How Sri Lanka defeated the LTTE

[Bob's World]

Bill:

This is a good laydown.

My assessment would be that the LTTE made a major strategic error in transitioning to phase III operations too soon and attempting to fight this as more of a civil war than as an insurgency. Essentially setting up the "weak state vs strong state" scenario which rarely ends well for the weaker.

Concur that the "Insurgency" is by no means defeated, but that the security forces have done their job in creating a window of opportunity for the politicos to fully address the roots of the insurgency itself. My fear is that while those who missunderstand the true nature of insurgency cheer the "victory," the very victory they are cheering will be slipping away as new leadership emerges, wiser from the recent setback, and begins anew with phase 1 activities.

Right now what the US should be doing is a full court diplomatic press on the government of Sri Lanka to close the deal. To be the bigger man. To be a Lincoln /Grant and recognize that one must be a gracious in victory as they are determined in battle.

State Department your move. Judging by your actions in our own GWOT to date, I fear you don't fully realize that though...

[Mark O'Neill]

Bill:

This is a good laydown.

My assessment would be that the LTTE made a major strategic error in transitioning to phase III operations too soon and attempting to fight this as more of a civil war than as an insurgency. Essentially setting up the "weak state vs strong state" scenario which rarely ends well for the weaker.

Concur that the "Insurgency" is by no means defeated, but that the security forces have done their job in creating a window of opportunity for the politicos to fully address the roots of the insurgency itself. My fear is that while those who missunderstand the true nature of insurgency cheer the "victory," the very victory they are cheering will be slipping away as new leadership emerges, wiser from the recent setback, and begins anew with phase 1 activities.

Right now what the US should be doing is a full court diplomatic press on the government of Sri Lanka to close the deal. To be the bigger man. To be a Lincoln /Grant and recognize that one must be a gracious in victory as they are determined in battle.

State Department your move. Judging by your actions in our own GWOT to date, I fear you don't fully realize that though...

And I bet that it doesn't happen. Hubris is a powerful politico/military force (as the Coalition in OIF in late '03 demonstrates...)

Cheers

Mark

[William F. Owen]

My assessment would be that the LTTE made a major strategic error in transitioning to phase III operations too soon and attempting to fight this as more of a civil war than as an insurgency.

Bob, I think you make an excellent point.

... and how do you tell the difference between a civil war and an insurgency, and why does it matter?

[S2MSSI]

A good short article in the paper Sunday covered the fact that in the LTTE COIN, "[They] were not worried about collateral damage…So in many regards it's a very difficult model to adopt." Some great ethical and strategic debate should come from the last push of this conflict, which is being deemed as successful despite the heavy civilian casualties in the end surge. (Below is the print article with some snippets from the original author’s submission not published in the print version).

“Other lessons are either unique to Sri Lanka or would be politically unpalatable in other societies, including the high civilian and military death tolls and alleged human rights violations. The United Nations and many human rights groups repeatedly called for a cease-fire so civilians caught in the crossfire could flee the conflict area -- calls the government largely dismissed. Because Rajapaksa's base was the nation's Sinhalese majority, there was relatively little domestic pushback over the deaths and displacement of ethnic Tamil civilians. The government restricted the access of international media and independent humanitarian groups, making it difficult to report what was going on. The lesson of nonstop, no-holds-barred combat -- the army even powered on during monsoons -- was complemented by better use of small, flexible "deep penetration" special forces units, many trained by their U.S. and Indian counterparts. Dressed like the rebels, they went behind enemy lines, assassinating Tigers, crippling infrastructure in rebel-held areas and reporting target locations to the army and air force. Cutting supply lines, creating faster and more mobile special forces units, going after financing and hitting jungle hide-outs are additional strategies applicable to other insurgency battles, experts said. At the same time, the Tigers' scope made them a bigger target. For years, they parked freighters at sea and ferried arms, oil, food and other supplies into ports they controlled. In recent years, the government destroyed seven of these mother ships, reportedly with the help of satellite intelligence from India and the United States, and made better use of small, maneuverable, heavily armed "Arrow" vessels.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,7880875.story

chicagotribune.com

Sri Lanka's defeat of the Tamil Tigers offers lessons for other countries fighting insurgencies
By Mark Magnier

Tribune Newspapers

May 24, 2009

NEW DELHI -- Sri Lanka's victory last week after a 25-year battle against the Tamil Tiger rebels represents a rare government success story in the global fight against insurgencies.

