The Hindu : International : 'U.S. can learn from Sri Lanka Army'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 11, 2004

International

International

'U.S. can learn from Sri Lanka Army'

By V.S. Sambandan

COLOMBO, JUNE 10. The United States is looking forward to learning from the "experience" and "tactics" of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in its 20-year war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The two countries are looking at the possibilities of increased military co-operation in enhancing the U.S. capability in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Sri Lankan security forces have experience in facing the kind of situation that our men and women are facing today in Iraq and Afghanistan," Lt. Gen. James L. Campbell, Commanding General, U.S. Army Pacific Command, told journalists here.

Lt. Gen. Campbell, here to attend Sri Lanka's first Multi Platoon Exercise (MPE) being conducted as part of its efforts to join the international peacekeeping efforts, said that the U.S. could "benefit from the tactics" adopted by the SLA in "dealing with improvised explosive devices," commonly used by the LTTE.

The MPE, to be held between June 12 and June 27, will have 45 participants each from Mongolia, Nepal, Bangladesh and the U.S., in addition to 70 Sri Lankan soldiers. The SLA described the MPE as the "biggest peacekeeping operation training" initiated in the country and one that "will definitely improve Sri Lanka's capacity to train its own peacekeepers for U.N. missions."

The SLA Commander, Lionel Balagalle, mooted the idea that the country should look at the possibility of joining U.N. peacekeeping during the early days of the ceasefire agreement between Colombo and the LTTE.

From its early days of being a largely ceremonial force performing internal security duties between the 1940s and the 1970s, the SLA is now "the largest employer in Sri Lanka" and creates around 10,000 vacancies annually.

During escalated fighting with the LTTE, it had a high desertion rate, estimated at about 10 per cent of the over 1.1-lakh strong Army.

The immediate context in which the MPE is being organised is the ceasefire, which has held for two years, and the need to meaningfully engage trained officers and men in a possible post-conflict scenario.

In the past three decades, the SLA has had its hands full in operations against Sinhala and Tamil militants.

In southern Sri Lanka, the Army had to counter the threats posed by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which attempted two failed insurrections before it took to Left-nationalist Parliamentary politics in the early 1990s and has now emerged as a major ally of the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance.

In northern and eastern Sri Lanka, the SLA and the LTTE were engaged in bitter battles from the mid-1980s till the ceasefire agreement was signed in February 2002. Despite the cessation of hostilities and with permanent peace still to be achieved, the armed forces maintain a state of alert in the northern and eastern districts.

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