Land Warfare: COIN lessons from Sri Lanka for Afghanistan | ADM Nov 2010

Among military circles globally there has been growing interest over Sri Lanka’s successful counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign that led to the military defeat of the formidable Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, making it one of the most significant COIN success stories since the defeat of the Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s, and perhaps the most remarkable COIN victory in the post-World War II era.

Serge DeSilva-Ranasinghe | Perth

Defeating an organisation like the LTTE was no inconsequential feat when considering the scale and sophistication of the group as an experienced and skilful practitioner of high-intensity, medium-intensity and low-intensity conflict.

It fielded a large and well equipped conventional army replete with heavy artillery, and prolifically used IEDs since the 1980s.

It developed the world’s most lethal non-state naval force; it was the first insurgent group to use suicide boats and suicide frogmen, and was exemplary in the conduct in amphibious warfare.

The LTTE was also the first insurgent group in the world to develop an air capability using single engine fixed-wing light aircraft.

Furthermore, its credentials in suicide terrorism, according to the FBI, included the invention of the suicide belt, pioneering the use of females in suicide terrorism, using light aircraft in suicide attacks, and creating dedicated military-suicide units, such as the elite Black Tigers and Black Sea Tigers.

The primary reasons for Sri Lanka’s success from which everything else transpired was due to both decisive political leadership and widespread public support for what was strongly perceived as a ‘war of survival’ for the Sri Lankan state.

The combination of these factors set the stage for the unprecedented mobilization of the state’s human, financial and material resources to decisively confront the LTTE, in what Western militaries refer to as a ‘whole of government’ approach.

In addition, Sri Lanka’s efforts to enlist the support of neighbouring countries in the region were critically important in shaping the final outcome of the campaign.

These efforts were made considerably easier given that the LTTE had become a serious regional, and to some extent, global security problem.

For example, as a direct result of its disregard for the Norwegian monitored ceasefire in Sri Lanka and its subversive actions within the Tamil diaspora in the West, Sri Lanka succeeded in banning the LTTE in the European Union and Canada in 2006, and readily acquired the political, financial and logistical support of key countries, particularly India and China.

In addition, relations with other neighbouring countries, namely Pakistan, Maldives, Malaysia and Indonesia, were also strengthened.

As a result of consolidating regional support, Sri Lanka streamlined the exchange of bilateral intelligence-sharing and succeeded in motivating neighbouring countries to crackdown on LTTE cells, smuggling and procurement operations within their borders.

An example of this co-operation can be seen by the Sri Lankan Navy’s successful operations to intercept LTTE warehouse ships in the deep sea, which in many cases were sunk several thousand kilometres off Sri Lankan territorial waters.

At the doctrinal level the military demonstrated its capacity to become a ‘learning organization’, a term fashioned by US COIN expert John A. Nagel who authored ‘Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife’.

In depth and comprehensive evaluations were conducted, analyzing the tactics and strategies employed in previous military campaigns, and consequently new tactics and strategies were devised and implemented.

The new strategies emphasized effective joint-force co-operation in the conduct of major military operations on land, sea and air, and to engage the LTTE on multiple fronts with the aim of dissipating its combat power and destroying its forces piecemeal.

The ability to learn and implement the lessons from previous campaigns led the Army to revise its land warfare doctrine to strongly emphasize small unit section level operations and the use of irregular units that operated extensively behind enemy lines.

In fact, the extensive use of irregular units behind enemy lines resulted in dozens of mid-level and senior LTTE field commanders being eliminated in ambushes forcing the LTTE to redeploy some 5,000 fighters in force protection duties to guard its lines of communication and supply.

Similarly, the adoption of small unit tactics by the infantry led to a higher incidence of close combat, and therefore, a higher incidence of casualties due to small arms fire.

The ability of small infantry units to infiltrate LTTE lines on a wider front (as opposed to column based advances), moving often undetected using the dense vegetation for concealment reduced the effectiveness of LTTE standoff weapons, such as artillery and mortars.

In previous campaigns, estimates indicated that infantry casualties inflicted by LTTE artillery and mortars were as high as 50-60 per cent of total casualties, while casualties due to small arms fire were estimated at around 30-40 per cent.

In Eelam War 4 (2006-2009), suggestions indicate that infantry casualties caused by LTTE artillery and mortar fire were reduced to about 40 per cent, while casualties due to small arms fire increased to nearly 50-60 per cent of total casualties.

The Navy also significantly enhanced its brown water capabilities by expanding, upgrading and raising new units to engage in small boat operations to counter the asymmetrical tactics used by the Sea Tigers, the maritime wing of the LTTE.

As previously mentioned, the Navy also concentrated on attacking LTTE warehouse ships in the deep sea which brought in large quantities of weapons and ammunition from overseas destinations.

The Air Force reorganized and focused on more effective air support to ground and naval forces, including close air support, aerial surveillance, strategic bombing and decapitation strikes.

Furthermore, in coalition with intelligence agencies, the Police were instrumental in countering LTTE suicide cells in and around Colombo, the nation’s political and commercial nerve-centre, by raising public support, awareness, participation and integrating surveillance, communication and intelligence gathering through the use of Vigilance Committees, a setup similar to the Australian neighbourhood watch system.

