Posted on 05/18/2009 10:27:27 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Tiger dead, a secret spills
SUJAN DUTTA
New Delhi, May 18: Sri Lanka’s military triumph over the LTTE that peaked with the announcement of Prabhakaran’s death today was possible with active assistance — including a defined naval deployment against the Sea Tigers — from India.
The aid increased steadily this year but New Delhi asked Colombo to keep it quiet till the election was over.
The Indian military assistance came on a specific request from the Sri Lankan government. The first military medical mission was despatched in April.
But far more significant than that benign assistance was the deployment of three fast attack boats and a missile corvette by the Indian Navy that were specifically tasked to patrol the Palk Straits, search for and catch hold of LTTE fugitives and, if necessary, destroy Sea Tiger craft.
The operation was executed by the Indian Navy’s Southern Command that co-ordinated with the integrated defence staff here. The missile corvette deployed was the INS Vinash, a boat indigenously made and capable of chasing the Sea Tigers’ vessels and pushing them back into Lankan waters to a waiting Lankan navy.
The “sea denial” and “naval blockade” by the Indian Navy was first requested by Colombo in May 2007. Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa requested New Delhi to amend its hands-off policy and be more pro-active with military support for the island’s armed forces.
Lanka made the request after a daring attack by the Sea Tigers on the island of Delft near Jaffna. India was still chary of active military assistance. But it effected a course correction from the end of last year.
The course correction was prompted largely by a growing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka. With India hesitating to supply lethal arms to the Sri Lankan forces, Colombo turned to China and Pakistan. It also gave major port and road-building contracts to Beijing, much to New Delhi’s anxiety. India was to supply radars and was training Sri Lankan military personnel.
From early this year, Delhi shifted gears and increased the quantum of support. It quietly agreed to aid in the naval blockade against the Sea Tigers — India has also handed over “LTTE fugitives” to the Lankan forces — on the condition that this was not publicised.
Foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and national security adviser M.K. Narayanan visited Colombo on the 23rd of last month in the middle of the elections.
Second, it also sent a military-medical mission. The military-medical mission is being turned around. A team of 60 doctors, paramedics and nurses is going to Sri Lanka on the 20th of this month to set up a hospital in Vavuniya to treat refugees in the warzone.
India is also working on a package of humanitarian assistance for Lanka. A team of engineers is also in Lanka to de-mine roads in its northern province.
The Indians are also capable of securing the Nukes in Pakistan when that becomes necessary.
Bravo! Finally India is reversing some of their foolish foreign policies which played into China’s hands. I can only hope that India will keep going in this direction after the jettison of the communists from the national government.
There is an article about REd Chinese aid to the Sri Lankan govt which helped to win the battle against the Tamils (down a page or two at Freerepublic.)
Find it, read it, and contrast it to this article. Will show you how another Cold War is being waged in Asia Minor.
IMHO India should perhaps be making friendly gestures to Cambodia.
India should ally with Thailand and Singapore to keep China from dominating the Straits of Malacca. India needs to cut off China from its “string of pearls.”
Asia Minor is the Asian part of Turkey, this article concerns South Asia.
You would need the special forces of all NATO members including the US and probably the Russians too to overwhelm Pakistani facilities.
India finally stops playing footsie with the Tamil Tigers and the Tigers collapse and are defeated. Who’d a thunk it?
If India needs to choose with Vietnam and Thailand on one side and Cambodia on the other, I think India is better of siding with the former. India is more aligned with these countries in their perception of China than is Cambodia. Cambodia is a backwater for the Chinese.
the Angkor Wat is not enough reason to perceive a country as Indic. Thailand and Vietnam have Hindu temples too.
And being pragmatic is about choosing smaller communists against larger ones.
Typical Indian bakwas. Sri Lankan Army defeats the LTTE; India declares victory.
I love that the delusional Indians can spin sending a medical mission after hostilities are over as a sign of how much aid they provided Sri Lanka. Or how “military assistance” comes in the form of not actively abetting the terrorists to begin with. Only an Indian would clap themselves on the back for securing the border after having let the LTTE use Tamil Nadu as a safe haven for nearly three decades.
Typical of Chinese sha bi’s to come and claim they are helping all these littoral Indian ocean countries with “good intentions”. Yay jump with joy! The truth though is the day you dock a naval ship in Sri Lanka and thats the day Sri Lanka will disappear from the map as a soveriegn country - and NO, it will not go Red like you muttering rat-eating Chicom vermin with running noses.
And so much for claims of abetting terrorists. This speech needs to be administered to your paymasters in ZhongNanHai who themselves lead the largest terrorist group in the world - the CCP.
Hu? Yeah you, you dyed-hair, wig wearing tyrant!
Wen? Right now, go **** a cow!
Drooling rabid Chicom running dogs abound on FR. This one refuses to die. Heel doggie heel! Uh Oh, no won’t heel? Cyanide shots are in order.:-)
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