By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, May 1 2001 (IPS)

A major Sri Lankan army debacle at the hands of Tamil guerrillas last week, a year after the rebels captured two major military bases in the north, is likely to step up the tempo of peace talks between the two sides, analysts say.

An embarassed military called off an offensive last week to capture rebel-held territory in the northern Jaffna peninsula after close to 20,000 men involved in the operation were forced to withdraw to their original positions due to heavy resistance from the rebels and rising casualties. Saturday’s retreat took place after four days of fighting.

The army lost more than 200 soldiers, and close to 1,000 more were injured. Rebel losses were in similar numbers. Military spokesmen say the army did not lose the battle but was able to dent rebels plans to launch an offensive on government positions.

“It was no doubt a severe reversal for the army. It just proves that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rebels are not or have not been weakened since last year as many people believed,” noted Keethish Loganathan, political commentator and an analyst at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a private think tank.

“This underscores the need for a ceasefire between the government and the rebels and the resumption of peace talks,” Loganathan said.

The setback came a few days before Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim to Colombo arrived in the Sri Lankan capital Monday and immediately went into talks with President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He is also due to meet opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe and other local politicians during a three-to-four day trip.

Solheim, on behalf of the Norwegian government, has been trying to coax peace talks between Kumaratunga’s ruling People’s Alliance coalition and the rebels for the past six months. This has been happening in an environment of hardening positions by both sides in the 18-year- old conflict, which stems from the minority Tigers’ battle for their own homeland.

The rebels declared a one-month truce in December and extended it every month until Apr. 24 in the hope that the government would reciprocate. Kumaratunga says a ceasefire is not necessary for talks to resume, can be held without it, and rejected the rebel truce.

The army offensive began hours after rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran decided last week against extending the rebel truce for the fourth time, but the military was totally caught off balance in its assessment of the “enemy.”

“One of the biggest problems of the military is that when there is a lull (during the rebel ceasefire), strategists conclude that the enemy is weak and that government forces have better firepower,” a military analyst said. “That is a basic weakness in our thinking. The government and the military believed the rebels called a ceasefire from a position of weakness.”

The military in fact has better firepower but underestimated the rebel capability. When two major army camps and some other parts of the northern Jaffna peninsula fell to the rebels in March and April last year, government troops regrouped and inch by inch recaptured lost ground.

They had help. The government spent an additional 200 million U.S. dollars last year purchasing T-55 battle tanks, multi-barrel rocket launchers with a range of nearly 10 km and can decimate an area in seconds, long range artillery, fighter jets and ground attack helicopters and missile carriers to beef up the military capability.

Government forces, with the help of the new equipment, kept the pressure on the rebels until the latter declared a unilateral ceasefire on Dec. 24, 2000 in what many thought to be a weakened position. “There seems to be a breakdown in military intelligence in being misled to believe that the rebels had been weakened during that period and the ceasefire,” said Loganathan.

He said it brings back to the peace agenda the futility of war and of speaking from a position of strength, which is the government strategy and why Kumaratunga wants peace talks to be held without a ceasefire.

Solheim’s current mission is aimed at persuading the two sides to agree to a proposed memorandum of understanding (MOU) on reducing hostilities and paving the way for peace talks. Some of the matters under consideration in the MOU are the lifting of an economic embargo in rebel-held areas in the north, release of prisoners from both sides and a freer flow of human traffic to and from rebel areas.

Everyone talks about peace these days and the country appears to be fed up with the conflict that has cost more than 60,000 lives and ravaged the economy. Even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have urged Sri Lanka to end the conflict and ensure a just solution for its people.

The Central Bank in its latest report released on Monday urged political parties and society to jointly end the conflict and find a lasting solution by addressing its deep-rooted causes. Businessmen and leaders of chambers of commerce and industry have issued similar pleas.

“It appears that ordinary people who have suffered considerably by the conflict, are quite willing to live together and work in peace and amity. It is therefore the overriding and paramount responsibility of Sri Lankan leaders to forge a consensus to restore peace, law and order in Sri Lanka,” the bank said in its annual 2000 report and economic outlook.

It was a rare appeal by the bank, which normally deals with economic data and has hesitated to give advice or comment on the conflict in the past.

Jehan Perera, political analyst and director at the National Peace Council (NPC), a Norwegian-funded peace group, believes the government’s tactics ahead of peace talks have not worked.

The government wanted the rebels banned overseas — which happened in Britain last month – and further discredited by other countries while putting pressure on the rebels to come to the negotiating table through the battlefield.

“On both fronts it backfired. The military got a beating while some countries are sympathising with the rebels because of the government’s failure to reciprocate the four-month long ceasefire,” Perera said.

The NPC director, who returned from a trip to the Tamil- dominated region of Jaffna last week, said most people who wanted peace and had been disgusted with the rebels were now hurt by the government response to the truce and tilted in favour of the rebels.

“Those days they (civilians) used to talk about ‘our boys’ when referring to the rebels. That view is surfacing once again,” he said.

Earlier this year, Kumaratunga said peace talks were likely to start in May in a foreign country. The latest developments on the battlefield is likely to alter that schedule and put back the peace process but with increasing pressure on the government to endorse the MOU as early as possible.

Excerpt: