Infiltration in Sri Lankan Defense establishment

The much expected moves to weaken and ultimately topple Sinhala Nationalist Rajapakse government is well and truly underway under the auspice of the International Community (read USA and India). A partnership with the traditional pro-Western UNP is very much expected along with the help of few other fringe political groups like CWC whose leadership is remote controlled by the policy makers across the Palk-straight. It’s also fair to expect the Muslim polity and the labour unions to rattle when they are instructed to do so by their handlers.

To the eyes of the ordinary people, the unexpected players who are already active yet almost invisible are the elements within the defense and security establishments of Sri Lanka. Masked by the daily incidents of the escalated fighting, the targeted activities of the elements within security and defense establishments are hard to isolate and identify for the ordinary. It’s fair to note that this is the 1st time in the history of Sri Lanka elements within the security and defense establishments are activated for a serious political project by foreign powers and to be even escalated to a bigger scale in the coming months.

History has shown that such involvement of defense and security elements in a country provokes militarization of politics and ultimately paves the way for military rule. There are few examples in Latin American and Pakistan in South Asia, all cold war era legacies. In many ways current handling and the attitude shown towards Sri Lanka by the IC is very similar to the attention and attitude received by Pakistan during the cold war.

The opportunities for the foreign intelligence services to recruit assets within the key divisions of the Sri Lanka’s military and security defense establishments are amble. The fore most reason being all officers and specialists get trained in Western and Indian defense and security academies which expose them at individual level to the recruiters in their own turf. The availability of funds and other incentives to tempt valuable assets into their sphere of influence is not going to be very challenging.

The initial and the current objective seem to be to provoke LTTE into launching a serious offensive in the Northern Theater. An offensive that would give a disastrous blow to the government troops which in turn will shatter Rajapakse government’s standing among the Sinhala constituency and topple his government. The chosen approach seems to be escalated arbitrary killings and terror campaign in the occupied Jaffna peninsula and even parts of East. The choice of Jaffna and Trincomali for such provocation has atleast 2 reasoning:

• Majority of Diaspora being Northern and Trinomial origin are expected to agitate and put pressure on LTTE to take action.
  Directly provoke the LTTE leadership which in IC’s mind is dominated by Northerners.
  

The other alternative is to deploy DPU targeting innocent civilians randomly aiming very high casualties. This option may have logistical difficulties and/or have challenges in the execution; or to be used as 1 of the next level of heightened provocative acts. The other options that cannot be ruled out are to deliberately misguide airforce pilots and artillery field gunners with false intelligence to create mass casualties.

Mahinda on the other hand will look for ways to ease the pressure on him that comes in the all kind of forms from worsening economic conditions, political challenges, human rights activists. While Mahinda understands what awaits the government forces if they were to venture out in the North, he needs to orchestrate events time to time to prevent the opposition gather momentum and focus. Among the choices he has are:

• Attempted assassination on him or his brothers by a signature suicide method.
  Bombing of public places in the south with reasonable amount of casualty to keep the public under the fear.
  

In the mean time the pro-western elements in south and the IC’s front institutions and media out lets would embark on a campaign of encouraging LTTE to launch offensive in the North. If no action is seen forthcoming from the Vanni heartland then it would be reasonable to expect additional moves made to make the international atmosphere as conducive as possible for such action.

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Related:

Understanding IC’s game plan and the needed response

Edited August 11, 200718 yr by kurukaalapoovan