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The cremation of the Most Venerable Talalle Dhammananda Nayaka Thera took place with state patronage yesterday at the Independence Square in the presence of a large and representative gathering.
Ven. Talalle Dhammananda Thera was the first ever Bhikkhu to receive the Sahitya Soori Degree (Literature Award).
The late Thera has edited two outstanding literary works, "Thripitakaye Sanskruthika Lakshana" and "Thripitaka Sahithya Saraswathi".
A woman and her two brothers have been remanded after her husband was brutally stabbed to death at a village in Halloluwa off Katugastota, police said.
The Kandy Magistrate remanded the three suspects till April 29 while police continue investigations, on the motive for the killing of the 37-year-old man.
A woman dressed in a white osariya, her young daughter and son also dressed in white wiped tears as they greeted Sri Lanka's grand old lady Sirimavo Bandaranaike on her 81st birthday.
It was a scene filled with emotion as many gave her the traditional bulath atha, worshipped her or kissed her on both cheeks.
Dressed in a tangerine saree with a green border she bravely kept smiling though she had bandaged a painful foot. Her courage inspite of her physical fraility was evident as she greeted hundreds of wellwishers at Rosmead Place. From morning she greeted diplomats and local dignitaries and finally was persuaded to rest around noon.
The overflowing bouquets of flowers on tables and even on the floor were a testimony to the love and respect she gets from the people.
Her eighty first birthday dawned with a welcome call from downunder. It was her son Anura, calling from Sydney to wish ammi a very happy birthday. He normally sends a touching card to "dearest ammi" along with roses.
Elder daughter Sunethra setting a new trend in women's fashions wore an off white verti from Chennai with a maroon border with long sleeves and a long maroon kurtha with a high neck. Worn with a Chappals she made a picture of elegance.
Her present to a much loved mother? "I don't give presents, such as clothes and the like. I give my time and my energy and organise things for her. I find it rewarding though I get tired and ammi appreciates it very much."
Though seated, Sirimavo saw to it that all her guests were well looked after. Upto the time I left President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had yet not arrived, but was expected. She normally comes with a present along with Sirimavo's only two grandchildren.
Some of the guests were old and grey but kept smiling doubtless nostalgically reminising about by'gone - birthdays.
Seeing Prime Minister Sirimavo smiling though tired as she talked with one of her trusted doctors D.J. Attygalle, everyone felt happy. Many had happy tears as they looked at the brave lady who completed not just 81 years but almost half that period in the hurly burly of hard politics and come through it all unscathed and virtually enthroned as the elder stateswoman of Sri Lanka.
Provincial administrative officers are just talking a lot but have done little or nothing for the war ravaged districts of Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu, a top official has charged.
Jaffna's Govt. Agent Chelliah Pathmanathan, speaking at a meeting of provincial officials in Trincomalee said the people had lost faith in the provincial council system because of the lethargy and complacency of officers there.Provincial administrative officers are just talking a lot but have done little or nothing for the war ravaged districts of Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu, a top official has charged.
Jaffna's Govt. Agent Chelliah Pathmanathan, speaking at a meeting of provincial officials in Trincomalee said the people had lost faith in the provincial council system because of the lethargy and complacency of officers there.
A masked gang allegedly having political connections wiped a liquor shop clean in a night raid at Maturata in the Kandy area, police said.
The ten armed men who came in a Pajero and a double-cab had overpowered the watchers, tied them up and hauled all the liquor worth more than Rs. 150,000 into their vehicles before getting away. They also took Rs. 16, 000 in cash.
A power failure when the newly elected Chairman of the Pathadumbara Pradeshiya Sabha was taking oaths caused much inconvenience with a shocking irony.
In the suffocating heat of the drama, a child fainted and other problems arose while it was asked why such a thing had happened in the electorate represented by the Minister of Power and Energy.
Five murders were reported in the Kandy district during the New Year season, police said.
The killings took place in Hasalaka, Teldeniya, Rangala, Katugastota and Panwila.
A sleeping youth was cut to death by his brother in a New Year's eve tragedy in their home at Elliyada in Rangala, police said.
Sudath (19) was sleeping after he had come home for the New Year when his brother, believed to be of unsound mind, had done him to death. The suspect has been arrested.
Sonia Gandhi, wife of former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi is expected to be the chief guest at a BMICH ceremony to mark Anura Bandaranaike's 20th year in politics.The ceremony in June is also expected to be atteded by Premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike and other VIPs.