Even as leaders in Colombo declared a national holiday, military planners and analysts around the world have begun scrutinizing the war for lessons on how to fight Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other lethal militant groups.

For more than two decades, the conflict in Sri Lanka had neither side strong enough to overcome the other.

That changed three years ago, when the Sri Lankan army adopted more mobile tactics, overhauled its intelligence system, promoted young commanders and steadily hemmed in one of the world's most ruthless and innovative rebel movements. At its peak, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as the Tigers are formally known, controlled one-third of the country; had its own army, a navy and nascent air force; and served as a role model for insurgencies worldwide with its pioneering use of suicide vests and female suicide bombers.

Last week, the army displayed in triumph what it said was the portly, bullet-riddled body of Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Arguably the most important factor in ending the stalemate was the political will to do whatever it took. In a supreme irony, President Mahinda Rajapakse was elected in November 2005 by a 1.9 percent margin after Prabhakaran urged Tamils to boycott the election. Rajapakse made military victory over the Tamils a cornerstone of his administration and signaled to the military it could get whatever resources it wanted simply by asking.

"They did everything a general dreams of," said retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, a commander of the Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s. "Unfettered resources and no political interference."

The military budget quickly grew by 40 percent a year and the army by 70 percent to 180,000 troops as it added 3,000 a month, compared with 3,000 a year previously -- drawn largely from poor rural Sinhalese attracted by relatively high wages.

With more soldiers, the army was able to hit the Tigers on several fronts simultaneously, breaking with years of hit-or-miss operations.

"Before the army would take territory then move on, allowing the LTTE to come back," said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. "That changed, and we hit them on all four fronts so they could no longer muster all their resources into one place."

Some lessons are transferable, experts said. "Sri Lanka provides a case study," said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.

Other lessons are either unique to Sri Lanka or would be politically unpalatable in other societies, including the high civilian and military death tolls and alleged human-rights violations. The UN and many human-rights groups, for example, repeatedly urged a cease-fire so civilians caught in the crossfire could flee the conflict area, calls the government largely dismissed.

"They were not worried about collateral damage," said Ajey Lele, a military analyst and ex-Indian wing commander. "So in many regards it's a very difficult model to adopt."

[Cavguy]

I have to write a relatively short paper for a class on terrorism and terrorist groups (a problematic definition, I know). I have wide latitude on the subject and thought I would look at Sri Lanka's defeat of the LTTE and the employment of the "ruthless" approach. I mainly want to focus on the shift in strategy over the last decade, how they handled the international objections (human rights), and prospects for long term stability.

Bottom line, am looking for good books and articles as sources, or credible websites. This isn't a dissertation, but the sources need some rigor.

[davidbfpo]

Niel,

There are several hits on LTTE here and one main thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=7413 and I expect places like IISS have commented on what happened. I suspect Indian observers watched the most, try http://www.satp.org/and maybe the Israelis who acted as advisers to the Sri Lankans IIRC.

[Cavguy]

Niel,

There are several hits on LTTE here and one main thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=7413 and I expect places like IISS have commented on what happened. I suspect Indian observers watched the most, try http://www.satp.org/and maybe the Israelis who acted as advisers to the Sri Lankans IIRC.

Been interesting trying to find disinterested (objective) comment - most of the articles or sites are clearly partisan to one side or another.

The summary by Bill Moore in the thread you linked helped.

[Entropy]

Cavguy,

The latest CRS report may interest you and there is also this paper by a Sri Lankan General.

Hope those help.

[William F. Owen]

I have wide latitude on the subject and thought I would look at Sri Lanka's defeat of the LTTE and the employment of the "ruthless" approach. I mainly want to focus on the shift in strategy over the last decade, how they handled the international objections (human rights), and prospects for long term stability.

As concerns "ruthless" I would pass on the commonly heard question from many foreign officers as to why is it OK for the US Army to kill "100's" of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet not OK for others to do the same given far greater strategic need in defence of their actual home lands.

I submit that Sri-Lankans merely observed that US(?)NATO conduct of operations gave very wide latitude to the idea of what levels of force were acceptable in the pursuance of policy.

From what I have seen and heard Tactical methods used were mostly just "best practice" give the threat, terrain and policy.

