'Victory' holiday in Sri Lanka

BBC
May 20

Sri Lanka is marking a holiday on Wednesday to celebrate the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels.

"The government has also asked all state institutions to fly the national flag for one week," an official said.

However state security forces said that they were on a state of high alert against revenge attacks from any remaining rebels.

On Tuesday pictures of the body of the man who is believed to be rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran were released.

'Triumph'

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says that officially the holiday has been called as a mark of respect to troops who have defeated the Tamil Tigers.

There are still some delighted youths rushing into the roads waving the red, yellow, green and saffron national flag, our correspondent says, but with businesses firmly shut and stormy monsoon weather descending on the city, the streets are much quieter than they were.

The state English-language daily has the word "triumph" in huge blue letters on its front page, but Rajiva Wijesinha, one of the government's regular spokesmen, writes that he is glad that "vulgar triumphalism" has not broken out.

Mr Wijesinha wrote there was a need to plan for the future and bear in mind Tamil suffering.

The US, the UN and China - a key and growing ally of Sri Lanka - have all urged ethnic reconciliation on the island, with Washington calling for "new power sharing arrangements".

'Best of cowards'

The government has said that renegade Tamil Tiger leader Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, has positvely identified Mr Prabhakaran's body.

Col Karuna defected from the rebels in 2004 and is now a government minister.

VELUPILLAI PRABHAKARAN

Born November, 1954

1972: Founded Tamil New Tigers (TNT), forerunner of LTTE

Reputation as fearless and ruthless leader

Pioneered use of suicide bombings in guerilla warfare

Wanted in Sri Lanka and India

The defence ministry website has also released more details of Mr Prabhakaran's death. It said that he was found with no cyanide capsule, but with his identity card and the dog tag.

"He was certainly not man enough to fight a single battle against army, but instead tried to save his life until the last moment," it said.

"Not for a single second did he he want to commit suicide, but tried to escape betraying his most loyal followers before a soldier shot him down.

"We are not going to comment on how he died... simply, he was the best of the cowards."

The ministry said that Mr Prabhakaran's body was found on Tuesday morning, contradicting earlier reports that it was discovered on Monday.

Bullet-riddled

The army also says it has found the body of one of the last rebel leaders still unaccounted for. It said that the bullet-riddled head of the rebels' Sea Tiger wing, Soosai, was found by troops in marshy land on Tuesday evening.

"Our motherland has been completely liberated from separatist terrorism," President Rajapaksa told jubilant lawmakers in a nationally televised victory speech to parliament on Tuesday.

SRI LANKA CONFLICT TIMELINE

1976 - LTTE formed

1983 - First attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels; start of 'First Eelam War'

Feb 2002 - Government and rebels sign ceasefire

2004 - 2008 - Violence mounts

Jan 2008 - Government pulls out of ceasefire agreement

Jan 2009 - Government captures Tigers' Kilinochchi headquarters

May 2009 - Government declares victory against Tigers

The president reached out to the mainly Hindu Tamil community - comprising about 20 million people - pledging that everyone in Sri Lanka should be able to live "in safety without fear and suspicion".

"All should live with equal rights. That is my aim," he said, briefly speaking in the Tamil language.

The president said that he would negotiate some form of power-sharing deal following the war and stressed the need for an agreement.

"We must find a homegrown solution to this conflict. That solution should be acceptable to all the communities," he said.

Our correspondent says that it is expected the government will devolve more power to the provinces giving Tamils more political say in some parts of the island.

Tamil politicians have said the government must address the causes of the long-running conflict.

The pro-rebel TamilNet website has not commented on reports of Mr Prabhakaran's death since it denied he was dead on Tuesday - before the release of photos depicting his body.

The Tigers had been fighting for a separate state for Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka since the 1970s.

About 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict and thousands displaced.

U.S. urges Sri Lanka to reach out to Tamils

Reuters
May 18

Sri Lanka should reach out to Tamils and build a political accommodation that protects the rights of all its citizens, the United States said on Monday after Colombo declared victory against the Tamil Tiger rebels.

Sri Lanka said it had militarily defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and taken control of the entire country for the first time since 1983, apparently ending one of the world's most intractable civil wars.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly declined to say whether the United States still opposed the International Monetary Fund giving Sri Lanka a $1.9 billion loan, seen as vital to helping it recover from the global financial crisis and rebuild after the war.