Recruitment to the armed Tamil separa tist movement in the Northeast peaked in 1984 and 1985. The PLOTE, which was the largest organization at that time, had six thousand cadres in its military training camps in south India.
In addition to this it churned out approximately twelve thousand mostly male cadres in what were known as 'local training camps' who could be automatically co-opted into regular units which were to be formed by the Indian trainees.( district commanders were expected to train an average of thousand five hundred drawn from or through the political wing. Jaffna exceeded the quota by five hundred.)
The TELO during this period had in its training camps in Tamil Nadu about four thousand members. It had two thousand local trainees in the Northeast. The EPRLF, according to Douglas Devananda who was the organization's military commander until 1986, had more than seven thousand in its military wing (PLA) including 1500 girls. There were 1800 members in the military wing of the EROS. The LTTE had less than three thousand full time trained cadres at that time.
We have to also take into account the membership of the political wings of the PLOTE, TELO, EPRLF and the EROS, part of which could have been turned into militias on short notice. The fully trained and armed cadres of the minor organizations such the NLFT, the Thamilar Paathukappup Peravai, the Liberation Cobras of Thamileelam and the Tamil Eelam Army which were militarily active at that time should be also included in this calculation.
If we grant another three thousand (which is a minimum figure) to both of these categories, the total number of militarily deployable youth in the Northeast in 84-85 would amount to approximately forty four thousand eight hundred. It might be noted, incidentally, that a large number of Tamil youth in the provincial towns and the rural parts of Tamil Nadu and even in places such as Bombay and Bangalore who wanted to join the Tamil groups for military training to fight the Sri Lankan army were discreetly turned back for fear of repercussions. (Some, however, managed to join and rose to high positions. One of them so excelled in his work that he was sent to Lebanon for training by his organisation. The splinter group he formed in 1987 remains active in Europe )
On the basis of this rough calculation, it can therefore be said that, at its peak, recruitment into the armed Eelam movement was more than 2.8 percent of the Sri Lankan Tamil population in the northeast in 1984-85. In 1983, before the July riots, the full time membership with basic military training in all the armed Tamil separatist groups did not exceed 800 - .06 percent Military Participation Ratio (MPR). This, as we saw, in less than two years grew to 44800.
The recruitment level among the Sri Lankan Tamils which peaked in 84-85, from .06 to 2.8, is down to 1.1 percent today - twelve years later.
The decline is significant. We have to remember here that the MPR among Tamils went down steeply in 1988 and 89 when the Indian army was deployed against the Tigers in the northeast. The MPR for this period takes into account the troop strength the LTTE was able to sustain in this period after the initial losses and depletion in the war with the Indian army and the size of the TNA, excluding the numbers raised through the ill-fated conscription drive of the EPRLF. Though it is difficult to quantify this downturn with precision - only a tentative figure of 6000 is available, of which 4000 is claimed for the TNA- we can certainly say that it fell well below 0.3 percent. This very low MPR suddenly shot up, in the course of six months (Nov 89'-May 90') from .3 percent to at least 1.5, enabling the LTTE to establish the basis of its base troop strength for Eelam War II and Eelam War III. It came to level at 1.1 percent by 1993 mainly due to the settled conditions in the Tiger controlled areas of the north, and Jaffna in particular.
We have to consider two questions at this juncture.
a)What are the reasons for this downturn in the MPR among northeast Tamils which occurred between 86 and 90?, or to put it differently, Why didn't LTTE achieve the 2.8 MPR of the peak years in 1990 ?
b)What has been the impact of this downturn on the Tamil separatist movement's military capability ?
Let me first enumerate the reasons for the decline of the Military Participation Ratio among the Tamils of the northeast from 2.8 to 1.1.
1) the disintegration of the groups which recruited the vast majority of Tamil youth during the peak years, namely the PLOTE, TELO and EPRLF and their complete exclusion from most parts of the northeast following the withdrawal of the Indian army. Their role in assisting the army in the 'cleared' areas since 1990 put severe limits on their recruitment needs, access to former recruitment grounds and above all on the ideology of national liberation which had propelled their recruitment drive during the peak years.
2) the disappearance of extensive networks built by the large political wings of these and other organizations such as the EROS and the NLFT which were able to attain a very high degree of politicization at the grass roots level.
3) the highly restrictive and selective training policy of the LTTE.
