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Neville de Silva on B Raman's assesment of Vanni battles


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Raman’s war and his historical analogies

By Neville de Silva

The other day a journalist friend of mine (more a TV person than a print journalist) emailed me an article by B. Raman, a former additional secretary of India’s cabinet secretariat and currently the director of the Institute For Topical Studies in Chennai.

Given the political turbulence in Tamil Nadu over Sri Lanka and the pressure by Chennai politicians on India’s central government to take positive action to ensure a ceasefire in Sri Lanka, it was useful to read what a Chennai-based analyst whose writings appear regularly in the Colombo media had to say about the military conflict. More so since he had decided to title this particular piece “Kilinochchi: The Kiss of Death.” That apparently has to be read with a previous article he wrote that was called “Kilinochchi: The Spectre of Stalingrad.”

I remember that his analogy of Stalingrad and the possibility of Kilinochchi turning into a Stalingrad for the Sri Lankan military was rubbished in a riposte that exposed Raman’s lack of knowledge of that battle in the Soviet theatre of war. In this particular article Raman not only continues to claim that Kilinochchi could turn out to be another Stalingrad but also now cites the Allied victory at El Alamein against Field Marshal Rommel’s Panzer Armee Africa as a possible scenario in the battle for Kilinochchi. Since the Stalingrad analogy has already been dismissed as inappropriate and even irrelevant I would not delve into that given space constraints.

What does interest me in Raman’s second piece is the new analogy of El Alamein. Says Raman : “The battle being fought for Kilinochchi is a combined miniature version of the battles for Stalingrad in the erstwhile USSR and El Alamein in North Africa. At Stalingrad, the Soviet Army beat back the Nazis after inflicting heavy casualties on them. At El Alamein, the allied troops commanded by Gen Bernard Montgomery (later a Field Marshal) beat back the advancing Nazi Army commanded by Gen Rommel with heavy casualties. These two battles marked the turning points in the Second World War.”

While it is true that they were decisive battles and did indeed turn the tide against the Axis forces, one must ask seriously whether Raman is not oversimplifying the Allied victory in El Alamein under Montgomery. Had Raman referred to the First Battle of El Alamein, then one might have conceded his point though the outcome of Kilinochchi is still awaited. In July 1942, after Rommel’s success at the Battle of Gazala he struck deep into Egypt threatening the Commonwealth’s use of the Suez Canal. General Claude (the Auk) Auchinleck withdrew the Eighth Army to within 50 miles of Alexandria to a point where the Qattara Depression came within 40 miles of El Alamein on the coast. This gave the defenders a short front to defend and secure flanks because the tanks could not traverse the Depression. In early July the Axis advance was halted in the First Battle for El Alamein.

If Raman had compared, though again the analogy is somewhat tenuous, to Gen Auchinleck’s halting of Rommel it might have been more meaningful. But when he cites Montgomory’s victory over Rommel, then Raman is surely looking at a desert mirage. By quoting Churchill, Raman is paying the usual tribute given to Montgomery as one of the greatest generals of the Second World War and comparable to Wellington before him. Much of this image was built by Montgomery himself, a self publicist and as some say, an egomaniac. When Montgomery died in early April 1976 and the usual gushing tributes flowed in I was on the Sunday Observer. I remember writing an article in that paper debunking this overestimation of Montgomery. If after 30 years I remember correctly the headline I gave to it was “Desert Rat or Field Mouse”. It might be recalled that while Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was called the Desert Fox for his cunning ploys and thrusts and counter thrusts in the African deserts, the British Eighth Army was called the Desert Rats.

After defeating Rommel at El Alamein, Montgomery did not pursue the battered Panzer Armee which had hardly any armour left and were largely without supplies. Montgomery’s overcautious pursuit of Rommel resembled more of a field mouse than the much vaunted desert rats and military historians as well as serving military men have criticized him severely for allowing Rommel’s tattered army to escape when it could possibly have been annihilated. Relying on military historian Corelli Barnett’s superbly written book “The Desert Generals”, I argued that Montgomery was overrated as a general and the real credit should go to his predecessor Gen Auckinleck who halted Rommel.