U.S. officials told Reuters in late April they were seeking to delay the loan to pressure the government to better protect civilians caught in the fighting and do more to forge a political settlement with the Tamils.

"This is an opportunity for Sri Lanka to turn the page on its past and build a Sri Lanka rooted in democracy, tolerance and respect for human rights," Kelly told reporters.

"Now is the time for the government to engage the Tamils, Sinhalese and other Sri Lankans to create a political arrangement that promotes and protects the rights of all Sri Lankans," he added.

The Sri Lankan government has to provide basic assistance and services to the estimated 280,000 people who fled the fighting in the northern part of the country, Kelly said.

The Conflict in Sri Lanka: A Cornered Tiger Is Still Deadly

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Stratfor
May 6

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told parliament May 5 that he believes Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is among the large group of Tiger militants trapped in a 4-square kilometer coastline area near Mullaitivu. The area around Mullaitivu has been the final focal point of a recent larger government military offensive aimed at restoring government control of northeast Sri Lanka and crushing the South Asian country’s separatist rebels, who have controlled large parts of the region for the past several years.

The Tigers’ battlefield losses have been compounded by the severe disruption to their formerly extensive financial network (primarily concentrated among the Tamil diaspora in Western Europe and Canada) after the European Union placed the group on its terror list in 2006. This led to tightened sanctions by Europe, the United States and Canada against the Tigers, as well as greater international cooperation in arresting Tiger smuggling rings. Some of the Tigers’ main financiers have since been arrested, and many of their assets have been frozen. It takes a lot of money and equipment to wage a conventional war, and those resources have become far harder for the Tigers to come by of late.

As STRATFOR has previously noted, if Sri Lankan troops manage to crush the remnants of the Tigers’ hard-pressed conventional military forces, the Tigers will have little choice but to give up on conventional warfare (at least for the time being). But the Tigers’ separatist struggle is more than 30 years old and has been marked by great brutality on both sides. Because of this, there is very little chance the Tigers will simply accept defeat and fade into history. Instead, now that the government has the military advantage, the Tigers can be expected to continue their war against the government by melting back into the populace and resorting to guerrilla tactics and terrorism.

In many ways, this will resemble events in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a militarily weaker force melted away in the face of a more powerful conventional military force. The Tigers, however, have a far more experienced and effective terrorist apparatus than either their Taliban or Iraqi counterparts. This struggle will therefore remain bloody in Sri Lanka (and perhaps even abroad).

Background

The Tigers are battling for the creation of an independent Tamil homeland for the country’s 10-15 percent Tamil minority, the dominant ethnicity in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The Tigers are struggling against the majority Sinhalese Buddhist-controlled government, which has fought the Tigers in a bloody civil war that has lasted nearly three and a half decades. Over the decades, the Tigers have developed an extremely sophisticated paramilitary organization. This force consists of not only ground forces (complete with artillery and even some armor), but also a sea wing that engages in arms smuggling and naval attacks against the Sri Lankan Navy — to include suicide boat attacks — a small air wing, and an elite force of militants trained to conduct assassinations and terrorist attacks known as the Black Tigers.

The Black Tigers became famous for suicide bombings (one of which killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991), and we are hard-pressed to think of another militant group that has assassinated as many VIPs, including several Cabinet ministers and numerous members of parliament, as have the Black Tigers. Last year alone, they killed a Sri Lankan member of parliament on Jan. 1, the minister for nation building on Jan. 8, and the highway minister on April 7. They also killed the Sri Lankan foreign minister in August 2005.

(click image to enlarge)

The Tigers’ fortunes have fluctuated over the years. Several times they have brought large swathes of northern and eastern Sri Lanka under their exclusive control, only to lose them to government offensives, such as an offensive launched in January 2001. As mentioned, international pressures on their finances and logistics in recent years, plus the loss of the strategically significant Elephant Pass in January — formerly a key logistics hub for their resupply efforts and an important base for their naval efforts — mean the Tigers are now in an uphill battle for survival. Compounding the Tigers’ woes, the government now is far better prepared, equipped and trained than it has been during previous military offensives. But despite being so hard-pressed and having taken such significant losses, there are no signs that the Tigers have lost the will to fight. They continue to hold out rather than surrender, and we have not seen news of desertions.