4) the closure of south India as a rear base where it had been possible until 1990 to draw resources and maintain a large number of people. The heavy recruitment in 1984-85 was partly induced by the availability of this rear base. If not for it most organizations would have had to turn back the thousands who were eager to join up the armed groups. The Tigers limited the number of those who recruited for training in India at that time mainly, I presume, for financial and logistical reasons. The MPR would have been higher in 84-85 if the Tigers had expanded their training and administrative facilities in Tamil Nadu, as the PLOTE and TELO had done, to accommodate the majority of those who were desirous of going for 'Indian training' through them.
5) the belated entry of the LTTE into some very fertile recruitment grounds in the north, and particularly in the east, which had been dominated, sometimes exclusively, by the other Tamil groups.
6) decline in Tamil population levels in some parts of the northeast due to large scale displacement and depopulation carried out in a systematic manner with the State's full backing or ,in the case of a few places, acquiescence . About eighteen Tamil villages were evacuated of their populations in the Ampara district. About ten in Batticaloa, twenty in Trinco including the large and prosperous villages of Thiriyai, Kumburuppiddy, Aalenkerny and Thennamaravaady and about sixteen villages in the southern parts of the Mullaitivu district including Kumulamunai and Kokkuthoduvai. The majority of these appear to be permanently destroyed and depopulated.
7) migration to the southern parts of the island and western countries. According to the demographic survey conducted by the Dept. of Census and Statistics in 1994 in all parts of the country except the north and east, there are 774,166 S.L Tamils living in the south. The majority are those who moved out of the conflict areas in the northern and eastern provinces since 1987. Though we have no way of finding the exact number of the S.L Tamils who moved out thus, it may safely be assumed that the figure is at least 400,000. Furthermore it is estimated that about 324,900 Tamils from the northeast are living abroad. (Canada alone has about 100,000) There about 110,000 (of which 95,000 are in refugee camps) in south India. This means that the actual SLT population in the Northeast today is at least 800,000 less than what it ought to have been.
8) the alienation and disaffection of considerable sections of those Tamils and their families who were associated with the non LTTE groups.
And now to the second question. What has been the impact of the downturn in MPR on the Tamil separatist movement's military capability ?
Here it is important to consider the idea of 'optimum force level' that the LTTE applies to its manpower policy.
An optimum force level is the number of troops that can most effectively be used against a state's security forces which is compatible with a rebel military organization's financial resources, administrative efficiency, political cohesion, logistical capability and the extent of safe terrain available for training and stationing troops in secrecy.
Whereas these are the necessary conditions for creating an optimum force level, sustaining it until achieving the strategic objective is predicated upon the minimal, and hence long term, MPR which satisfies the maximum number required periodically to replenish the shortfalls in the Optimum Force Level. (OFL).
At this point we have to consider the degree to which the LTTE has been able to inflict damage on the SLG's military assets with the OFL it has been able to sustain since April 95.
There has been no significant change in the LTTE's OFL after that.
But the military damage inflicted by the LTTE with this OFL based on the 1.1 MPR has increased dramatically. For example the destruction caused by the LTTE in eight months between July 96 and March 97, when tentatively quantified, amounts to about 2500 soldiers dead, at least one thousand permanently injured, two large and three medium camps wiped out, and the loss of hardware, including planes, tanks, artillery pieces and naval craft, worth billions.
When recruitment among the SL Tamils peaked in 1985 at 2.8 MPR, the damage that the Tamil armed separatist movement could inflict on the SL Army which at that time was only twelve percent its current size, less trained, not well equipped and backed neither by the international community nor India, was less than fifty soldiers killed along with a few jeeps and vehicles destroyed which was not more than a million rupees worth in hardware losses.
In hindsight it appears that the LTTE's adherence to the concept of OFL was one of the most important reasons for its survival and emergence as the exclusively fittest from the armed Tamil separatist movement.
For example, the PLOTE which was the largest organization during the peak recruitment period imploded into insignificance in less than an year because the degree of political cohesion, administrative efficiency and logistical capability which the organization was able to achieve was utterly incompatible with its large membership base.
Things had got quite out of hand by the time the leadership of that organization realized that streamlining was essential. The disintegration of the TELO the moment it was hit by the LTTE which at that time was smaller and had less weapons is a very illustrative case in point.
The decline of the other non-LTTE groups can be attributed to this problem.
Another important development in this respect is that the destructive potential of the LTTE's current OFL has increased although, as we observed, there has been no patently significant rise in the number of its troops.( In 85' while the MPR among the S.L Tamils was reaching the maximum force level, the weaponry available to the whole Tamil separatist movement did not exceed two hundred assault rifles and some light machine guns acquired mainly from the Indians most of which by design or accident had some component missing in the breech blocks.)
