Studies of the LTTE Defeat and the Significance of the Rajapaksa Regime’s Measures

Daniel Alphonsus** ….. A review of Peter Stafford Roberts’ “The Sri Lankan Insurgency: Rebalancing the Orthodox Position” and Stephen Battle’s “Lessons In Legitimacy: The LTTE End-Game Of 2007–2009” … with highlights being the impositions of The Editor, Thuppahi

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in May 2009 the Government of Sri Lanka won the war. This extraordinary turn of events, we are told, resulted from the political carte blanche granted to the Gotabaya, Fonseka and Karanagoda troika. License from on high, the story goes, unshackled their hitherto caged military nous and single-minded, perhaps even bloody-minded, focus on military victory.

Causes for the Failure of the LTTE Insurgency: A Capsule Statement

Peter S. Roberts: Abstract of Dissertation “The Sri Lankan Insurgency: A Rebalancing of the Orthodox Position” … being a D. Phil Thesis Brunel University April 2016 …. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/13366

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 reframe 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.

SOME PERTINENT STUDIES

Ask these questions: have Peter Roberts, Stephen Battle and Daniel Alphonsus  taken in most of these studies? Allowing for the difficulty of covering every essay, what are the implications arising from the lot missed?

IDAG [i.e. Citizen Silva] 2013 “The Numbers Game: Politics of Retributive Justice,” http://www.scribd.com/doc/132499266/The-Numbers-Game-Politics-of-Retributive-Justice OR http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/shrilanka/document/TheNG.pdf.

De Silva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2009b “The Battle for the Vanni Pocket,” Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, March 2009, Vol. 35/2, pp. 17-19.http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/aulimp/citations/gsa/ 2009157395/156554.html

De Silva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2010b “Downfall of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” South Asia Defence and Strategic Review, May-June 2010, pp. 10-15.

Roberts, Michael 2013 “BBC-Blind: Misreading the Tamil Tiger Strategy of International Blackmail, 2008-13,” 8 December 2013, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/bbc-blind-misreading-the-tamil-tiger-strategy-of-international-blackmail-2008-13/#more-1122

Jeyaraj, DBS 2011 “KP” speaks out. An Interview with Former Tiger Chief, Vavuniya: NERDO.

Roberts, Michael 2013 “Introducing “Numbers Game” – A Detailed Study of the Last Stages of Eelam War IV,” 30 April 2013, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/introducing-numbers-game-a-detailed-study-of-the-last-stages-of-eelam-war-iv/

Roberts, Michael 2013 “Towards Citizenship in Thamiilam: The Tamil People of the North, 1983-2010,” South Asia Research vol. 33: 57-75.

Roberts, Michael 2014 Tamil Person and State. Essays, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.

Roberts, Michael 2014 Tamil Person and State. Pictorial, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.

Roberts, Michael 2014 “Generating Calamity, 2008-2014: An Overview of Tamil Nationalist Operations and Their Marvels,” 10 April 2014, http://groundviews.org/2014/04/10/generating-calamity-2008-2014-an-overview-of-tamil-nationalist-operations-and-their-marvels/

Roberts, Michael 2010d “Self-Annihilation for Political Cause: Cultural Premises in Tamil Tiger Selflessness,” in Roberts, Fire and Storm. Essays in Sri Lankan Politics, Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, pp. 161-201.

Roberts, Michael 2012a “Inspirations: Hero Figures and Hitler in Young Pirapāharan’s Thinking,” Colombo Telegraph, 12 February 2012, http://thuppahi. wordpress.com/2012/11/26/velupillai-pirapaharan-veera-maranam/… rep. in TPS: Essays, 2014: 69-89.

 

Amarasingham’s Study of Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada

 

Pain, Pride, and Politics: Social Movement Activism and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in Canada …. As a product of Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Series) Paperback – September 15, 2015

SL Army enshrine a New Statue at a Mass in Madu

A News Item, April 2019 …. https://www.army.lk/news/wanni-army-troops-consecrate-holy-madu-shrine-attend-special-mass-commander

Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake, Commander of the Army on Thursday (11) morning had the rare privilege of offering a new statue of Our Lady of Madu to the most sacred Holy Madu Shrine in Mannar during a Special Mass and simultaneously consecrating the statue in an Army-built pedestal, adjoining the main Shrine premises.

The day’s sequence of proceedings began with the carriage of the newly-carved Holy Statue of Our Lady of Madu by Army personnel in a motorcade before it was blessed in a Special Mass inside the main Shrine after Most Reverend Dr Emmanuel Fernando, Bishop of Mannar and Reverend Father Peppi Sosai, Administrator at Madu Shrine received the statue for consecration and invocation of blessings.

Gotabaya remains Upbeat and in Fighting Mood

Hassina Leelarathna in Los Angeles, writing for  DAILY FT, 12 April 2019, where the title reads “Gota fires back against lawsuits”

Former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dismissed the two lawsuits filed against him as baseless and insisted that they would only motivate him and his supporters to push for political change in Sri Lanka. “These lawsuits have been filed to delay the process and discourage me. I have handed the matter to my lawyers [in Los Angeles] to take care of and I’m looking ahead to what needs to be done for our country,” said Rajapaksa, commenting on the two civil lawsuits filed against him in the Central District of California.

Gotabaya in Legal Gunsights: One, Two, Three …

ONE = Sanjana Hattotuwa: “The Candidate,” in Island, April 2019,

“The lie is revealed. There was no summons served. The photo depicts a lookalike of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The FBI is engaged in an effort to ascertain who produced this false information”. The Facebook Page with this content originally in Sinhala also featured a screenshot of a news story from a leading private electronic media institution. This TV channel, with pages on Facebook in both Sinhala and English that regularly generate very high engagement, ran a story which strongly suggested news of Gotabaya Rajapaksa being sued in the US was false and incorrect.

Multi-pronged British Vengeance Politics at Geneva

Shamindra Ferdinando, in Island, 9 April 2019, where the title reads “UK reiterates foreign judges as Killing Fields producers crucify Lanka again”

The House of Commons seems far more interested in Sri Lanka’s accountability in respect of war against terrorism than our own parliament. Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Mark Christopher Field, on April 04, 2019, reiterated foreign judges in Sri Lankan judicial mechanism to hear war crimes cases. Conservative Party member Field reassured the UK’s commitment to ensure participation of foreign judges in proposed mechanism in response to a query raised by Labour MP and shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury).

Mark Field Army Chief of Staff Major General Shavendra Silva recently received the appointment as the new Colonel of the Commando Regiment at its Ganemulla headquarters. Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana, PC, told Geneva sessions that it wouldn’t be fair to deprive security forces commanders of their due rights on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations. Marapana said that as allegations hadn’t been proved officers couldn’t be dealt with on the basis of them. The delegation also pointed out that information supportive of the military had been disregarded.