The Tigers’ material losses will be more difficult to overcome than their loss of personnel. They should be able to find new volunteers (or conscripts) among Sri Lanka’s Tamil population. Their ability to recruit should be aided by the Sri Lankan military’s policy of forcing Tamils into internment camps, something the Tigers also have leapt on as an international propaganda opportunity. Tiger militants are well-trained and are also subject to rigorous political indoctrination. With rare exception, the Tigers prefer to fight — or take their standard-issue cyanide capsules — and die rather than surrender.

This willingness for self-sacrifice is best seen in the Black Tigers, which were early adopters of suicide bombing attacks and have been among the most frequent users of the tactic. The Black Tigers also have employed more female suicide bombers than any other group. (They used a female suicide operative in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.) The Black Tigers reportedly have a waiting list of militants seeking to enter the unit — suicide bombers reportedly are held in almost mythical esteem by their ordinary Tiger colleagues — and Prabhakaran reportedly handpicks each member.

Insurgency and Terror

As seen from Iraq, Afghanistan and any number of historical examples, it is very difficult to eradicate an insurgency that can blend in with a sympathetic local population. Doing so is even harder when the insurgents can exploit international borders to create a place of refuge. Although Sri Lanka is an island, it is located very close to the coast of India. It lies just a few miles from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, an Indian state that, as its name implies, has a substantial ethnic Tamil population. Some Indian Tamils are sympathetic to the Tigers, and the Tigers have established a sizable presence in Tamil Nadu.

Sympathy in Tamil Nadu for the Tigers came into view May 5, 2009, when a large group of pro-Tiger Indian Tamil activists blocked a convoy of Indian army trucks in the city of Coimbatore because they believed the trucks were carrying supplies destined for the Sri Lankan military. The activists reportedly damaged and ransacked some of the trucks.

Support in Tamil Nadu means that the Tigers can — and do — exploit the international border to their advantage. The Tigers use India in much the same way that the Taliban and al Qaeda use Pakistan. The Tigers’ logistical and training infrastructure in India is especially important during times (like the present) when the Sri Lankan government is hammering them. The Tigers also have a long history of working with an array of other militant groups in India and the general region. This cooperation is not based on ideology, but rather on mutual benefit, such as bolstering the groups’ ability to smuggle weapons and other goods.

Another truism about insurgency is that it takes far fewer resources to sustain an insurgency than it does to fight a conventional war. The amount of ordnance expended in a single conventional battle can sustain months or even years of insurgent activity, especially if the insurgents can acquire ordnance from their enemy during their operations. Conducting terrorist attacks requires even fewer resources than insurgent attacks; terrorism is a cheap and time-tested means of hitting a militarily superior foe. When properly conducted, terrorist attacks are the ultimate exercise of asymmetrical warfare.

For a militant group to effectively wield terrorism as an asymmetrical weapon, however, it must gain mastery of a range of tactical skills that we refer to as terrorist tradecraft. These skills include, among other things, the ability to operate without being detected, the ability to collect intelligence on potential targets, the ability to procure munitions, the ability to recruit operatives, the ability to plan effective strikes and the ability to construct reliable improvised explosives devices (IEDs).

Through decades of trial and error, the Tigers have developed all of these skills, as evidenced by their large number of successful assassinations. In fact, they have a record of tactical success that would make any jihadist group green with envy. The Tigers excel at collecting intelligence, and their female operatives form a significant part of their intelligence apparatus, since they generally can travel more widely than males can and do not tend to arouse suspicions to the extent male operatives do. Female Tigers who are already willing to serve as suicide bombers not surprisingly have been willing to use seduction to obtain information critical to their cause.

The group has also long demonstrated the ability to operate in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, as well as in other non-Tamil majority areas. And it has conducted scores of attacks against military, financial and political targets and civilian soft targets in non-Tamil areas. The group conducted five suicide bombings in Colombo alone in 2008, and several attacks against soft targets like passenger buses and commuter trains. The group also has a cadre of very polished and experienced bombmakers who make reliable and effective IEDs.

Perhaps most spectacularly, the Tiger air wing launched a 9/11-inspired airborne suicide attack Feb. 20, in which their two remaining aircraft were loaded with explosives and sent out after dark on a suicide mission to attack Colombo. One of the planes was shot down, but the other plane reached the capital and struck the 12th floor of the 15-floor Inland Revenue Department, where it exploded — a scene captured by a Sri Lankan navy infrared camera and posted to YouTube.

External Link

• YouTube Video of Airborne Tiger Suicide Attack

(STRATFOR is not responsible for the content of other Web sites.)