[Bill Moore]

Wilf,

Excellent points and they to many conflicts around the globe. I wish some of our DOD and DOS policy members would comment on how any nation could feasibly defeat a separatist movement like the LTTE following our policies? Policies as you stated that we wouldn't follow ourselves. From where I sit we seem to generate extremely naive policies that are beginning to result in America influence being less welcome in many parts of the world. One only need to review the Leahy Amendment on human rights violations to get an understanding of how far we have gone down this road to unintended isolation from the real world.

The losers now (and their supporters, both State and non-State in the global community) get to take the winners to trial, which means that the conflict will continue via lawfare that Jmm99 wrote about a few times. In a way the EU, UN, U.S. and others have joined hands with the LTTE, while China and others have joined hands with the Sri Lankan government. Is this a World War (using lawfare)?

I think the West in general is getting to the point that our extremely simplistic views of right and wrong are going to result in us in having less influence on the world stage as we continue to isolate ourselves in a concoon of quixotic ideals that simply don't apply in the real world. Perhaps the saddest part of this is the intent to support human rights is good, but in practice the way we apply the policies results in indecisive action, which in turns results in conflicts dragging on for years. This results not only in much more suffering, but in lost generations that know nothing but war.

If it is essential to our national interests to enter a conflict (directly or indirectly), then whenever possible I would recommend pushing for a strategy that resulted in a decisive victory instead of prolonging the status quo by applying naive policies. I realize the world isn't black and white, but in many cases we "seem" to add imaginary complexity.

[davidbfpo]

Niel,

Thinking a little about LTTE and the 'ruthless' approach. First LTTE were themselves ruthless, which helps explain India's decision to exit. Throughout the war no all Tamils sided with LTTE - once they had been confined to the Jaffna area. LTTE were not the only targets of the Sri Lankan state, IIRC a left wing revolt amongst the Sinhalese was repressed brutally before LTTE "took to the stage".

LTTE ran an effective PR campaign abroad, amidst the diaspora, but many in that community only co-operated from fear. Their PR failed to gain traction amidst a wider audience - including the Tamils in southern India. Compare the LTTE abroad to other Indian insurgent groups, who has heard of them? Very few.

The war went on so long and only spectaculars, e.g. Colombo airport attack, got external attention, so Sri Lanka knew few would oppose a 'ruthless' approach.

Were the LTTE exhausted by the end?

[tequila]

Wilf - Are you wondering why the Israelis can't fire 155mm artillery into Palestinian towns at will? I really doubt it is the U.S. holding the IDF back, perhaps you should ask them.

Bill - Can you cite a single serious example of the "losers" taking the "winners" to trial? Where has this happened where the so-called "winners" didn't deserve it? Do you think that, say, the Bosnian Serbs are being unjustly persecuted for the "battle" of Srebrenica? Or perhaps the Hutu supremacist FAR shouldn't face any consequences for their counterinsurgency "techniques"? Or maybe we need to take a second look at Charles Taylor's record from a more understanding perspective. And I don't know why everyone hated on Saddam Hussein - don't people understand that the Kurds and Shiites were violent too? After all, Saddam's tactics really brought the whole Kurdish-Arab conflict to a swift end --- if we'd just allowed him to "finish the job" back in 1991, we wouldn't even be talking about a Kirkuk problem now, would we?

[Ken White]

One only need to review the Leahy Amendment on human rights violations to get an understanding of how far we have gone down this road to unintended isolation from the real world.

You, sir, are a master of understatement (in the vernacular; you got that right!).

I think the West in general is getting to the point that our extremely simplistic views of right and wrong are going to result in us in having less influence on the world stage as we continue to isolate ourselves in a concoon of quixotic ideals that simply don't apply in the real world.

True, I believe -- unless someone screws up and gives us a wake-up call, a likely occurrence...

...the way we apply the policies results in indecisive action, which in turns results in conflicts dragging on for years. This results not only in much more suffering, but in lost generations that know nothing but war.

Absolutely correct. Our half baked approach kills more of us and them and does more general harm than would occur with firm and rapid action...

Tequila:

...Can you cite a single serious example of the "losers" taking the "winners" to trial? Where has this happened where the so-called "winners" didn't deserve it?

Isn't that in the old eye of the beholder as they say? Particularly the last clause...

In any event, I think Bill was looking at the future and simply discussing the trend line. It hasn't truly happened yet in a major way but the portent is obvious.

What we cannot know at this time is whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing...

P.S.

Left this off...

Re: Wilf and 155s; I think his point was that we, the US, are rather hypocritical with respect to who should shoot what and where, i.e a rule for us, another for others. I personally think he's correct.

