Change in military strategy pays dividends

Peace and national security top on agenda

By Lionel Yodhasinghe

The new strategies introduced in the Defence sector during the last year have changed the entire military structure paying substantive dividends to fight terrorism and sectoral corruption, Defence sources told the Sunday Observer yesterday.

Consequent to this, the overall development taking place in different departments under the purview of the Ministry of Defence have shown tremendous results thereby increasing the performance of the three security forces and the police.

The directions given by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on one hand to the security forces to concentrate on a clear aim enabled them to retaliate against terrorist attacks and repulse them successfully. This has boosted the morale of the security forces and built confidence in them to carry out their duty with responsibility by maintaining law and order in the country.

The correct leadership commanded the forces to control the LTTE's violence in the North and East to check their arms smuggling and other tactical measures that threatened national security in the past. On the other hand, the President steering the peace delegation on a very clear path, to negotiate for dignified peace, are salient features included in the new strategies.

The security forces were compelled to take control over the earlier LTTE held Sampur. Sampur, south of the Trincomalee harbour was a strategically important ground which terrorists used as a launching pad to attack the Navy base and the Trincomalee harbour earlier. The loss of such bases and civilian support in the area due to the Tigers' heinous acts also caused many hardships to the terrorists.

This coupled with the closure of the A9 road blocked reinforcements of their cadres, food and medicine. The lack of international support and manpower weakened the Tigers ultimately bringing them to the negotiation table twice in the past year. Several projects were set up under different departments and the tasks were given to supervising commanders and they reported major achievements.

The manufacture of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and mine blockers by the local engineers in the newly set up Research and Development Unit are among them, and this concept was also put into practice on the directive of the President as he wanted to give the local experts pride of place.

Measures were taken to form a Government company, Lanka Logistics Technology (LLT) to procure military equipment for the three forces and the police thereby removing the private arms dealers in the military procurement process. The local manufacture of equipment and the profits of the LLT saved millions rupees in foreign exchange for the Ministry to enable it to pump such money for the welfare of thousands of soldiers and policemen sacrificing their lives in the noble task of safeguarding the territorial integrity and building a lasting peace.

A massive project to build 20,000 decent houses for service personnel families has got under way. Under the first stage, 5000 houses are already under construction in Ipalogama and several more projects will be started soon in different parts of the country.

[email protected]