Addressing the Passing-Out Parade of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) at Trincomalee the other day, Defence Secretary, retired Air Vice-Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha, said that the defence forces will be ‘employed exclusively for their primary role of military assignments’ in defending the country. ‘We expect to undertake a review of the armed forces structure to ensure optimal utilisation of resources and to enhance the operational efficiency by implementing targeted recruitment and focusing on quality over quantity in personnel selection,’ he added.
Fully 15 years after the end of the nation’s war on LTTE terror, there is a legitimate need to ‘undertake a review of the armed forces structure’. Months before the end of the conclusive Eelam War IV, western detractors of Sri Lanka and the nation’s armed forces had started talking about restructuring but in terms of post-war ‘down-sizing’. The list comprised serving and veteran diplomats, and also academics and journalists, who descended on Colombo in droves, to spread the message.
Their apprehensions were genuine, at least up to a point: What would a nation of 22 million do with an armed force of 200,000 soldiers? In their perception, the population-to-soldier ratio would have been too high. Their unmentioned fear was that in the absence of an enemy like the LTTE, would the Sri Lankan State structure disintegrate, and the armed forces stage a coup on whatever ground, flimsy or otherwise – whether immediately or over the medium-term.
In this background, does ACM Thuyacontha imply down-sizing in future recruitments when he speaks about ‘targeted recruitment and focusing on quality over quantity in personnel selection’? Leave aside the budgetary constraints that maintaining a numerously high armed forces in peace-time entail. They periodically get into the news for all the wrong reasons. It should be avoided in a nation where there was a real coup threat, though some six decades back.
Disciplined and loyal
Today, post-war, post-Aragalaya, the armed forces have proved to be as disciplined and as loyal to the Sri Lankan State than in many other nations that were / are similarly placed. But the question about down-sizing remains. It is here the question of ‘reviewing the armed forces structure’ – call it restructuring or whatever – gains relevance.
Maybe, it should have been done very long ago, and is delayed already. But there are issues. In a nation where the State was/is the single largest employer in terms of job opportunities and financial outages in the form of salaries, perks and over-heads, retiring / sacking a hundred thousand soldiers, almost overnight, was out of the question. Re-deployment was an option, but the question arose, why, where and how.
Credit should go, but only in a small way, for the post-war Team Gota for divining ways to re-deploy the armed forces in civilian duties even while in their fatigues and drawing the pay and pension of soldiers. In the war-ravaged areas, the troops were used to build camps, houses and community facilities for the IDPs, starting with around 200,000 Tamil civilians rescued from the LTTE’s vice-grip at Mullivaikkal.
In the second Mahinda presidency, post-war, transferring Urban Development to the care of the Defence Secretary too was aimed at facilitating smooth re-deployment and execution at the grassroots-level. Yet, when the chips were down, the soldier class resented being asked to put down their guns and take up bricks and cement, spades and shovels to refurbish the city payments and re-work the age-old drainage system.
Their resentment, which remained subterranean – and thankfully so – however showed possibly during Elections-2015. Data analysis after the presidential election showed that unlike as might have been expected, the families of the hundred thousand soldiers recruited in the last years of the war, did not vote for incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa. They were giving electoral expression to the resentment of their sons, husbands or brothers, re-assigned to work ‘Colombo’s gutters and sewers’ – as some of them put it crudely.
Primary role
Then there is the issue of the Defence Secretary’s declaration that the armed forces would be ‘employed exclusively for their primary role of military assignments’. It is not clear what he has in mind and how this government visualises the ‘restructured’ role of the armed forces. At a time when the world has shifted gears to accept ‘human security’ as a major element in national security, it is unclear if ACM Thuyacontha had included it in his concept of exclusive military assignment.
If, yes, it would require a formal re-designation or expansion of the role of the armed forces, where a ‘review of the structure’ may help. If not, what does it mean to have the numerically unsustainable armed forces to exclusive military assignments’? After all, post-war, the security forces have been regularly employed to support the police force in the maintenance of law and order.
They were there on the streets at the height of the Covid-Corona epidemic, to help out the civilian administration. Enforcing the Covid lock-down, at times crudely, if not outright violently, was all over the media. There were other areas of Covid management, where the armed forces set up medical camps and ran them for the Corona victims.
Likewise, in times of annual floods in the plains and land-slips in the upcountry, it is the three services of the armed forces that are there in the front, to undertake rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations. The truth is that no other agency of the government is as equipped and as trained as the armed forces, with their men having developed the kind of attitude required for the assignment.
Strategic assets
There is another aspect that the government should be looking at if the ‘review of the structure’ of the forces is what it is generally believed to be and the new role will be exclusively for military assignments in ‘defending the country’. The operational portion here is ‘defending the country’.
If the security of the country is going to be the exclusive job of the armed forces, and not just its primary task, any restructuring should focus on the Navy and the Air Force and not the Army. That’s logical, given that Sri Lanka is an island-nation with a vast EEZ that is set to expand in the coming years owing to the resetting of the outer-limits under the UN norms.
Issues over the continental-shelf, sea-bed mining and the like may not lead to confrontations but securing those waters and consequent operations would be a task for which only the Navy and the Air Force are the best suited. Already, the Navy proved its mettle in the midst of the Houthis’ attack on international maritime operations in distant waters, of course, in coordination with counterparts from neighbouring India.
It was indicative of the kind of role the Navy, and at times the Air Force, would have to play in the evolving circumstances, where economic assets are increasingly becoming strategic assets more than ever. Remember what Gota R said about the nation needing a ‘Blue Water Navy’ in the months after the LTTE war, and was mocked for the same. It may still be over-ambitious and not required but the Navy may have a bigger role to play in the coming years and decades – with the Air Force lending support.
