- The armed forces are fighting a ‘protracted war’, still quite low-key and small scale, against a small resolute group of armed youths. The enemy is Tamil…but not the Tamil people, either of the North or the rest of country. But the Tamil ‘resistance’ is trying its utmost to draw that particular dividing line – the State’s armed forces versus the Tamil people. This is the major psychological dimension of this unconventional warfare.
_____________________
by Mervyn de Silva
(June 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Bristling with ironies, and not entirely untouched by the surrealistic was the front page picture in the Island showing a group of deserters from the Raja Rata Rifles walking nonchalantly to the Anuradhapura railway station to take the first train out of town. Posting for the photograph and grinning triumphantly, they looked as if they had just beaten the Yaalpanam gunners at an artillery tournament and brought the trophy home. Like a clever Wijesoma cartoon showing a ferocious tiger twisting a sedate Lion’s tail, this was perhaps the only moment of light relief in the gathering gloom.
The ‘war’ – and these days even our mildest reporters and staid editorialists are quickly acquiring a military idiom – has come south. Not the ‘war’ of guns and armed confrontation or skirmishes between the security forces and armed rebels or well-organised attacks on pre-selected targets but the uglier, messier, and often unmanageable war of another ‘underground’, the underworld of hoodlums, and goondas resorting to arson, looting, thuggery and even murder under cover of racialism disguised at patriotism. Across the country, from Trinco to Matara, in Ratmalana, Panadura and Kurunegala and so many other towns, the security forces were on full alert to meet unpredictable situations apparently provoked by whipped-up racial passions. It is the sort of situation that no government or army can welcome.
The armed forces are fighting a ‘protracted war’, still quite low-key and small scale, against a small resolute group of armed youths. The enemy is Tamil…but not the Tamil people, either of the North or the rest of country. But the Tamil ‘resistance’ is trying its utmost to draw that particular dividing line – the State’s armed forces versus the Tamil people. This is the major psychological dimension of this unconventional warfare.
The armed actions of the Tamil rebels (from their point of view, successful ‘operations’) leads to Sinhala anger and frustration, and in turn inflames Sinhala feelings. Each successful operation also affects the morale of the services. This was in fact the justification for the introduction of an emergency law to dispense with coroner’s inquests, as Cabinet spokesman Ananadatissa de Alwis told the press.
To crack down hard on Sinhala arsonists and looters has its own political consequences. Not to do so is to risk the breakdown of law and order and invite near-anarchic conditions in which no administration can function. It is a slow goodbye to development. This is the dilemma of the government.
President J.R. showed an acute awareness of this danger when he asked whether some of these Sinhalese miscreants and racialist thugs were a bunch of ‘modayo’. This campaign of indiscriminate violence directed at Tamil shops, business and professional establishments and factories, only hindered the government’s own counter-attack on the terrorists, said the President.
Sinhala Consensus
He made another point worth noting. He appealed to the leadership of the SLFP, and to its supporters to assist the government in its plans to ‘wipe out terrorism’, a campaign which Lands Minister Gamini Dissanayake says will take two years. The President’s direct appeal to the SLFP is the first serious sign that a UNP administration, embattled economically and challenged in the Tamil north, may be compelled to move towards ‘a Sinhala consensus.’
JR’s reference to Mr. Thondaman who was on the platform pointed to another aspect of the UNP’s predicament. The army’s sweep in Vavuniya and Trinco has had an immediate impact on the re-settled plantation refugees, both a political and moral responsibility of the CWC. It also has an ‘Indian connection’ and therefore a diplomatic angle. Mrs. Bandaranaike’s instinctive response shows that anti-UNP bitterness (from elections to referendum and by-elections) is too deep and too fresh at this point of time for a closing of ranks between the major (Sinhala) parties. Adapting a wisecrack of Deputy Leader Mr. Ilangaratne, the SLFP president said: ‘We are against both Tiger terrorists as well as Elephant terrorists’.
Since she was deprived of her civic rights for abuse of emergency powers, Mrs. Bandaranaike could hardly resist the temptation to enjoy the irony and discomfiture of the UNP which has now armed itself with the PTA and Public Security Act islandwide. The SLFP was politically battered and beaten. But in going beyond traditional warfare to ‘unconventional’ warfare against the SLFP, the UNP has opened a front it will now find hard to close. Whatever his own ethnic loyalties and sentiments, the average SLFPer seems to be deriving some vicarious satisfaction from the way the Tiger is twisting not, as in Wijesoma’s cartoon, the Sinhala lion’s tail but the elephant’s trunk.
The ramifications of the turmoil in the north are getting wider daily. For all its air of a school boy romp, the desertions from the Raja Rata Rifles was a serious affair. And the Army top brass are right to crack the whip at the sign of indiscipline. About forty men are supposed to have deserted when six of their colleagues, accused of looting etc in Jaffna, were sacked
The private sector is worried about the foreign investment and has plans to launch its own counter-propaganda campaign abroad to polish up Sri Lanka’s image – ‘stability’ and ‘democracy’ are the areas of concern. None of this could have been ‘planned’ by the Tigers or anybody else. It is the sheer logic of events unfolding according to its own laws. But when you take the total picture, it is difficult not to conclude that the initiative is slipping from Colombo’s hands.
