march to the terror capital with minimal losses. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

Questions were again raised when the army’s 57 & 58 divisions were closing in on Killinochchi and the “rain” of LTTE artillery and mortars that landed on the troops when they went over the earthen wall at several fronts. The army commander was quick to blame the navy for negligence - letting a clandestine ship offload desperately wanting munitions that resulted in the many army casualties within days. Though the navy may be guilty of falling a sleep at the bridge for a short time, they acted promptly to sink the remaining cargo to bottom of the sea. The difficulty for the navy was that the sea off Mullaitivu is a passage to many merchant ships and Sea Tigers posing as fishermen, and the Sea Tigers are masters at masking such operations. Recently our navy had done a yeoman service literally destroying the Sea Tigers to make army’s war in Wanni undemanding for most part and this was a slip they regret deeply.

Let’s go back to the earthen wall. Had the air force forewarned the army, they should have seen what was coming up and had preparations to take them down efficiently. They saw the magnitude of the LTTE’s effort only when they reached the walls. It seems the army’s only option was to go over the wall like the trench warfare during WWI exposing the troops to the wall-top LTTE snipers and mortar range hidden far back. It appears that the LTTE knew the army would d. In short, the army carried out the only strategy to overcome the earthen wall was exactly what LTTE had in mind for them. How did they know the army was short on strategies? Waylay worked until the LTTE ran out of munitions, thanks to the navy sinking of that ship, though delayed.

Much of the agony of losing invaluable troops could have been avoided had the army and air force built an effective communication channel to work out the pitfalls and strategies to overcome the earthen walls. For example, they should have estimated the magnitude of the walls by air and the army could have surprised the LTTE by mobilizing a fleet of earth moving machinery to push back the walls into the trenches, thus, exposing the LTTE strategy foolhardy.

What was very amusing from a military engineering point of view is an insight to LTTE originality in desperate times. When they dug these trenches, the earthen walls were built in front of the trenches, making the army face the wall first and then the trench. Later when the monsoon rains come these trenches were filled with water and became moats. Did they plan for this too? I do not think so. So why they thought this was a bright idea still baffles me. In fact, what the moat did was to entrap the LTTE between the wall and the trench (limited to minimal manoeuvring) and making the army approach the foot of the walls with ease. The idea of building such a barrier since ancient warfare is the have the trench (or moat) facing the enemy, instead the LTTE built it behind them. Imagine the consequences if that had been done, the army would be still struggling at these earthen walls today. What amazes me is the army even could not take full advantage from the obvious gift that the LTTE presented to them i.e. using earth moving equipment raze them.

Furthermore, the air force’s unmanned aerial reconnaissance could have given the army the locations of the LTTE’s mortar and artillery position awaiting the troops when went over the earthen wall, fired at those positions and could have attack from air. Apparently that did not happen too, instead the army commander had a major blow out with the navy commander and now they are not on speaking terms. As a result of this blow out, someone very high up in the command ordered Israel’s Gaza strike like air assault on the LTTE positions for three to four days for the troops to finally conquer the walls and march towards Killinochchi. The questions for me is that why didn’t the army sort of the walls before things got completely out of hand and after many troop losses?

And what about the colossal troops sacrifice in Kilaly and Muhamalai on two occasions to hoodwink LTTE when the army knew that narrow stretch was impassable? What the army should have done was task the 58 division to bypass the earthen wall at Paranthan by going along on the beach to Elephant Pass to relieve the 53 & 55 divisions above.

No war is without mistakes, however, minimizing the losses is the key for many commanders. My wish is that this war when it ends will lead to a stronger force from lesson learnt. The three forces must be strengthened to ensure that such future insurrections never happen by understanding the nature of the problem and adapting innovative counter actions to make Sri Lanka what it was.