It is thought that the Inland Revenue Department was not the intended target, but that the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and accidentally struck that building. According to Sri Lankan sources, the intended target may have been either the headquarters of the Sri Lankan air force, which is next to the building that was hit, or the president’s house or army headquarters, which also are close by. The decision to use the remaining Tiger aircraft in this type of suicide operation against the government in Colombo rather than risk losing them to advancing government troops is a prime example of the Tigers’ mind-set.

Mayhem in the Forecast

With the Tigers’ air wing now apparently gone, further 9/11-style suicide planes are unlikely. The Tigers, however, will almost certainly plan more terrorist strikes. Such attacks will be seen as retaliation against the Sri Lankan government. They also will be used to hurt the economy (and thus the government’s ability to finance its military efforts). And they will be used to force the government to divert troops from the northeast to provide security to other parts of the country, thus taking pressure off the Tamil heartland. The Tigers also have shown a limited cyberwarfare capability, which they can be expected to use to score propaganda points and wreak economic havoc when possible. In addition to assassinating VIPs and attacking passenger trains and buses, the Tigers have a long history of attacking villages and massacring Sinhalese Buddhist and Muslim civilians to foster a sense of terror.

We anticipate that small Tamil units will resume operations to massacre civilians, in particular Sinhalese Buddhist and Muslim civilians. The Tigers also probably will attack crowds of civilians and commercial centers. We also anticipate assassination attempts to be launched against military and political VIPs in Colombo, and against local/regional leaders and military and police commanders in the northeast. Attacks against passenger trains and buses also can be expected. STRATFOR sources in Sri Lanka advise that the Tigers are likely to strike at the Yal Devi Express, a train that runs from Colombo to Vavuniya and is of great symbolic value to Tamil-Sinhalese coexistence.

We believe there will be numerous attacks and ambushes targeting traffic on the A-9 road that leads from Colombo to Jaffna aimed at both military and commercial targets, blending terrorism and insurgency. Such attacks could involve ambushes and roadside IEDs, a tactic the Tigers have used with success in the past, such as with the roadside IED used in the January 2008 assassination of the minister of nation building.

Due to the long history of conflict in Sri Lanka (which has sometimes been fueled by external meddling), we do not share the assessment by some in the Sri Lankan government that the Tigers are all but dead. They may be severely damaged as a conventional military force — for a time at least — but the group’s cadre of dedicated, zealous militants will certainly spill a lot more blood in their quest for independence and vengeance against the Sri Lankan government.

From Sandy Strip of Sri Lanka, Tales of Suffering as War Bears Down

Thomas Fuller
The New York Times
April 25

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — In more peaceful times, the narrow, sandy strip of land that hugs the coast near the northeastern town of Mullaittivu might attract tourists to its Indian Ocean beaches.

Now, as the country’s long-running civil war appears to be reaching its climax, a picture of desperation is emerging from that roughly four-square-mile spit between a lagoon and the sea where rebels from the ethnic Tamil minority are making their last stand.

Stories of suffering have streamed out of the area along with the tens of thousands of civilians who were able to break through the front lines last week and straggle into overwhelmed hospitals and refugee camps.

Tim Pruchnic, an American surgeon working at a hospital in the northern town of Vavuniya, said in a telephone interview that many of his patients were so weak they were dying after operations that would not normally be life threatening.

After months in the combat zone, patients are exhausted, malnourished and dehydrated, said Dr. Pruchnic, who works with the aid group Doctors Without Borders. Another doctor who works with the aid group at the same hospital, Paul McMaster, said some of his patients were losing limbs to amputations because their injuries — often from shrapnel, gunshots and land mines — had gone untreated for too long and become infected.

Civilians have been trying for weeks and sometimes months to leave the ever-shrinking area of fighting between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north, but the rebels have been holding them as human shields, building berms that make it harder not only for soldiers to get in but also for civilians to get out, according to aid agencies and the Sri Lankan military. The rebels have also forced some civilians to take up arms, the United Nations says. The government, meanwhile, has ignored appeals from the United Nations, India, the United States and other nations for a cease-fire until all the civilians are out of the combat zone.

Last week, the government was able to explode one of the rebels’ berms, allowing about 100,000 civilians to flee.