By doing so, within less than three years the Sri Lankan security forces rapidly intercepted the majority of LTTE suicide cells and thwarted many suicide operations before they could be executed.

LTTE vrs Taliban

The LTTE differed from the Taliban in that it had a formidable high-intensity conventional warfare capability, including naval and air capabilities.

At its peak, the LTTE could simultaneously confront several or more divisional sized military formations in combat, as well as launch large-scale amphibious attacks.

For instance, in 1996 the LTTE overran a military camp at Mullaitivu killing over 1200 troops and, similarly, in Operation Jayasikuru from 1998-2000, fought off three infantry divisions in sustained conventional combat.

Although the LTTE possessed more advanced land warfare capabilities than the Taliban, its comparative disadvantage was strategic geography and terrain as the insurgency in Sri Lanka was waged on a small island characterized by a jungle-clad, rural and semi-urban environment.

In Afghanistan, strategic geography, terrain and land area have had a far more decisive impact in enabling the Taliban to sustain operations against the US coalition by using the high-degrees of concealment offered by the mountainous terrain, and the ability to readily access safe havens located across Afghanistan’s porous 2,430km long border with Pakistan.

This would then suggest that land area is also a major consideration.

For example, Afghanistan has a total land area of 647,500 km2 and in addition there are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres within the border regions of Pakistan; while in contrast, Sri Lanka only has a land area of only 64,000 km2.

Another factor was that unlike the Taliban with its safe havens in Pakistan, the LTTE was unable to maintain a foothold in southern India and utilize Tamil Nadu as a safe haven, as it had done in the 1980s.

Although both groups fought to emplace an autocratic political structure, they varied considerably in that the LTTE was composed mainly of ethnic-Sri Lankan Tamils, both Hindus and Christians, focused on the creation of an ethnic-Tamil homeland; while the Taliban is focused on the formation of a religious theocracy based on a strict interpretation of fundamentalist Islam.

Indeed, the Taliban has an extensive capability to mobilize fighters outside of Afghanistan, which includes a practically unlimited manpower reserve in Pakistan, as well as the ability to recruit a sizeable number of foreign fighters from the global Islamic community.

Comparatively, the LTTE was unable to mobilize significant numbers of Tamils in India, and was seldom able to recruit fighters from within the Tamil diaspora, even though the diaspora provided considerable financial and material support to the LTTE.

Moreover, LTTE manpower reserves were always finite, as the Sri Lankan Tamil population is a small minority of no more than 2.5 million or 12-14 per cent of the country’s total population.

Finally, the LTTE had a highly centralized command and organizational structure with vast powers vested in the hands of a small senior cadre, which was in turn led by its dictatorial leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who wielded unlimited power within the organization.

In contrast, while the Taliban has Mullar Mohammed Omar as its spiritual leader, it has a far more decentralised and cellular based structure and therefore a greater capacity to regenerate its leadership.

The inability of the LTTE to revive in any form since its defeat, not even with a residual guerrilla warfare capability nor a capacity to engage in low intensity conflict, further substantiates the group’s vulnerability to the decapitation of its leadership.

Lessons for Afghanistan

Although there are significant differences between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, Sri Lanka’s example demonstrates that major wars are harder to win without strong political leadership and public support, both of which are symbiotic and form the basis of success.

In the West such commitment on both counts is seriously lacking, with political leadership and public support wavering at the prospect of casualties and sustained troop deployments.

In relation to troop numbers, the Sri Lankan state was able to mobilise vast numbers of troops to replace casualties and regularly add new units to the military’s order of battle.

However, in Afghanistan the lack of troops for both holding and offensive operations continues to be a problem, and this factor has in large measure compelled allied field commanders to conduct major military operations in haphazard phases.

Given such inherent political disadvantages faced by the US coalition in augmenting necessary troop strength and its inability to seal the porous border with Pakistan, the only significant and realistic transferable lesson that applies from Sri Lanka’s model to Afghanistan is co-option of enemy leaders.

As in the Sri Lankan example, co-option of enemy leaders into the democratic political mainstream proved vitally important in shaping the outcome of the civil war.

It reduced the strength of the LTTE by an estimated 40 per cent and thereby seriously eroded its influence and ability to regenerate.

As a direct consequence of this, the Sri Lankan military needed to mobilize around 300,000 combatants in order to win; but had the LTTE not fractured, the Sri Lankan military would have needed perhaps in excess of 500,000 combatants.

The benefits of co-option not only reduced the strength of the LTTE, but also provided: valuable intelligence and defecting former LTTE guerrillas who then engaged the LTTE, which proved instrumental in aiding military operations to oust the LTTE from areas it previously dominated.

Although co-option of enemy leaders appears to be the most realistic transferable lesson, the hurdles that the US coalition faces are significant.

Unlike in the example of the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE, the US military lacks an intimate knowledge of the Taliban’s internal machinations, including its tribal and factional politics, which is critical if it wishes to seriously exploit the Taliban’s internal divisions and reduce its influence and ability to regenerate.

However, given that 2014 has been declared as a drawdown date for US troops from Afghanistan, it is quite possible that US efforts to implement co-option as a viable strategy may be increasingly complicated.