1990 – August 1994: The Chickens Come Home

By Rajan Hoole –May 30, 2015

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Law Enforcement and the Security Services: Politicisation and Demoralisation – 15

The Withdrawal of the IPKF

During 1989, gross misjudgement and crass opportunism were allowed to override sound military judgement. Wanasinghe, who believed that the IPKF should stay, fell behind the President in undermining their role. The professionals in the Army had few illusions about their government’s much vaunted understanding with the LTTE. When President Premadasa publicly called for the withdrawal of the IPKF in July 1989, the three Sri Lankan army commanders in charge of northern divisions met in Vavuniya. They were Major General Balaratnarajah (Jaffna), Brigadier Srilal Weerasooriya (Trincomalee) and Brigadier Chandra Abeyratne (Vavuniya). They then requested Deputy Defence Minister Ranjan Wijeratne for additional troops to maintain order in the areas the IPKF had brought under control. Ranjan Wijeratne refused additional troops and confidently said, ‘everything is fine in Jaffna’!

The Chickens Come Home

By January 1990 the IPKF pullout was well underway. General Balaratnarajah who had finished a year in Jaffna was to leave for the National Defence College in India. In a written report briefing his successor Jaliya Nammuni, he recommended closing all the smaller camps, including Jaffna Fort and Valvettithurai, and concentrating the forces at Palaly. This was not done. In June 1990, the LTTE suddenly commenced hostilities and laid siege around Jaffna Fort. The troops were relieved and evacuated in September with great difficulty and the position was abandoned. The camps at Kokkavil and Mankulam were overrun before the year’s end.

Ranjan Wijeratne

After the wisdom of the country’s leaders, the Army set about trying to bring control in the North-East in the manner in which it had dealt with the JVP in the South. It indulged in a series of massacres. The resulting fear, displacement and resentment helped the LTTE reap a windfall of new recruits and inflict a series of blows on the Army. This was ironical because up to the time of the war, resentment had been building up against the LTTE in the North-East. These liberators had been constructing torture camps and detained all and sundry against whom it had the slightest suspicion of being against them. The Sri Lankan Army had co-operated with them in these unlawful detentions and elimination. Even persons detained in Colombo were transported to the North chained to passenger vehicles. Once the war started in June and the Government through the security forces turned its wrath on the Tamil civilians, the Army was in for a series of costly humiliations. The Army lost control of most of the North. It was the nemesis of immorality, of disregarding the Law as the standard.Read More