“My source revealed when I met him somewhere in the East, how he communicated important details with their leader, Pottu Amman. “I operated in Colombo. Those days I shared the most important details with Pottu speaking to him as though he were my girl friend. Anyone who was listening to our conversation would have thought I was talking to my girl friend. But that information would open the door to the next terror attack against Sri Lanka”, he said. That’s Tiger strategy. He was collecting and passing on information for more than 3years to plan for the Katunayake International Air Port attack in 2001.”-------------------------------------------------
by Mathali – Exclusive to Sri Lanka Guardian
(May 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) No doubt our intelligence network is not working as an independent unit without political intervention. It totally depends on the ruling political parties. The UNP and SLFP have been playing with this heart of the country’s security in the past and continue to do so in the present.
As a subject, military intelligence should not for a toy doll in the hands of rowdy politicians. It should be an independent unit with solidarity – especially so when we are facing an enemy engaging in strategic guerilla warfare for more than 3 decades. Sadly, things are not as they ought to be.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was born in 1976 under Uma Maheswaran and Prabhakaran. They established their intelligence unit early in the 1980s under Vinayagamoorthy Muralidaran aka Col. Karuna Amman. After that Shanmugaligam Shivashankar alias Pottu Amman was an appointed his successor. It was called TOSI. Its work was strategically well thought out and they engaged in an artful game against the Sri Lankan Government and their internal and external enemies. One day I met a former top level LTTE intelligence officer who had worked with Pottu Amman for more than 10 years. But he has kept away from the LTTE since Col. Karuna Amman’s estrangement from the LTTE in March, 2004.
My source revealed when I met him somewhere in the East, how he communicated important details with their leader, Pottu Amman. “I operated in Colombo. Those days I shared the most important details with Pottu speaking to him as though he were my girl friend. Anyone who was listening to our conversation would have thought I was talking to my girl friend. But that information would open the door to the next terror attack against Sri Lanka”, he said. That’s Tiger strategy. He was collecting and passing on information for more than 3years to plan for the Katunayake International Air Port attack in 2001.
While the LTTE’s intelligence gathering is so sophisticated and advanced, what is happening to the Sri Lankan state’s intelligence gathering? Why are we saying in this article that the situation is very bad?
“Intelligence” is one of the most important subjects for running any country or movement. In India they have been maintaining a few intelligence departments some of which operate world-wide. So also are Pakistan, the US, Russia and Israel playing great games against their enemies and establishing their power in the world with their myriad spies and numerous espionage agencies.
According to Sun Tsu, the well-known War Specialist from Ancient China in his treatise The Art of War, “Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.”
But Sri Lanka’s intelligence services have become the dolls and play-things of the ruling parties. Further, their structures are ever-changing depending on the whims of Government. They are never based on military needs and priorities. They are a mere political tool. No country as far as we can tell is playing with its military intelligence and their members like Sri Lanka.
I have many examples of how Sri Lankan politicians have been playing with their intelligence services in the past and continuing their games into the present. I see that the Rajapakse regime also does not understand how to organize the national intelligence network effectively to fight terrorism and other enemies. We should not think only of the LTTE and other armed Tamil militant groups as our enemies. In fact, a country like Sri Lanka has more enemies coming from outside the country in the guise of social reformists, social activists, peace activists, businessmen et al.
Indeed we have never heard of the country (Sri Lanka) having established an intelligence unit for monitoring bribery and corruption among the diplomatic services – a key drain on military procurement allocations. Unfortunately we do not understand how to create an in-depth intelligence network that is monitoring all the enemies arrayed against the country.
I have identified a few cases from inside Sri Lanka’s intelligence services to start a series of articles on this subject; this being the first in that series. Actually Sri Lanka’s intelligence network is working without any thought out strategies. However there do exist third and second level members of these services who have been doing a genuine job against their enemies. But much of the intelligence collected by personnel at those two levels, though passed on to the first level, has gone unused. Unfortunately such unused intelligence, if properly interpreted, would have been a cure for the country’s ills.
One day last week I met two top level intelligence officers who are facing this troubling problem and are now living under fire because of the country’s failing strategies. “We were destroyed. It’s our fate. Even in the past other genuine persons have faced this unfortunate situation like us. But we cannot any longer remain silent in this game if Sri Lanka is to have a genuine intelligence network” they told me.
One of them started to reveal his experiences as an intelligence officer against the LTTE’s Colombo network. Some details of his revelations.
(May 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) No doubt our intelligence network is not working as an independent unit without political intervention. It totally depends on the ruling political parties. The UNP and SLFP have been playing with this heart of the country’s security in the past and continue to do so in the present.
