THE OMENS FROM KATUNAYAKE
by B. Raman
The omens from Katunayake bode ill for the ultimate
success of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces' counter-insurgency operations
against the LTTE and even for the continued unity and territorial
integrity of Sri Lanka (SL).
Two conclusions stand out, loud and clear, for anyone
who cares to notice them from the details of the LTTE's precision attack
on the Katunayake air base and the adjoining Bandaranaike International
Airport on July 24:
* First, the LTTE is up and kicking and has lost nothing
of its fierce motivation and elan despite the heavy casualties inflicted
by the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) for the last one year by taking
advantage of its air superiority consequent upon the arrival of new
Israeli aircraft and advisers.
* Second, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, blinded by
misplaced elation over the success of their air strikes against the LTTE,
failed to take the basic precaution of pre-empting the only option
available to the LTTE in the face of its difficulties in having its
stock of anti-aircraft ammunition and missiles replenished---namely,
penetrate the air bases and destroy the aircraft on the ground.
This shows that the SL military and political leadership is none the
wiser after nearly two decades of counter-insurgency operations and
continues to fight the LTTE more with weapons than with their mind.
There is no doubt that the LTTE is the most ruthless
terrorist organisation in the world which fights for its political
objective with no holds barred. This negative image of the
organisation should not make the SL military blind to the fact that the
LTTE is also the most intelligent and futuristic-thinking terrorist
organisation of the world, which manages to think of innovative solutions
to the difficulties faced by it and has a seemingly inexhaustible supply
of determined cadres volunteering for suicide missions to carry out these
solutions.
After the Aum Shinrikiyo incident involving the use of
sarin gas in Tokyo in 1995, security experts of the world have been
debating with increasing concern the dangers of terrorist organisations
acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and threatening to use them
one day in a desperate move to achieve their political objective.
The LTTE is one organisation, which has the
intelligence, innovative spirit and the narcotics-fed funds to acquire a
WMD capability if it decides to go in for one. One of the lessons
from the precision attack on Katunayake for the intelligence agencies of
not only SL, but also other countries of the world, including India, is to
rule out nothing when it comes to the LTTE and co-operate in identifying
and neutralising any search by it for a WMD capability.
Anyone even with a rudimentary idea of the way the LTTE
thinks and operates should have anticipated an LTTE strike to destroy
aircraft on the ground since it had lost its capability in the air.
This writer had drawn attention to this possibility in December last.
It is, therefore, surprising that the SLAF failed to
anticipate the attack on the Katunayake air base. There were two
possibilities open before the LTTE----penetrate the security perimeter of
the air base through suicide operators moving on the ground or initially
penetrate it through a microlite aircraft, a capability which its cadres
in West Europe and Canada had acquired in the 1990s, and then facilitate
the entry of more suicide cadres through the breach provided by the
microlite.
The details available so far show that no microlite was
used and that the penetration was probably done by wading through a
drainage canal exiting from the air base. The details also indicate
that the maximum damage to the planes of the SLAF and the SL Airlines was,
most probably, caused with rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers of
Soviet vintage which the Afghan Mujahideen, now forming part of the
Taliban, and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan had
captured in large numbers from the arms depots of Kabul after the collapse
of the Najibullah regime in April, 1992.
In the past, the ISI and its creation, the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), had supplied at least three consignments of
weapons seized from Kabul, including the launchers and anti-aircraft guns
and missiles, to the LTTE in return for its assistance in narcotics
smuggling and in shipping arms consignments to the Muslim separatists in
Southern Philippines and to the Chechen terrorists in Russia through a
Turkish port.
The damage has been very heavy for the SL Airlines and
potentially heavy for the tourism-dependent SL economy. The damage
to the SLAF is more psychological than material for the present. It
is still estimated to have, if the figures of SLAF losses given by the
Government are correct, 30 combat aircraft/helicopters in flying
condition, which should enable it to keep up the air strikes, but at a
reduced scale. Fortunately, the LTTE has not displayed any
capability for destroying runways. Not yet.
The damage to the credibility of the SL political
leadership is the most severe. Reports from SL since the military
stopped the LTTE advance towards Jaffna last year have been indicating an
air of political and military over-confidence, unwarranted by ground
realities, and a consequent dragging of the feet in the search for a
political solution. The success of Colombo's diplomatic efforts in
persuading the UK and other West European countries to curb LTTE
activities from their territory seems to have added to this
over-confidence.
Having neglected to expedite the search for a political
solution, the SL President, Mrs.Chandrika Kumaratunga, now faces a
difficult choice---if she immediately resumes and accelerates the search
it will be seen by public opinion as knee-jerk reaction from a position of
weakness and, if she doesn't, further escalation of LTTE terrorist
activities is a grim possibility.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com)