Barring the acquisition of nuclear weapons, increasing the efficiency of an army has generally been associated, among other things, with a related rise in its troop strength. "The generals always ask for more men" goes the saying.
But the destruction of the Mullaitivu base clearly showed that the LTTE had greatly augmented its capacity to inflict damage on the government's military assets without significant increases in its Optimum Force Level or the infusion of a weapons system capable of significantly altering the military balance which obtained at that time. The Tigers, of course, used the MBT they seized in Pooneryn. But one tank, like the swallow which doesn't make the summer, is not equal to the kind of weapons system that we are talking about here. The acquisition of artillery at Mullaitivu and Pulukunavi certainly constitutes a new weapons system which has pushed up the potential of the LTTE's OFL to another dimension )
This may sound like one of those solemnly phrased truisms that are not uncommon to academic discourse; but its implications, one may see upon closer scrutiny, are anything but platitudinous. The following are some of them:
a) A decline in recruitment ratio can be equated to a proportionate fall in an organization's military efficiency, over a period of time, only in a situation where that efficiency has been built and sustained on a maximum force level and expectations related to, or arising from it.
b) The decline of Tamil MPR was to some degree induced by the concept of Optimum Force Level in the LTTE's method of war making.
c) The decline was also partly due to the closure of several fertile recruitment grounds as a direct result of the LTTE's fratricidal actions which led to the reconfiguration of the Eelam movement militarily. As such this closure cannot be taken as a permanent feature of the Tamil political landscape. With the fading of old grievances and hatreds and the rise of new and perhaps sharper contradictions with the state, the reopening of these grounds is a very real possibility. Some EPRLF and PLOTE recruitment grounds which resisted the LTTE's intrusion for many years are now counted among the organization's strongholds.
d) The MPR among Tamils was brought down in 1988-89 by denying recruitment grounds to the LTTE through the Indian strategy of military saturation. It is incorrect therefore to refer to it as a decline. This is why recruitment shot up as soon as the IPKF left. And again in the east, during the peace talks from Sept 94 to April 95, recruitment went up when the army, under a cease-fire, relaxed its hold on the population in the east. It was estimated that at least three thousand boys and girls joined the Tigers during that period in the Batticaloa district alone. However, a severe limit on the maximum number that could be drawn in was imposed by the closure of the rear base in Tamil Nadu. The degree to which actual war weariness among the population has affected the MPR is, therefore, not 'statistically' significant if we concede this limit which was imposed due to the closure of the rear base and consider the fact that the vast majority of the 324,900 who went west were economic refugees representing a trend which began long before the war escalated and the 400,000 in the south are to a large extent the natural and inevitable effect of the peninsula's traditional money order economy .
e) The political exigencies and strategic perceptions of the Sri Lankan state inexorably compel it to desire a maximum force level as a solution to most of the problems it faces in the Eelam War. Capturing and holding on to MSRs and population centres is the main reason for this compulsion which is bound to be quite powerful as long as the LTTE is able to keep the military pressure up at the current level. The army's quality has to fall over the years if this is going to be the case. Furthermore, this compulsion will place the army in a position where it will not have the initiative of deciding the time and place of attacking a real target. Its strategic perceptions, in other words, have enmeshed it in the role of a sitting duck. Whereas the LTTE, which has this initiative, can hence, according to one of its senior members, have a general idea of the maximum number of troops it can afford to lose in an operation and adjust it accordingly to suit the maintenance of its OFL annually.
f) Very high recruitment levels need not necessarily imply military efficiency. The case of the PLOTE is the example most illustrative of this. The decline from 2.8 to 1.1 has actually contributed to immensely raising the LTTE's capability to inflict damage on the SLG's military assets by creating the conditions for an exclusively controllable and effectively deployable force as opposed to the confusion that prevailed during the peak recruitment period in military matters due to the presence of more than ten active armed groups in the field . Therefore, there isn't enough ground to assert that a decrease in MPR among Tamils if there really is one, will lead to the eventual fall of the LTTE.
g) Lastly, in the light of trends in recruitment among the SL Tamils, it might not be judicious to claim that the MPR among them will not go up in the future, but will only decline inexorably.
The question relevant to the current conflict in the northeast therefore is not 'What has been the impact of the marked decline in MPR (from the high of 84-85) on the LTTE's military capacity to inflict damage on the Sri Lankan government? ' but 'Can the LTTE sustain its optimum force level until such time that it can make significant and irreversible gains in the Eelam War ?'
To be continued next week
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