As a subject, military intelligence should not for a toy doll in the hands of rowdy politicians. It should be an independent unit with solidarity – especially so when we are facing an enemy engaging in strategic guerilla warfare for more than 3 decades. Sadly, things are not as they ought to be.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was born in 1976 under Uma Maheswaran and Prabhakaran. They established their intelligence unit early in the 1980s under Vinayagamoorthy Muralidaran aka Col. Karuna Amman. After that Shanmugaligam Shivashankar alias Pottu Amman was an appointed his successor. It was called TOSI. Its work was strategically well thought out and they engaged in an artful game against the Sri Lankan Government and their internal and external enemies. One day I met a former top level LTTE intelligence officer who had worked with Pottu Amman for more than 10 years. But he has kept away from the LTTE since Col. Karuna Amman’s estrangement from the LTTE in March, 2004.
My source revealed when I met him somewhere in the East, how he communicated important details with their leader, Pottu Amman. “I operated in Colombo. Those days I shared the most important details with Pottu speaking to him as though he were my girl friend. Anyone who was listening to our conversation would have thought I was talking to my girl friend. But that information would open the door to the next terror attack against Sri Lanka”, he said. That’s Tiger strategy. He was collecting and passing on information for more than 3years to plan for the Katunayake International Air Port attack in 2001.
While the LTTE’s intelligence gathering is so sophisticated and advanced, what is happening to the Sri Lankan state’s intelligence gathering? Why are we saying in this article that the situation is very bad?
“Intelligence” is one of the most important subjects for running any country or movement. In India they have been maintaining a few intelligence departments some of which operate world-wide. So also are Pakistan, the US, Russia and Israel playing great games against their enemies and establishing their power in the world with their myriad spies and numerous espionage agencies.
According to Sun Tsu, the well-known War Specialist from Ancient China in his treatise The Art of War, “Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.”
But Sri Lanka’s intelligence services have become the dolls and play-things of the ruling parties. Further, their structures are ever-changing depending on the whims of Government. They are never based on military needs and priorities. They are a mere political tool. No country as far as we can tell is playing with its military intelligence and their members like Sri Lanka.
I have many examples of how Sri Lankan politicians have been playing with their intelligence services in the past and continuing their games into the present. I see that the Rajapakse regime also does not understand how to organize the national intelligence network effectively to fight terrorism and other enemies. We should not think only of the LTTE and other armed Tamil militant groups as our enemies. In fact, a country like Sri Lanka has more enemies coming from outside the country in the guise of social reformists, social activists, peace activists, businessmen et al.
Indeed we have never heard of the country (Sri Lanka) having established an intelligence unit for monitoring bribery and corruption among the diplomatic services – a key drain on military procurement allocations. Unfortunately we do not understand how to create an in-depth intelligence network that is monitoring all the enemies arrayed against the country.
I have identified a few cases from inside Sri Lanka’s intelligence services to start a series of articles on this subject; this being the first in that series. Actually Sri Lanka’s intelligence network is working without any thought out strategies. However there do exist third and second level members of these services who have been doing a genuine job against their enemies. But much of the intelligence collected by personnel at those two levels, though passed on to the first level, has gone unused. Unfortunately such unused intelligence, if properly interpreted, would have been a cure for the country’s ills.
One day last week I met two top level intelligence officers who are facing this troubling problem and are now living under fire because of the country’s failing strategies. “We were destroyed. It’s our fate. Even in the past other genuine persons have faced this unfortunate situation like us. But we cannot any longer remain silent in this game if Sri Lanka is to have a genuine intelligence network” they told me.
One of them started to reveal his experiences as an intelligence officer against the LTTE’s Colombo network. Some details of his revelations.
I cannot publish because of the need to protect their lives.
As my source detailed to me, one day this April, two intelligence officers were released from jail by the courts when they finished their 3 month sentences on top of another 3 1/2 months as interdicted persons without monthly salaries. They had lived on their friends’ generosity. They were involved with the crack down of the LTTE network in Colombo.
“The LTTE’s main strategy for implementing their Colombo plans is very complete. They have invested lots of money in Colombo hiring Tamil businessmen, with two conditions. One was a percentage of their profit being put into LTTE accounts annually. The second was that any persons sent from the Wanni or any other place by the LTTE should be engaged with their business without any fuss,” he said.
In all likelihood such persons who are sent from the Wanni by the LTTE are working as intelligence officers for them. Their task was simply to collect information on their enemies or be sleepers till the day they are activated for some mission. An example is when the Black Tigers come to attack and stay for short times in the area. It is a non-suspicious way to strike at the right time without being caught or suspected.
Intelligence services in Sri Lanka have been monitoring this kind of Tiger strategy and started taking counter-measures again such Tiger moles. But the specific unit assigned this task against the LTTE is established under politicians. The late Minister Sripathi Sooriarachchi especially had given his full support and backing to this unit but he had leaked lots of secrets when he was ousted from the Government by President Rajapakse.
The LTTE’s Colombo network was facing a very troubled situation when Col. Karuna Amman broke away from the LTTE in 2004. The LTTE faced severe challenges to their money collecting operations in Colombo because Karuna’s members started collecting money for themselves from Colombo. Some intelligence services members also supported Karuna and they came to be aware of core LTTE sources and elements in Colombo. They can break the LTTE network from Colombo if they wished.