“Even in ordinary times a population of 100,000 would be a huge burden on the health system,” said Gordon Weiss, the United Nations spokesman in Colombo. “But these are people who have had three months with very little food, they’ve traveled across mine fields and endured months of shelling and small-arms fire. It’s no surprise that the hospitals are overwhelmed.”

Shortages of doctors and nurses are also growing severe, in part because of what Mr. Weiss described as bureaucratic “bottlenecks” in the approval process for visas of foreign aid workers.

Some of the civilians who have fled ended up in the hospital at Vavuniya, where doctors say the maximum capacity is normally 600 patients. Last week, 1,700 people were crowded into its wards. Dr. Pruchnic said many of the patients, including children, arrived without their families.

“There are kids here who have had amputations, their mother and father are gone — their whole family is missing,” he said. “Yet they can still smile. I’m amazed at their resilience.”

On Saturday, the Tigers said that tens of thousands of civilians faced “imminent” starvation, according to a Web site that serves as their mouthpiece, Tamilnet.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which evacuated hundred of wounded civilians by fishing boats used as ferries in recent days, has also warned of the lack of food and an “acute shortage of vital medical supplies” in the combat zone.

The government’s advance has been slowed somewhat by the rebels’ earthen barriers, according to Brig. Gen. Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman. He said the military was now moving forward only several yards a day as troops cleared mines and booby traps. The rebels are equipped with at least one tank, artillery pieces, armor-plated vehicles, assault weapons and satellite phones, he said.

Conditions in the rebel-held territory are difficult to verify because journalists and aid workers have been barred from the combat zone.

The general also said the mingling of rebels among civilians had complicated the military’s advance.

Among the nearly 200,000 people who have escaped rebel-held territory since January, about 3,000 were determined to be fighters disguised as civilians, General Nanayakkara said. He estimates there are 500 fighters left in rebel-held territory.

“The moment we take all the trapped civilians out it’s just a matter of 48 hours to get rid of them,” General Nanayakkara said of the rebels.

Since late January, when rebel-held territory shrank significantly, about 13,500 civilians have been killed and 14,000 wounded, according to a United Nations tally. The United Nations estimates there are 50,000 to 100,000 civilians stuck on the sandy spit of land. The military says it is more like 15,000 people.

Whatever the number, the frailest among them may never make it out alive.

Patients arriving at Vavuniya hospital are usually young or middle-aged: Dr. Pruchnic says he has seen few elderly people.

“The old don’t seem to make it here,” he said. “There’s a few. But I think they’re mostly dying on the way.”

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York.

More than 6,000 Sri Lankan civilians killed in three months

Jeremy Page, South Asia correspondent
Times Online
April 24

(Reuters)

More than 6,400 Sri Lankan civilians have been killed and 14,000 injured in fighting between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels since mid-January, according to the United Nations.

The figures were not made public by the UN, but were circulated among foreign embassies in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, and released to the media by a foreign diplomat.

The UN's previous estimated death toll – released in similar circumstances a week ago – was 4,500.

According to its new figures, 6,432 civilians have been killed in the fighting since January 20 and another 13,946 have been wounded. There was no immediate comment from the UN's office in Colombo.

Related Links

• Sri Lanka guilty of 'humanitarian disaster'

• Final push to obliterate Tamil Tigers

The new death toll emerged four days after the Sri Lankan army advanced into a "no-fire zone" where it has pinned down the last of the Tigers with tens of thousands of civilians.

It came as India sent Shiv Shankar Menon, its Foreign Secretary, and M. K. Narayanan, its National Security Adviser, to Sri Lanka to press for a ceasefire to allow the civilians to flee the zone.

The army, which says that it has rescued more than 100,000 civilians from the zone since Monday, admits that some may have been killed, but insists the number is much smaller.

It accuses the Tigers of shooting many civilians as they tried to escape – an allegation that has been backed up by some of those fleeing the five-square-mile area on the northeastern coast.

It has also shown aerial video footage, taken from a surveillance plane, which appears to show Tigers shooting dead several members of a crowd of civilians on a beach in the no-fire zone.

The Tigers deny shooting civilians and accuse the army of killing at least 1,000 non-combatants in shelling on Monday alone.

It is impossible to verify information from either side as the government has banned most independent reporters and aid workers from visiting the frontline. The Times has been refused a journalist’s visa for Sri Lanka since August.

