CO09050 | Military Defeat of the Tamil Tigers: From Velvet Glove to Iron Fist

Indeed, Chinese financial backing of the new multi-billion-dollar Hambantota deep-water port in Southern Sri Lanka stands as a testament to the new strategic relationship between China and Sri Lanka. What the West threatens to withhold, China now provides at ‘friendship’ prices.

Explaining Operational Success

At the operational level, Sri Lanka was able to wrest the initiative away from the LTTE as the military campaign progressed. In its 26-year fight against the LTTE, the SLAF rarely got the LTTE to fight a decisive military campaign on its terms. However, since 2004, splits within the LTTE movement and defections to the government side severely eroded the military leadership of the Tamil Tigers. When the Sri Lankan military took the fight to the LTTE strongholds, the Tamil Tigers could no longer employ the advantage of asymmetry, but were forced into defensive actions to hold on to their rapidly- diminishing territory.

The struggle to hold ground ultimately became conventional battles of attrition in which the numerical and firepower superiority of the SLAF became telling. The capture of the strategically vital Elephant Pass effectively hemmed in the LTTE to a restricted pocket on the north-eastern coast. As the ring grew tighter, the SLAF was able to pull-off a textbook ‘Cannae’ – the paradigmatic battle of encirclement and annihilation. In short, the final battles that sealed the fate of the LTTE as a fighting force seem to demonstrate that military-centric means can work in COIN.

Salience of the Information Space

One of the key factors that enabled the success of Sri Lanka’s military campaign is the ability of the government to dominate the information space. Contrary to the ‘global insurgencies’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, the LTTE’s armed struggle was of local proportions (geographically, politically, operationally, perceptively and as portrayed by the mainstream media). By localising the conflict yet further, the Sri Lankan government was able to control the dissemination of its images.

Unlike Israel’s recent Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, there was no proliferation of videos on Youtube depicting alleged human rights abuses to viscerally shock and play on the conscience of global netizens. Unlike their network-centric Western counterparts operating in Iraq or Afghanistan, the average Sri Lankan soldier belongs to the industrial rather than the information age. He does not go into the area of operations (AO) accompanied by a helmet-cam, iPod or iPhone taking and sharing videos that might negatively affect the strategic picture or at the very least cause a public relations disaster.

Most importantly, the Sri Lankan government was able to keep the international press out of the conflict areas and control the flow of images. As a corollary, the SLAF operated in an insulated information bubble — free from the interference of journalists who might otherwise undermine military operations.

Images that eventually emerged were of flag-waving Colombo residents and an effigy of David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, going up in smoke — defiant signals to anyone who wishes to take their war-winning leaders to task for human rights violations. Firm comments such as “Our president will tell the UN secretary general we did the right thing – to finish the war off” were prevalent views held by the Sinhalese majority. In short, the Sri Lankan government was able to capitalise on the groundswell of Sinhalese opinion staunchly in favour of the military option.

There is no question that the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to dominate if not control the local information battle-space have been immensely successful. The information ‘firewall’ that shrouded the physical battle zone was instrumental if not crucial to military victory.