[Jedburgh]

.....I mainly want to focus on the shift in strategy over the last decade, how they handled the international objections (human rights), and prospects for long term stability.

Bottom line, am looking for good books and articles as sources, or credible websites. This isn't a dissertation, but the sources need some rigor.

There is a tremendous amount available on the human rights issue, so I won't bother with that. But here's some other material you may find of use:

UK House of Commons report with a brief general history and a detailed look at the conflict from '02 on: War and Peace in Sri Lanka

A pair of RSIS commentaries: Ending the LTTE: Recipe for Counterterrorism? and Military Defeat of the Tamil Tigers: From Velvet Glove to Iron Fist.

And this one from the East-West Center, published just before the final push by the Sri Lankans: Countering Violent Extremism: The Fate of the Tamil Tigers

Outside of complaints regarding the campaign against the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government isn't looking so clean in plainer terms. Since winning the presidential election last month, Rajapaksa has had his political opponent arrested, purged the military and assaulted/jailed numbers of journalists who were critical of him during the election campaign. Opposition protests have been broken up by the police in Colombo and other cities. Even without the LTTE, the government is doing itself no favors in the legitimacy/stability department.

[Cavguy]

Thanks for all the sources. My paper (last of grad school!) will likely point out that the LTTE's defeat is owed mostly due to the following factors:

1) Political Isolation from terror attacks
2) Reduction of its expat funding network (related to #1 in the EU and India)
3) Physical (geographical) isolation
4) Introduction of massive aid and political cover from China on the government side that allowed the "ruthless" approach.

Overall, I think the tactics used by the Sri Lankan government didn't really change, mainly the shaping conditions.

My graduate thesis came to the conclusion that possession of external support and sanctuary were the best predictors of insurgent victory, rather than the tactic used. This action is another confirming case study.

[SWJ Blog]

What Sri Lanka Can Teach Us About COIN

Entry Excerpt:

What Sri Lanka Can Teach Us About COIN
by Lionel Beehner

Download the Full Article:

It has become a truism to say there are no military solutions to defeat an insurgency. That was the thrust of the U.S. military’s 2006 counterinsurgency (COIN) manual as well as the mantras repeated by CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus, the manual’s coauthor, and his “warrior intellectual” offspring. Conventional wisdom also holds that COIN takes years, if not decades, to complete and emphasizes a population-centric strategy to avoid civilian casualties and win locals’ hearts and minds.

But Sri Lanka’s successful victory one year ago stands all this conventional wisdom on its head. It was brute military force, not political dialogue or population control, which ended its brutal decades-long war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, a separatist group perhaps most notorious for popularizing the suicide bomb. The final military campaign lasted months, not years or decades. It was a gruesome finale, to be sure. The Sri Lankan government paid little heed to outside calls for preventing collateral damage. While humanitarian workers and journalists were barred from entering the war zone, as many as 20,000 civilians were killed in the crossfire and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Tamils were corralled into camps after war ended . It was, as one journalist I spoke to in Colombo put it, “a war without witnesses.” Hearts and minds took a backseat to shock and awe.

Still, the lesson from Sri Lanka’s COIN experiment is that overwhelming force can defeat insurgents, terrorists and other irregular armed groups in relatively short order, but at a steep cost. Its model disproves the notion that counterinsurgencies must be drawn-out, Vietnam-like campaigns. With U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also provides states fighting small wars with a different counterinsurgency template. Not without reason did Pakistan and Thailand, which both face insurgencies on their peripheries, seek out Sri Lanka for military training and advice in recent months.

So do America’s warrior intellectuals and COIN theorists have it all backwards? Should we be emphasizing military solutions over political compromises and accommodation, overwhelming force over clear-hold-and-build campaigns, defeating the enemy over winning locals’ “hearts and minds”? Does Sri Lanka’s COIN strategy provide any lessons for Washington as it escalates the war in Afghanistan, or for other countries facing violent insurgencies along their unruly peripheries?

Or does the fallout from the use of massive force—the high death toll, the lost hearts and minds, the accusations of war crimes, the unresolved grievances of ethnic minorities—negate whatever victory is achieved on the battlefield or goodwill that comes from a peaceful settlement? It is a perplexing question for military strategists. “The end of the Sri Lankan civil war,” wrote Robert Haddick, a managing editor at the Small Wars Journal, “most especially the way it ended, with a clear military solution – will cause many sleepless nights for Western counterinsurgency theorists.”