However, aid workers on the ground say that civilians have been killed by both sides inside the no-fire zone. They have also warned of a bloodbath if the army continues with its offensive before the remaining civilians are evacuated.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, accused the Sri Lankan Government on Wednesday of causing “untold suffering” and said that “the entire world is very disappointed”.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, has ordered a UN humanitarian team to visit the no-fire zone immediately and Britain is sending a minister to Sri Lanka on Monday.

India has been less outspoken until now, despite having 63 million ethnic Tamil citizens.

Analysts say that Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the ruling Congress Party, is keen to see the defeat of the Tigers, who assassinated her husband, the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991.

However, the coalition Government has come under mounting pressure from the Tamil community and is anxious not to lose its support in the country’s ongoing parliamentary elections.

"These killings must stop,” Pranab Mukherjee, India’s Foreign Minister, said in a statement as the two Indian officials were dispatched to Sri Lanka.

"The Sri Lankan Government has a responsibility to protect its own citizens and the LTTE [Tigers] must stop its barbaric attempt to hold civilians hostage."

The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils to protect them from discrimination by the ethnic Sinhalese majority.

Implications of the Manawan Attack

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Stratfor
April 2

On March 31, Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), called The Associated Press and Reuters to claim responsibility for the March 29 attack against a Pakistani police academy in Manawan, which is near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore and the Indian border. The attack had been previously claimed by a little-known group, Fedayeen al-Islam (FI), which also took responsibility for the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September 2008. Mehsud has also released an Urdu-language audio message claiming responsibility for the Manawan attack as well as a failed March 23 attack on the headquarters of the Police Special Branch in Islamabad. Mehsud, whom authorities claim was behind the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, also warned that there would be additional attacks all across the country in retaliation for U.S. drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Area. He even threatened to launch attacks in Washington, D.C.

It is not clear at this point if the two claims of responsibility for the Manawan attack are indeed contradictory. If FI is an independent group, it is possible that it was working with Mehsud in the assault on the police academy. However, it is also quite possible that FI is either part of the larger TTP (which is an umbrella group with many factions) or perhaps just a nom de guerre used by the TTP to claim certain attacks. When a reporter asked about the FI claim, Mehsud refused to comment. Two things can be ascertained from this: that Mehsud’s organization has the ability to conduct these attacks, and that a major jihadist figure like Mehsud has no real need to claim the attacks of others to bolster his reputation. In fact, lying about such a thing would hurt his well-established reputation.

It is a good bet, therefore, that the TTP was in fact involved in the Manawan attack. The odds are even greater when one considers the intelligence reports from a few days prior to the attack: that Mehsud had dispatched a group of 22 operatives from his base in South Waziristan, through the town of Mianwali in southwestern Punjab, to conduct attacks in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Pakistani authorities were actively searching for those operatives when the attack occurred in Manawan.

While STRATFOR has already published a political assessment of the Manawan attack, we believe it might also be interesting to look at the incident from a protective intelligence standpoint and examine the tactical aspects of the operation in more detail.

Sequence of Events

The attack on the police academy in Manawan happened at approximately 7:20 a.m. on March 29 as more than 800 unarmed police cadets were on the parade field for their regularly scheduled morning training. Witness reports suggest that there were 10 attackers who scaled the back wall of the academy and began to attack the cadets. Part of the attack team reportedly was dressed in police uniforms, while the rest reportedly wore shalwar kameez (traditional Pakistani dress). Several members of the team also wore suicide belts, and at least some of them carried large duffle bags (similar to those carried by the assailants in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore). The gunmen reportedly engaged the cadets with hand grenades and fire from assault rifles. As the gunmen raked the parade ground, many of the cadets reportedly fled the compound or barricaded themselves in various rooms inside the facility. Because the bulk of the people at the academy were cadets and not trained police, they were not issued firearms.

The armed guards at the academy were able to offer some resistance, but the attack team was able to make its way across the parade ground and into the barracks, where the attackers established defensive positions, apparently with the hope of initiating a prolonged hostage situation. Reports are conflicting as to how many hostages they were actually able to seize and control inside the barracks.

