The Sri Lankan military has launched an immediate urgent investigation into how two unidentified aircraft were able to fly for an hour over government-controlled territory before dropping bombs on the Katunayake Air Base some 125 miles from Tamil Tiger lines. The basic answer is already clear. There had never before been an air raid by the insurgents and therefore no one expected it. The radar plots of the two airplanes were clearly viewed with bemusement rather than with alarm. It is unlikely that government forces will err in the same way a second time.
This surprise escalation of the conflict, however, drives home the key truth that the resourceful and ruthless Tamil rebels are not going to be convinced of anything on the battlefield. This air raid was clearly a calculated response to the latest government drive into rebel-held territory in the north of Sri Lanka. Over and above the killing of three air force personnel, the raid will have immense propaganda value for the Tigers. Outsiders may be tempted to believe that the pilots of these aircraft were plucky individuals fighting against an overwhelmingly superior and uncompromising enemy. They would be wrong.
The reason the Norwegian-brokered cease-fire is now in tatters is in large measure due to the intransigence of the Tamil rebels. Successive governments in Colombo may have been ham-fisted in their treatment of the country’s Tamil minority but it was in the end, the Tamils who sabotaged the peace deal by prevaricating about venues and refusing to give clear signs that they were finally prepared to accept a lasting peaceful solution.
In the past 15 months since the cease-fire broke down, four thousand more people from both sides have died. In 20 years of fighting, some 70,000 have perished and more than a million Sri Lankans have been displaced. The problem is that this is a war that militarily neither side can lose. Nevertheless, the Tamil Tigers are certainly not strong enough to defeat the government military in detail, march into Colombo and impose a peace deal that would give them the independence they seek. Nor are the government forces sufficiently powerful to subdue the Tigers who, if ever they are losing a formal engagement, resume their guerrilla tactics and melt away into the countryside. Sri Lankan troops are also obliged to operate in Tamil areas where members of the local population who do not enthusiastically support the Tigers do so anyway out of fear of reprisal when the government forces leave.
But if neither side can lose, neither can it win — militarily. However, the rebels have one major advantage. They have only to sustain their rebellion, mounting occasional spectacular assaults such as this air raid, or suicide bombings aimed at government figures. In their brutal terms, their survival, coupled with proof that they can still hit hard, is a victory. Whereas for the government every day the rebellion continues is a defeat, which the Tigers hope, may finally so sap morale that independence will be granted. It is a wickedly cold-blooded calculation.
