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The Sri Lankan Insurgency: a Rebalancing of the Orthodox Position

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The Sri Lankan Insurgency: a Rebalancing of the Orthodox Position THE SRI LANKAN INSURGENCY: A REBALANCING OF THE ORTHODOX POSITION A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Peter Stafford Roberts Department of Politics and History, Brunel University April 2016 Abstract The insurgency in Sri Lanka between the early 1980s and 2009 is the topic of this study, one that is of great interest to scholars studying war in the modern era. It is an example of a revolutionary war in which the total defeat of the insurgents was a decisive conclusion, achieved without allowing them any form of political access to governance over the disputed territory after the conflict. Current literature on the conflict examines it from a single (government) viewpoint – deriving false conclusions as a result. This research integrates exciting new evidence from the Tamil (insurgent) side and as such is the first balanced, comprehensive account of the conflict. The resultant history allows readers to re- frame the key variables that determined the outcome, concluding that the leadership and decision-making dynamic within the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had far greater impact than has previously been allowed for. The new evidence takes the form of interviews with participants from both sides of the conflict, Sri Lankan military documentation, foreign intelligence assessments and diplomatic communiqués between governments, referencing these against the current literature on counter-insurgency, notably the social-institutional study of insurgencies by Paul Staniland. It concludes that orthodox views of the conflict need to be reshaped into a new methodology that focuses on leadership performance and away from a timeline based on periods of major combat. 2 Contents Cover 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 Acknowledgments 4 Introduction, Methodology and Sources 5-32 Chapter 1: The Beginnings and the Rise 33-57 Chapter 2: Decline and Fall 58-107 Chapter 3: Prabhakaran: leader and chief, influences and modus operandi 108-163 Chapter 4: Understanding the LTTE breakdown 164-173 Conclusion 174-180 Bibliography 181-217 3 Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to those who allowed me to interview them, despite the risks to themselves and their families, as well as those within the Sri Lankan and Indian Governments who have provided an insight into various agencies and reporting which has hitherto been most secret. I will continue to protect their identities. I am most grateful to the UK Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Intelligence Services for facilitating my research, and specifically to Commodore Phillip Thickness Royal Navy (Retired). Finally, I am indebted to my wife and family who encouraged me to continue work when I thought my analysis had been stolen by nefarious actors. 4 Introduction Research Question, topic and significance The Eelam Wars were a twenty-year campaign in Sri Lanka that took place between the majority Sinhalese government of Colombo and Tamil insurgents, centered on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).1 The conflict ended in a decisive victory for government forces in March 2009, without any political access or role in governing the disputed territory for the insurgents and there has been no significant resurgence in Sinhala-Tamil violence to date.2 The current orthodoxy of the campaign states that the outcome was entirely due to the reinvigoration of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, physically as well as cognitively, acting under inspired leadership from President Mahinda Rajapaksa and army General Sareth Fonseka between 2005 and 2009.3 That narrative is agnostic of the changes to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the same timeframe, due to a lack of evidence. The current analysis of the wars are primarily based on sources provided and facilitated by the government in Colombo, including with those intricately involved in the campaign: but only from the actors on one side.4 The research conducted for this thesis complements that current work by introducing the Tamil perspective to form the first comprehensive account of the conflict. By examining new information from LTTE sources, amongst others, it presents a different history, one in which the failures of the insurgents and their leader Prabhakaran were as important for the outcome of the war as were the activities of the government in Colombo. This thesis will integrate these Tamil accounts of the wars into the existing 1 Major General Raj Mehta, Lost Victory: The Rise and Fall LTTE Supremo V Prabhakaran (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2010), M R Narayan Swamy, The Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Men (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 1994), Tigers of Lanka: from Boys to Guerillas (New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2002), The Tiger Vanquished (New Delhi: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2010), and Inside an Elusive Mind (Colombo: Srilankabooks, 2003). 