The Pakistani police and military responded aggressively to the attack. Within about 30 minutes, officers from the Elite Force — a highly trained branch of the Punjab Police responsible for counterterrorism — reportedly had surrounded the barracks building. By 9 a.m., paramilitary Pakistan Rangers and Pakistani army troops began to arrive. Many of the wounded cadets were evacuated from the parade ground using armored personnel carriers (APCs) to protect them from the attackers’ fire. The attackers apparently attempted to use grenades to attack the APCs, but were met with heavy suppressive fire from the security forces. Pakistani forces also apparently used tear gas against the attackers, as well as APCs and helicopter gunships. Eventually, the Elite Force went room to room to clear the barracks building of attackers. By 4 p.m., the siege had ended, with six of the attackers captured and four killed. (Three of the four reportedly killed themselves using suicide belts.) Despite initial reports of high casualties, it now appears that only eight police officers or cadets were killed in the attack, with more than 90 others wounded.

While armed assaults against paramilitary forces, convoys and other targets are common along the border with Afghanistan, this attack was only the second such attack in Lahore. Terrorist attacks in Pakistan have more commonly been committed by suicide bombers, and it appears that Mehsud’s group may have embraced a change in tactics, perhaps influenced by the success of Mumbai. (However, as we will discuss below, this latest attack, like the attack on the cricket team, was far from a spectacular success.)

Analysis

First, it must be recognized that jihadist attacks on police recruits are not uncommon. We have seen attacks on police training and recruiting centers in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other countries, and we have also seen them before in Pakistan. On July 15, 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a police recruitment center in Dera Ismail Khan, killing 26 people and wounding 35. The victims were at the center to take medical and written tests for entering the police force.

A training center like the one in Manawan provides an unusually large concentration of targets. The more than 800 cadets at the academy were a far larger group of police than is normally found in the police stations scattered throughout the country. The training center was also a far softer target than a traditional police station, where all the officers are armed. From media reports, it appears that there were only seven armed guards on duty at the academy at the time of the attack. The instructors allegedly were armed only with lathis (long canes commonly used by police in India and Pakistan). The academy’s rigid training schedule also provided a highly predictable target, as the attackers knew the cadets would be on the parade field from 7-8 a.m. every day.

With so many potential targets on the parade field and in the barracks, and with so many attackers, it is amazing that there were only eight people killed in this attack (one-fourth the death toll of the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting). This is an indication that the Manawan attackers were not nearly as well trained in marksmanship as the assault team that conducted the November Mumbai attacks, in which 10 gunmen killed 173 people. The 10 heavily armed Manawan assailants did not even succeed in killing one victim each in a situation akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

From a military standpoint, such a formation of massed people in the open would have been far more effectively targeted using mortars and crew-served machine guns, so it can also be argued that the attack was poorly planned and the attackers improperly equipped to inflict maximum casualties. Even so, it is quite amazing to us that attackers armed with assault rifles and grenades did not kill one victim apiece.

Of course, one thing that helped contain the carnage was the response of Pakistani security personnel and their efforts to evacuate the wounded under fire. While not exactly practicing what are known in the United States as “active shooter procedures”, the Elite Force officers did quickly engage the attackers and pin them down until more firepower could be brought to bear. The Elite Force also did a fairly efficient job of clearing the barracks of attackers. The Pakistani response ensured that the incident did not drag on like the Mumbai attacks did. The Elite Force went in hard and fast, and seemingly with little regard for the hostages being held, yet their decisive action proved to be very effective, and the result was that a minimum number of hostages were killed.

There were some significant differences from the situation in Mumbai. First, there was only one crime scene to deal with, and the Pakistani authorities could focus all their attention and resources there. Second, the barracks building was far smaller and simpler than the hotels occupied in the Mumbai attacks. Third, Manawan is far smaller and more isolated than Mumbai, and it is easier to pin the attackers down in a city of that size than in a larger, more densely populated city such as Mumbai. Finally, there were no foreign citizens involved in the hostage situation, so the Pakistani authorities did not have to worry about international sensibilities or killing a foreign citizen with friendly fire. They were able to act aggressively and not worry about distractions — or the media circus that Mumbai became.

The Future

Perhaps the most important thing to watch going forward will be the response of the Pakistani people to these attacks. In his claim of responsibility, Mehsud said the Manawan attack was in direct response to the expanding U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) campaign in Pakistan. Mehsud threatened that there would be more militant attacks in Pakistan and the United States if the UAV attacks did not stop. Clearly, Mehsud is feeling the heat from these attacks, and although he claims he is ready to be martyred, his bravado is belied by the fact that he is taking such extraordinary measures to try to halt the UAV campaign. He obviously fears the UAV strikes, not only for what they can do to him, but for what they can do to degrade his organization.