Download the Full Article:

Lionel Beehner is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University and formerly a senior writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is also a term member.

[Cavguy]

Joint Force Quarterly # 59, due to be published next week, will contain an article by myself covering some of the same ground as Mr. Beehner's piece above - but with a very different take.

From my reading of events, Sri Lanka's victory had much, much more to do with the economic and physical isolation of the LTTE between 2001 and 2007 than the shift in tactics (brutality) emphasized in most of the literature and papers published thus far (including this one)

The LTTE’s collapse was the result of cumulative external and internal forces, not simply the employment of ruthless new tactics. Indeed, there is little beside the ability to disregard Western criticism that distinguishes Sri Lankan tactics or brutality post-2005 from earlier eras, as the conflict was already one of the most violent and ruthless in the world. Critical blows from internal defections, loss of external funding, a global antiterrorist mindset after 9/11, and second order effects of the 2004 tsunami crippled the LTTE. At the same time, foreign aid, domestic politics, and external political cover from China enabled the Sri Lankan government to resume its COIN campaign from a position of strength. The combination of these factors proved decisive in the defeat of the LTTE.

Hopefully I will be able to link the JFQ paper on SWJ in the next week.

Niel

(xposted from blog comments)

[JMA]

Joint Force Quarterly # 59, due to be published next week, will contain an article by myself covering some of the same ground as Mr. Beehner's piece above - but with a very different take.

[snip]

Hopefully I will be able to link the JFQ paper on SWJ in the next week.

Niel

(xposted from blog comments)

I look forward to reading this.

[Cavguy]

I look forward to reading this.

And it's out!

http://www.ndu.edu/press/understanding-sri-lanka.html

An examination of Sri Lanka's victory reveals the LTTE's collapse was the result of cumulative external and internal forces, not simply the employment of ruthless new tactics. Indeed, there is little beside the ability to disregard Western criticism that distinguishes Sri Lankan tactics or brutality post-2005 from earlier eras, as the conflict was already one of the most violent and ruthless in the world. Critical blows from internal defections, loss of external funding, a global antiterrorist mindset after 9/11, and secondorder effects of the 2004 tsunami crippled the LTTE. At the same time, foreign aid, domestic politics, and external political cover from China enabled the Sri Lankan government to resume its COIN campaign from a position of strength. The combination of these factors proved decisive in the defeat of the LTTE.

Those who wish to use the LTTE's defeat as a foil for criticizing U.S. COIN doctrine have adopted an overly simplistic narrative of the LTTE's defeat. These critics have missed the larger picture of what occurred in Sri Lanka. Appropriate and legitimate debate continues as to the significance of populationcentric tactics practiced by the U.S. military during the surge to the successful reduction of violence. Without doubt, numerous changes in the wider internal and external dynamics of the conflict coincided with the tactical shift and accelerated the turnaround in Iraq. Likewise, by 2009, the LTTE was a shadow of its former self, bankrupt, isolated, illegitimate, divided, and unable to meet an invigorated government offensive of any kind. At almost every turn, the LTTE made profound strategic miscalculations in the post-9/11 environment by continuing its use of terror tactics despite a fundamentally changed global environment. Failing to realize this shift, Prabhakaran made poor strategic and tactical choices that doomed his movement long before the government began its final offensive. Taken together, these conditions proved essential to the collapse of the LTTE after nearly 30 years of conflict.

[Bob's World]

The key to remember is that while this particular organization, the LTTE, may well and truly be defeated (time will tell, and it probably takes about 3-5 years to accurately assess such a defeat); true success will only be if no similar organization emerges from the ashes to continue the challenge against popular perceptions of poor governance. The military is far too quick to assess these political operations in military terms. How many times have the insurgencies in Algeria and the Philippines been "defeated" militarily, only to reemerge a few years later?

This is but one more reason why it is so helpful to look at insurgency as a civil emergency, a condition existing within a populace based on their perceptions of poor governance on the part of the government that may result in non-violent or violent illegal challenges depending on the nature of the group that rises to challenge.

Yes, LTTE may well be defeated, but if the perceptions of poor governance have not also been addressed it is just a matter of time before that, or some other, group emerges to challenge yet again. This is the lesson of history. It has little to do with either threat-centric or Pop-centric COIN (both are flawed), it has to do with insurgency itself.