2 Paul Farrell, “Sri Lanka Tamils subjected to horrific abuse after 2009 civil war, says report”, Guardian newspaper, 21 March 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/21/sri-lanka- tamils-subjected-to-horrific-abuse-after-2009-civil-war-says-report accessed 20 January 2016. 3 See for example, C A Chandraprema, Gota’s War, (Colombo: Piyasiri Printing Systems, 2012), Gordon Weiss, The Cage (London: Vintage Books, 2012), and Ahmend Hashim, When Counter Insurgency Wins: Sri Lanka’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2013). 4 C A Chandraprema, Gota’s War (2012), p.14, Gordon Weiss, The Cage (2012), p.xxvi, Ahmend Hashim, When Counter Insurgency Wins (2013), p.19. 5 historical accounts and will then go on to analyse the new evidence to derive a conclusion as to why the decisive outcome came about, pointing to leadership and the decision-making paradigm in which the LTTE operated as a central factor. The orthodox position There is what this author would call an ‘orthodox’ position on the Eelam Wars, one that this study will challenge, as stated above, and so it is important at this stage to detail fully what this position is, what are its strengths and weaknesses, and it how this position will relate to this dissertation. To do this, this section will first detail the orthodox literature as it stands before providing a critique. This author is describing the literature as orthodox because it has become a commonly held belief and has been enabled by interviews by members of the Sri Lankan ruling government at the end of the conflict.5 There have been no official counters to statements made in the government-assisted literature after publication. Since 1996, thirteen books by nine authors have been published specifically related to the Eelam Wars: four authors of these accounts used government sources, two used Tamil sources, and three were personal experiences. Gordon Weiss was a UN diplomat in Sri Lanka between 2004-2009. In his book, The Cage (2012),6 Weiss concluded that the result came about directly because of the determined attritional approach adopted by the Sri Lankan government, specifically from the Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa – the president’s brother.7 Sri Lankan academic C A Chandraprema makes a similar conclusion in his potted history of the conflict between 1956 and 2009, Gota’s War (2012), which examined the war from a political perspective centred on Colombo.8 Weiss integrates LTTE activities that were made public but admits his own failure to understand the LTTE, despite meeting some of the LTTE leadership (although, notably, not the leader, Prabhakaran)9, whilst Chandraprema completely ignores any non-Sinhalese sources. 10 Ivy league academic Ahmed Hashim tackled the conflict from a counterinsurgency perspective in his book, When Counterinsurgency Wins (2013), again concluding that the result came about as a direct result of the approach of the 5 “Orthodoxy: authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine or practice.” The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.1310. 6 Gordon Weiss, The Cage (London: Vintage Books, 2012). 7 Ibid, p.xxvi. 8 C A Chandraprema, Gota’s War, (Colombo: Piyasiri Printing Systems, 2012), p.12. 9 Weiss, The Cage (2012), p. xxvi. 10 Chandraprema, Gota’s War (2012), pp.11-13. 6 Sri Lankan army.11 The only military analysis was conducted by Indian Major General (retired) Raj Mehta in his 2009 publication, Lost Victory.12 Mehta stated that the philosophy of Prabhakaran was deeply revolutionary and nationalistic with tendencies towards iconoclasm13 – key facets associated with Maoism.14 Despite identifying some of the changes that occurred in the LTTE at the time, Mehta again concluded that the actions of the Sri Lankan armed forces were the critical factor that determined the outcome.15 Each of these authors placed significant weight on interviews with key personalities within the Sri Lankan government between 2004-2012, and there is no doubt that there is a strong case, from their evidence, that the authorities in Colombo had every right to claim victory. Two authors have previously published research regarding the Tamil side of the equation. Shri Murari, a former Associate Editor of the Indian newspaper, The Deccan Herald, covered the totality of the LTTE campaign in 2011 in his book, The Prabhakaran Saga.16 The research contains a wealth of information and detail particularly on the LTTE chief’s early life but is focused on the international perspectives of the conflict – specifically the Indian involvement both overtly and covertly. Narayan Swamy, an India-based journalist, covered the conflict in news reports for various media between 1987 and 2009 including two interviews with Prabhakaran himself.17 Again, each of his four books examines the conflict through an Indian lens becoming increasingly taken with the Norwegian-led peace process. But Swamy is a reporter and not an analyst: his recounting of events as they unfolded did not go further to assess the impact or potential causes. He also lost his access to the majority of his sources from 1991-1996 when he began to write more from the perspective of Colombo – 11 Ahmend Hashim, When Counter Insurgency Wins: Sri Lanka’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2013), p.214.
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