If Raman is arguing that like Montgomery the LTTE forces would not only be able to blunt the offensive of the Sri Lankan forces but turn the battle later into an offensive victory and inflict reversals, then Raman has obviously not studied the Second Battle of El Alamein in any depth and has cursorily assigned great military prowess to Montgomery, implying of course that Prabhakaran could become another Montgomery. Raman forgot a crucial factor in this particular El Alamein battle. Rommel was sick and away recuperating. His second-in-command Gen: Stomm died of a heart attack on the field and Rommel was hurriedly sent back to take charge.

More importantly, a point that Raman misses or carefully avoids mentioning, is that Rommel attacked though he was facing over-extended supply lines and a relative lack of reinforcements and was well aware that massive reinforcements of both men and material were arriving and more were due to arrive to strengthen the Allied defence. It is true Montgomery stopped Rommel at Alam el Halfa Ridge and Point 102.

Having failed Rommel dug in. This is the crucial point. After some six weeks of preparation when the Eighth Army was ready to strike Montgomery had superiority in men and material on his side. Accounts vary but it is generally accepted that Montgomery had between 220,000-230,000 men and 1,100- 1,300 tanks. They faced a Panzer Armee 80,000 - 115,000 troops and 280-559 tanks. Perhaps the difference in numbers on the Axis side is that some historians and writers are counting only the German component, as the Panzer Armee consisted of a mix of German and Italian infantry and armour. Moreover Montgomery had more artillery and aircraft, though perhaps not the 3 to I ascendancy ratio that military instructors at staff colleges consider necessary for an offensive.

If Raman is saying that the LTTE could turn the tables on the Sri Lankan military in the same way Montgomery did at El Alamein then surely he is forgetting the crucial element in that battle. That is the vastly superior forces, armour, air and artillery support that the Eighth Army had over Rommel who was not getting the logistical support because the German Army was well and truly stuck in the Russian front.

Surely Raman is not suggesting that the LTTE has such superiority in numbers, equipment and logistical support? If he is, living in Tamil Nadu as he does, then he obviously knows much more than anybody on this side of the Palk Straits, save the LTTE leadership.

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081228/Columns/thoughts.html

Kilinochchi and Raman’s kiss of death

By Neville de Silva

Bahukutumbi Raman, a retired additional secretary of India’s cabinet secretariat who has set himself up as an analyst of topical issues in some Chennai outfit, has come a cropper again. In one of his regular pieces to the local media he wondered, nay virtually predicted, that Kilinochchi besides being another Stalingrad would be the Sri Lankan army’s fatal kiss.

Raman was suggesting that overrunning the LTTE’s administrative and political ‘capital’ could prove to be fatal. Why? Because, said Raman with assumed sagacity and wisdom, the LTTE had laid sufficient traps for the state security forces and built up enough defences to fight a significant battle to save their capital. Raman saw the forces being lured into a trap that would prove dangerously costly. In fact, resorting to historical analogy Raman saw the then forthcoming battle for the LTTE’s capital as a combination of the battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein in North Africa. He wrote: “The battle for Kilinochchi is a combined miniature version of the battles of Stalingrad in the erstwhile USSR and El Alamein in North Africa.”

Raman was way out on a limb when he cited the example of Field Marshal Montgomery’s defeat of Erwin Rommel as I pointed out in a previous column, for he had actually stood the analogy on its head. Now, having witnessed the fall of Kilinochchi, Raman swiftly changes tack and historical circumstance and tries to draw a parallel with the US army’s unchallenged entry into the Iraqi capital during the invasion of that Arab country post 9/11. Referring to the jubilation shown in many parts of Sri Lanka at the news of the fall of Kilinochchi Raman sees this as a reminiscent of “scenes witnessed after the US army moved without resistance into Baghdad.”