Meanwhile, the International Community blamed the Government for the latter’s Human Rights violations, and here intelligence members were trapped because of their work with Karuna. Some pro-LTTE movements launched mass campaigns against the kidnapping and ransom cases in Colombo. But, these cases happened more than two decades ago in Colombo against the Government of Sri Lanka. Some enemies in the country opened their eyes as if these happened against the LTTE. We have received lots of information on how the LTTE sends their members to Colombo as journalists, NGO activists, et al. We also have information on how many persons regularly are contributing to the LTTE’s media.
But I am mainly addressing here the lack of vision in the intelligence leadership. Basically they never have known how to supervise a skilled spy. They have failed to induct such genuine and skillful persons into the high ranks of the intelligence services. All our leaders in the intelligence services have few ongoing activities against the nation’s enemies. But they are doing some things against their own members and their own sources.
What happened when Sri Lankan authorities arrested Com. Gajanayake? Actually Com. Gajanayake was a political tool and he was playing games with other good sources and ground members of the intelligence services. One person, who was a close friend of Gajanayake named Deshapriya (Air force), comes from Kiribathgoda. He has openly revealed all details of the intelligence network in Colombo on last year. He has even sent all details with date and place pertaining to how the Sri Lankan intelligence network has been operating in Colombo for the last few years. The man has played with the lives of some genuine persons because he was a political tool of one late MP and another key member in the country.
However, fortunately, Sri Lankan Army and Navy intelligence members were protected by their Commanders-in-Chief. If they had been arrested the Country would be going down to hell and the LTTE’s strengths will be growing more rapidly than in the past.
But Special Task Force members were arrested over human rights cases because of the reckless leadership in their department. Even while investigating this case some senior members of the intelligence services fled the country without taking responsibility. Especially notable is one man called Kodituawakku who fled to Australia.
I see the STF playing games more with their intelligence department than any other security forces branch. The resulting losses are to be blamed on some seniors in the CID like Mahesh Perera (SSP). Anyone knowing Mahesh Perera knows of his playing with women in the Department and how many times he takes some ladies to night clubs in Colombo.
All these bad things happened because the intelligence services in the country depend on politicians. They don’t have any skillful leadership qualities. Actually presently all leaders are seniors in the Department and good only for marauding works linked to dancing in night clubs and playing with the lives of innocent people including their own members. They are not good for any intelligence gathering.
The cases like IP Madakumabura’s unfortunate situation and the Athurugiriya situation have given a good lesson to the country. How the LTTE use the Sri Lankan leadership’s game against genuine members of our intelligence! But we never learn from history. The same thing is happening again at present. If any one wants to eliminate terrorism or strengthen the country, he should not break the country’s heart, its intelligence services. But now, here in Sri Lanka the heart is wounded because of our reckless seniors and politicians.
I would like to end this part with a Sun Tsu quotation on Intelligence on his treatise The Art of War , “Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.”
To Be Continued......
- Sri Lanka Guardian
its obvious that the CID is no match for the LTTE intelligence wing.many thanks to the author for revealing this to the public.hopefully our "mati" leaders will realize the need of good intelligence.however i dont think its the media's job to reveal the private life of the officers as long as they do their job right.with freedom comes responsibility,and the SL media should not forget this.
Mathali, has placed the correct emphasis on one of the most serious and major issues that have led to the chaos, bloodshed and the rotten state of this Island Nation. This problem goes all the way back to the 1970's with the uprising of the JVP, paralyzing, Army,Navy, Air Force and the Police.
In the coming together of the LTTE a few years later,the phychological nature in the "mentality" of Sinhala politicians,was well in place in their favor the LTTE, namely -the insipid selling out of Sinhalese by the Sinhalese. These are the most disunited people with rotten,power hungry,corrupt politicias, since SWRD Bandaranayeka, began the myopic short sighted "Sinhala Nationalistic Movement," giving way to the riots in the 1950, with the emerging corruption of Buddism. Not a sigle Buddhist leader of courage, spoke up, including the that time "All Ceylon Buddhist Association." Since then the true terrorists are those who have been in and continue to be in well entrenched corrupt positions of leadership, gained by thuggery, intimidation and death, at the expenses of the very dear Sinhala, Tamil folks in this land.It is who continue to remain the victims.
An eye opening artical in the Island Paper by Dr. David Bandara brings home the beggarly state of this once beutiful Nation that continues to become "The Begger Of Asia." "Has Sri Lanka really achieved 60 years of Independence?" The honest answer is a resounding NO. The vast ammounts of money for what is called "development" since the 60's, have been squandered and continue to disappear upto this date. No checks and balances, no accountability, no prosecutions brought against those who handled such finances, and we are still needing some more!
The island will never recover untill the Nation of Sri Lanka and Lankans face up to the reality corruption, hypocricy and national disunity, while we as a nation continue to sacrifice our future,our young people (Sinhala and Tamil) to blind, corrupt and manaical men and women in both the LTTE and the Sinhala political web of corruption. I would urge folks to read Dr. Bandara's article.
Post a Comment