Even without it all, the increasing incidence of drug-smuggling and the external apprehension of maritime terrorism, not only of the Houthis type but more so of the ‘Sea Tigers’ kind will always keep Sri Lanka on a subdued yet eternal alert for a long time to come. No, it is not about the revival of the ‘Sea Tigers’ but of the adoption and improvisation of their tactic by other groups that may not originate in this country or the neighbourhood but could still adversely impact on its security, big time or not.
Limits to the numbers
From this flows the inevitable corollary as to what the government intends doing with the Army, in terms of strength even if not of equipment. For an island-nation where the Navy and the Air Force should be the prime force-multipliers in that order, the Army has more men (and women) in their ranks, and multiple times.
It does not mean that the government will have to down-size the Army, here and now. Nor is it feasible, when viewed from multiple angles. Even the Defence Secretary is talking only about targeted recruitment in the future, not disbanding divisions or giving personnel a honourable discharge before their time.
Yet, unless the government is expecting another militant insurgency of the JVP kind or a combination of conventional war and terrorism of the LTTE kind, any talk about the ‘review of the structure’ of the armed forces cannot escape the issue. In the short, medium and long-term, the Sri Lankan State may not have to fight a full-fledged land-war, either here or elsewhere. As has been seen, there are limits to the number of soldiers that the nation can send to wear the UN’s Blue Beret in nations in war with itself.
Whatever be the recommendations and whatever the outcomes, any ‘review’ of the armed forces structure has to address this question. If the government is serious about it, then it will have to apply its mind also to the composition of any review panel that would be required to be set up. The question is if the panel should have academics and foreigners, including knowledgeable veterans, to provide multiple inputs as the outcomes would anyway be not only crucial but also critical.
There is a further, unstated aspect to the review. Given its political and ideological orientation, a lot of suspicion will be heaped on the JVP-NPP dispensation whenever they talk about the kind of ‘systems change’ that they had been advocating prior to the twin polls that they won last year. Needless to say, there are enough people around to pillory them on the subject. They may use the proposed review of the armed forces structure as a part of the ‘systems change’, which even the JVP leaders have stopped talking about, once elected power became an actual possibility.
Arguable and more
Independent of the Defence Secretary’s speech, news reports have it that the government is considering to dismantle the office Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) that was created to coordinate the tri-Services war efforts at the height of the Eelam War series. At least, there does not seem to be any move to name a successor to outgoing CDS, celebrated war veteran and only the second four-star general, Shavendra Silva, who retired over the year-end.
Well, the need for a CDS may be a part of the ‘review’ process. Or, at least, the government may want to wait for such a review before deciding on the matter because it is already thinking about restructuring the armed forces. In between, there is Gen Silva’s last official news conference, where he has defended his conduct as the CDS, at the height of the 2022 Aragalaya protests, which in turn was among the causes that has catapulted the current leadership to elected power last year.
Silva has dismissed past accusations, most of it on the social media that he acted at the instance of a foreign government and/or a foreign embassy in Colombo, and had only ensured that the forces did not shoot to kill innocent civilians who were unarmed, anyway. Needless to point out, he has waited through the past two years of service before retiring, and then only did he open his mouth. That’s like a disciplined soldier of 40 years.
Gen Shavendra Silva has a point – but at least the second part of it is arguable: Was he instructed by his ‘civilian’ higher-ups, including then Defence Secretary, Gen Kamal Gunaratne, a fellow-war veteran, or President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Supreme Commander, to take whatever action that was required to disperse the protesting mobs from outside the President’s Secretariat and from inside the President’s official residence, not to mention the ‘GotaGo Gama’ ‘protest-village’ on Galle Face Green?
If there was prior Intel inputs, did he do enough to stop the unprecedented coordinated arson involving the properties of close to 100 politicians, beginning from President Gota R and outgoing Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa? Silva now mentioning the despatch of the Air Mobile unit to ensure the personal security of later-day President Ranil Wickremesinghe was a stand-alone episode, which however needs to be applauded then and now.
If Silva’s focus is ensuring that innocents were not killed in an indiscriminate shoot-out, the professional / moral question arises: Did anyone in CDS Silva’s place have the right and authority to take his own decision – without possibly communicating it to either to those above him in the civilian hierarchy or to those below him within the armed force structure? It is a fine line in which it’s damned if you did and damned if you did not.
Say, for instance, if a section of the protestors had resorted to violence, holding innocent civilians in their tens of thousands as ‘human shields’, as the LTTE used to do, what would have been the outcome if Silva had followed his conscience? That is to say, did Silva had enough intel input that the protestors would not turn violent at all, at least in the main Galle Face Green venue, drawing the attention of the international community and their media that had gathered in numbers?
In this case, like many others in his place, Silva would have been hauled up before international fora, if had done whatever was required to disperse the crowds and restore complete peace – which was achieved with minimal force, but only after the exit of President Gota. Without using any force, and without dispersing those crowds, Silva ensured that the violence did not escalate then or since.
No one has damned him for it, at least in public. Of course, there is the report of a three-member committee of veterans, appointed by successor President Ranil Wickremesinghe, which has not been published yet. If the government decides not to publicise the report in the good precedent of the armed forces, it could consider forwarding the same to any committee that it may set up to ‘review the structure’ of the armed forces.
That could still only be a beginning, as larger issues still remain to be addressed, as Silva’s was the kind of behaviour that many in his place elsewhere in the world had displayed and deployed at the height of the ‘coloured revolutions’ through the past decade. Post-Aragalaya, in Bangladesh in the shared South Asian neighbourhood, the Army chief said as much when pressured by the Hasina government to put down the violent mobs – but only during the second edition. Hasina (too) read the writing on the wall and exited. In between, the Army’s pre-announced diffidence, possibly flowing from the building up of dissent from within, said it all.
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)