(Today 9th Death Anniversary of Prominent Journalist in Sri Lanka, Mervyn de Silva. The article wrote by him to the Lanka Guardian magazine, June 15, 1983, pp.3 & 6.]
- Sri Lanka Guardian
_____________________
by Mervyn de Silva
(June 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Bristling with ironies, and not entirely untouched by the surrealistic was the front page picture in the Island showing a group of deserters from the Raja Rata Rifles walking nonchalantly to the Anuradhapura railway station to take the first train out of town. Posting for the photograph and grinning triumphantly, they looked as if they had just beaten the Yaalpanam gunners at an artillery tournament and brought the trophy home. Like a clever Wijesoma cartoon showing a ferocious tiger twisting a sedate Lion’s tail, this was perhaps the only moment of light relief in the gathering gloom.
The ‘war’ – and these days even our mildest reporters and staid editorialists are quickly acquiring a military idiom – has come south. Not the ‘war’ of guns and armed confrontation or skirmishes between the security forces and armed rebels or well-organised attacks on pre-selected targets but the uglier, messier, and often unmanageable war of another ‘underground’, the underworld of hoodlums, and goondas resorting to arson, looting, thuggery and even murder under cover of racialism disguised at patriotism. Across the country, from Trinco to Matara, in Ratmalana, Panadura and Kurunegala and so many other towns, the security forces were on full alert to meet unpredictable situations apparently provoked by whipped-up racial passions. It is the sort of situation that no government or army can welcome.
The armed forces are fighting a ‘protracted war’, still quite low-key and small scale, against a small resolute group of armed youths. The enemy is Tamil…but not the Tamil people, either of the North or the rest of country. But the Tamil ‘resistance’ is trying its utmost to draw that particular dividing line – the State’s armed forces versus the Tamil people. This is the major psychological dimension of this unconventional warfare.
The armed actions of the Tamil rebels (from their point of view, successful ‘operations’) leads to Sinhala anger and frustration, and in turn inflames Sinhala feelings. Each successful operation also affects the morale of the services. This was in fact the justification for the introduction of an emergency law to dispense with coroner’s inquests, as Cabinet spokesman Ananadatissa de Alwis told the press.
To crack down hard on Sinhala arsonists and looters has its own political consequences. Not to do so is to risk the breakdown of law and order and invite near-anarchic conditions in which no administration can function. It is a slow goodbye to development. This is the dilemma of the government.
President J.R. showed an acute awareness of this danger when he asked whether some of these Sinhalese miscreants and racialist thugs were a bunch of ‘modayo’. This campaign of indiscriminate violence directed at Tamil shops, business and professional establishments and factories, only hindered the government’s own counter-attack on the terrorists, said the President.
Sinhala Consensus
He made another point worth noting. He appealed to the leadership of the SLFP, and to its supporters to assist the government in its plans to ‘wipe out terrorism’, a campaign which Lands Minister Gamini Dissanayake says will take two years. The President’s direct appeal to the SLFP is the first serious sign that a UNP administration, embattled economically and challenged in the Tamil north, may be compelled to move towards ‘a Sinhala consensus.’
JR’s reference to Mr. Thondaman who was on the platform pointed to another aspect of the UNP’s predicament. The army’s sweep in Vavuniya and Trinco has had an immediate impact on the re-settled plantation refugees, both a political and moral responsibility of the CWC. It also has an ‘Indian connection’ and therefore a diplomatic angle. Mrs. Bandaranaike’s instinctive response shows that anti-UNP bitterness (from elections to referendum and by-elections) is too deep and too fresh at this point of time for a closing of ranks between the major (Sinhala) parties. Adapting a wisecrack of Deputy Leader Mr. Ilangaratne, the SLFP president said: ‘We are against both Tiger terrorists as well as Elephant terrorists’.
Since she was deprived of her civic rights for abuse of emergency powers, Mrs. Bandaranaike could hardly resist the temptation to enjoy the irony and discomfiture of the UNP which has now armed itself with the PTA and Public Security Act islandwide. The SLFP was politically battered and beaten. But in going beyond traditional warfare to ‘unconventional’ warfare against the SLFP, the UNP has opened a front it will now find hard to close. Whatever his own ethnic loyalties and sentiments, the average SLFPer seems to be deriving some vicarious satisfaction from the way the Tiger is twisting not, as in Wijesoma’s cartoon, the Sinhala lion’s tail but the elephant’s trunk.
The ramifications of the turmoil in the north are getting wider daily. For all its air of a school boy romp, the desertions from the Raja Rata Rifles was a serious affair. And the Army top brass are right to crack the whip at the sign of indiscipline. About forty men are supposed to have deserted when six of their colleagues, accused of looting etc in Jaffna, were sacked
The private sector is worried about the foreign investment and has plans to launch its own counter-propaganda campaign abroad to polish up Sri Lanka’s image – ‘stability’ and ‘democracy’ are the areas of concern. None of this could have been ‘planned’ by the Tigers or anybody else. It is the sheer logic of events unfolding according to its own laws. But when you take the total picture, it is difficult not to conclude that the initiative is slipping from Colombo’s hands.
(Today 9th Death Anniversary of Prominent Journalist in Sri Lanka, Mervyn de Silva. The article wrote by him to the Lanka Guardian magazine, June 15, 1983, pp.3 & 6.]
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Post a Comment