When the Elite Force completed the clearing of the barracks, several officers came out on the roof of the building, shouted “God is great” and fired celebratory shots into the air (something that is anathema to Western police and military forces). Many of the people gathered outside the academy joined in the shouting and loudly cheered the Elite Force. This sentiment was widely echoed in the Pakistani media.

Although the Manawan attack was intended to demoralize Pakistani security forces, it may have just the opposite effect. The bravery and dedication exhibited by the Pakistani police and soldiers who responded to the attack may instead serve to steel their will and instill professional pride. Mehsud’s recent threats, along with the militant attacks, may also work to alienate him from people who had been supportive of — or at least ambivalent toward — him and the jihadists.

Up until 2003, the Saudi public, and many in the government, pretty much turned a blind eye to the actions of jihadists in Saudi Arabia as long as the jihadists were concentrating their attacks on targets outside the kingdom. But when the jihadists declared war on the Saudi royal family and began to conduct attacks against targets inside the kingdom that resulted in the deaths of ordinary Saudis, the tide of public opinion turned against them and the Saudi government reacted aggressively, smashing the jihadists. Similarly, it was the brutality of al Qaeda in Iraq that helped turn many Iraqi Sunnis against the jihadists there. Indeed, an insurgency cannot survive long without the support of the people. In the case of Pakistan, that also goes for the support of Inter-Services Intelligence and the army. The TTP, al Qaeda and their Kashmiri militant allies simply cannot sustain themselves without at least the tacit support of Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus and army. If these two powerful establishments ever turn against them, the groups will be in serious peril.

Pakistan has long been able to control the TTP and al Qaeda more than it has. The country has simply lacked the will, for a host of reasons. It will be interesting to watch and see if Mehsud’s campaign serves to give the Pakistani people, and the authorities, the will they need to finally take more serious steps to tackle the jihadist problem. Having long battled deep currents of jihadist thought within the country, the Pakistani government continues to face serious challenges. But if the tide of public support begins to turn against the jihadists, those challenges will become far more manageable.

UN concerned for safety of Sri Lankan civilians

Ravi Nessman
AP


The United Nations expressed growing concern Friday for the safety of tens of thousands of children and other civilians trapped in the war zone in northern Sri Lanka and called on the Tamil Tiger rebels to let them leave.

The move came amid reports that scores of civilians have been killed by government artillery and rocket attacks on the rebel-held areas in recent days.

"At the moment, we have a very large number of people, including tens of thousands of children, trapped in a fast shrinking area," UNICEF's country representative Philippe Duamelle said. "They have poor access to shelter, health care and water and sanitation, and as the conflict lines get closer to them they are more and more exposed to the fighting."

Human rights groups have accused the rebels of using the hundreds of thousands of civilians reported trapped in the area as human shields against the government's offensive.

Duamelle said both sides must make every effort to avoid civilian casualties and appealed to the rebels to let the local population move out of harms way.

Fighting continued Friday, as Sri Lankan fighter jets and attack helicopters pounded Tamil Tiger positions across the war zone in support of advancing ground forces, the military said.

The rebel-affiliated Web site TamilNet said three civilians were killed and 33 wounded when army troops fired multi-barrel rocket launchers into civilian settlements in the rebel-held territory. The site also said insurgents killed 40 government soldiers.

Health officials in the rebel-held area reported Thursday that the military had shelled a hospital and a village inside a government-declared "safe zone" for displaced families, killing at least 30 people. Health officials said at least 67 civilians were killed in shelling since Tuesday.

The military denied firing into the civilian settlements and launching attacks on the "safe zone" and accused the rebels of carrying out the assault themselves to keep the civilians out of the area.

Rebel spokesman were not available for comment, but have denied the accusation in the past.

Independent accounts of the fighting are not available because reporters are barred from the war zone.

The government has vowed to crush the rebel group and end the quarter-century civil war in this Indian Ocean island nation. In recent weeks troops have forced the rebels out of much of their heartland in the north, boxing them into a small corner of the northeast, the military said.

The rebels have fought since 1983 to establish an independent state for minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of successive governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the violence.

Journalist killed in Sri Lanka

Parliamentary protests in Sri Lanka after the killing of an outspoken journalist who covered topics of high-level corruption. Sri Lanka is fighting a 25 years war with the Tamil Tigers, which left at least 70,000 victims.


See also: Transparency International on Sri Lanka

TIME on Lasantha Wickramatunga