So the former Indian government official now passing himself off as an expert analyst of Sri Lankan affairs, particularly politico-military, takes a great leap forward from El Alamein to Baghdad because he finds the Baghdad scenario somewhat more comfortable than that of El Alamein into which he stumbled or bungled without the slightest knowledge of how Field Marshal Montgomery defended and then built up sufficient strength in men and materiel to launch an offensive. Having made a serious faux pas in assessing the LTTE’s military strategy and tactics with regard to Kilinochchi, Raman could only resurrect whatever credibility he has by praying for a Stalingrad.

The Sri Lankan armed forces do not have to cope with a severe winter as the German forces did on the Russian front- a second front opened by Hitler against the best counsel of some of his senior military men. Nor do the Sri Lankan forces have the same logistical problems such as long and often vulnerable supply lines that faced the German troops who were sucked in further and further into the vast wastes of Russia. These historical comparisons apart, Raman does not explain how it is that Prabhakaran withdrew from Kilinochchi having made the bravura remark that if President Rajapaksa thought that he could capture Kilinochchi he was living in “dreamland.” What the LTTE leader’s rather dismissive observation of the government’s intention implied was that Kilinochchi would be defended with all the strength and military might at the Tigers’ command. Any hope of capturing Kilinochchi would then be nothing more than somebody’s pipe dream.

The situation that faced the Sri Lankan forces that entered the LTTE’s de facto capital might be akin to Raman’s more recent analogy of the American troops entering Baghdad. But then did Raman believe in Prabhakaran’s boast that implied Kilinochchi would never be taken from them. The critical question here is whether Prabhakaran was doing what Goebbels was best known for, the big lie that was intended to mislead by convincing his enemy and the people of the truth of what he carefully propagated.

If Prabhakaran was indeed practising the Goebbelsian art of trying to convince the people of something that is not so, he could have had two reasons for doing so. One was to try and convince the advancing Sri Lankan forces that he was going to stand firm at Kilinochchi and fight. Unlike in General Custer’s last stand, Prabhakaran of course would not be there. His field commanders would have to defend the capital and reportedly carry the can for not staying there and fighting as subsequent news reports suggested.

Also such defiant words by Prabhakaran would shore up the flagging spirit of the diaspora Tamils who had been led into believing in the invincibility of the LTTE forces but were now beginning to doubt their own propaganda fed to them by such umbrella organisations as the British Tamils Forum and others similar to it in the western world. There could be another reason for the LTTE leader’s dismissive words. By saying they would stand and fight in Kilinochchi, Prabhakaran was saying the government forces would have to pay a heavy price. This would lead to more caution and greater preparedness on the part of the government troops. It would also mean more planning to avoid civilian casualties as it has been reported that the LTTE was using civilians as a human shield and as labour. The time gained would be used by Prabhakaran to move the LTTE apparatus lock, stock and barrel out of Kilinochchi and deeper into the northeast jungles.

Pro-LTTE websites reported that the Sri Lanka army “has entered a virtual ghost town as the whole civilian infrastructure as well as the centre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had shifted further northeast.” But in trying to minimise the impact of the fall of Kilinochchi and diminish the role of the Sri Lankan forces, pro-LTTE websites such as TamilNet only exposed Prabhakaran’s words as nothing but hollow and even misled those like Raman who say that the LTTE like any rebel army would be defeated only when it did not have the support of the people and a sanctuary it can fall back on. If Tamil Nadu denies that sanctuary and some of its people deny their support then the objective conditions that Raman speaks of will change significantly.

While it is true that the LTTE will still continue as a hit and run force, one that will harry and harass and engage in acts of terrorism, it would seem right, now that as a conventional army its effectiveness has been drastically curtailed. If the military assessment of experts is correct then what seems like the cornering of the LTTE has a lesson for those western pundits and diplomats. It is necessary to defeat terrorism militarily before acceptable political solutions are worked out to resolve the larger question.

I don’t think that anybody who is seriously intent on solving this problem denies that a political solution needs to be hammered out. The question is when and how. Sri Lanka is trying to show that there are other approaches than those suggested by bystanders who do not have to live with terrorism on the streets.

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/090111/Columns/thoughts.html

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டமிழ் டயஸ்பராக்கள் மாதிரித்தான் ராமனும் அதிகமாக நம்பிட்டார் போல .

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