Into the Top Ten?

An SL Army soldier moves in on Palampeddi village, in north western Mannar, soon after its capture in July 2008. -- Image by © Stringer/Reuters/Corbis

I had mixed feelings when I read the following statistics. It was like walking into a Lambo showroom and asking for the specs of a Murcielago, knowing what my annual salary is. The SL Army’s current strength is around 200,000. That’s almost double the size of the British Army (109,000), and larger than most western European armies. Gen Sarath Fonseka says he wants to increase the troop strength to 300,000. That’ll make the SL Army the tenth largest in the world! It’ll be a quarter the size of the Indian Army (approximately 1.2 million). India has a population of roughly 1.2 billion, while ours is just under 20 million. The next largest armies from ours will be Russia and Iran, with only 20,000 soldiers more than us. This will be the Top Ten:

1. China – 1,700,000
2. India – 1,200,000
3. North Korea – 900,000
4. South Korea – 560,000
5. Pakistan – 520,000
6. United States – 475,000
7. Myanmar – 325,000
8. Russia – 320,000
9. Iran – 320,000
10. Sri Lanka – 300,000

The combined armies of SL, Pakistan, and Bangladesh will equal the strength of the Indian Army. The Indian nuclear power stations at Kalpakkam, south of Chennai, are two hours flying time by SLAF MiG-27s based at Anuradhapura. The two new stations being built at Kudankulam, west of Nagarcoil, can be reached in less than an hour.

It is credible that with the proposed expansion of Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone, the SL Navy will have to be beefed up, as will the SLAF. An overall Armed Forces strength of at least 500,000 is quite possible. 2.5% of Sri Lanka’s population will be under arms.

I know it’s nuts. I know it’s impractical. I know we can’t really afford it. But, dammit, doesn’t it look good?

Peace in Five

Was tagged by the End on this Five Words About the SL Situ that RD started. I can’t really put my thoughts into five words. It’s a bit too complex for that. At least for me. So instead, I’ll give you five pictures. You can attach whatever words you think suit them.

And to keep it rolling, I tag Indi,
Electra,
Ravana,
Nayagan,
and DBSJ.

Nineteen ’til I Die

Last night it rained. And I stood under my parents’ porch and smoked. The deluge of water on the tin sheeting drowned out everything — traffic, the neighbours, the sound of the TV. Just me and the rain and the dark, like it had been on that first night in December 1990. I stepped out from the porch, and the rain put out my cigarette in an instant. I spat away the shreds of tobacco and let the rain soak me. Remembering them, as I have done a hundred thousand times in the last eighteen years.

I can remember the ridged steel flooring of the Y-8’s cargo bay like it was yesterday, digging into my arse as I sit packed in with my platoon, flying to Palay.

I remember the smell of wet sandbags on that first night on the FDL at Elephant Pass. Looking out into the black ink beyond the perimeter. Here be Tigers.

And the ten-man patrols through knee-deep water, trying to be quiet. “Kata vahapang, huththo,“

The hot, dusty days and wet, rainy nights. Mosquitoes. And being tired. So tired. Every day. All the time.

Sharing cigarettes and melted Edna chocolate on Christmas Day. Tang instant orange mixed with warm, brackish Jaffna Peninsula water.

And contact. Finally. What we’d lived for, longed for, suffered for. What we’d watched in movies and read about in books. Contact. Sex for virgins. With red tracers. And the elephant sitting on my back, squeezing the breath out of my lungs as I tried to hold my rifle steady. The hammer roar of 7.62-mm fire, gunflashes blurring the distant, running figures.

None of us were over twenty, most eighteen or nineteen. Ariyaratne, the section commander, and Dias, the machine-gunner; our parents, old men of twenty-four. Combat veterans of the Sinha Rifles. The hard core.

And the killing. I remember every single one. The blood, the eyes. The smell. I remember Rohantha getting hit by the .50. I remember the sixteen-year-old bayoneted girl with the long plaited hair come loose. I remember kneeling at a tube well and washing the crusted blood out from under my finger nails.

Down time. Sitting in abandoned tin buildings in the Saltern Siding. We’d strip down to OG shorts and slippers and our Death By Bullets T-shirts. We never talked about victory, about killing Prabha, or defeating the Tigers. Our personal goals were to survive, to do well, to not let each other or our regiment down. Sura talking about the XT-250 he wanted to buy. Husni and Sanjeeva talking about girls. Dias and I cleaning guns and talking about optics.

I thought I knew them all very well, but now I realize I didn’t really. And now, sadly, I can’t recall their faces in detail. And sometimes I have to think hard to remember all nine names.

Well, it looks like it’s over now. And I wish those guys were here to see it. I wish we could all go out for a drink and talk about EPS and catch up on our lives. But it’s too late for all that. It all took too long. I wish they were all in their thirties, like me. Maybe they’d have wives, and children, or not. I wish they could walk down the road and be offered kiri bath by the trishaw drivers. I wish they were alive.

For Section 2, Recce Group Charlie, 6th Sinha Rifles.
KIA, July 1991, Elephant Pass.

Drop in the Price of Chillies in 2009

I was hoping for a fairly uncontroversial ad awards this year, following on the heels of 2008’s scam issues; however that doesn’t look likely. Everything seemed very low key at first. There were no embarrassing judges telling us our work was shit in the forums. There weren’t any catfights between CEOs and C-oh-ohs over whose ads were scam. Everybody was ready to toe the line, divide up the Chillies, and go on home in the same sedate rowboat. Sound almost Slimmish, no?

And Slimmish it was. This year’s panel of local and international judges decided wholesale was the way to give out Chillies, doling out a record nine (count ‘em, nine) Golds, a Grand Prix, and a Best of Show. That’s more Golds than has been awarded in all three previous years put together. And don’t even get me started on the dozens of Silvers, sackloads of Bronzes, and what looked like millions of those silly Finalists that were handed out. Couple this with a new scoring system that moved away from the so-called Olympic system to a point-based system, and you have a Chillies show that was fundamentally different from the previous years.

Now I have many questions for the Chillies organizers, but it all boils down to just one really: WTF?

Let me explain.

I’ll start with the two scoring systems that have been tried for the Chillies — Olympic, and point-based. With the Olympic system that was in place over the last three years, metal value won — a Gold beat a Silver beat a Bronze, etc. Pretty simple. A Grand Prix or Best of Show trumped everything and the agency that got that baby scored the night. Now, there was a bit of a fuckup last year. Leo Burnett won a bunch of silvers (relatively a lot by the Chillies standards of the time), and looked to be 2008’s most consistently creative agency. But not quite. You see, Triad (which had won next to nothing all night) suddenly pulled a Gold out of the hat and had the last laugh. So this time, the Chillies decided “that’s not fair” (and to be fair, it really wasn’t very fair), and decided to move the goal posts. Onto the cricket pitch. They also forgot to tell Triad, apparently (though more of that, later). This time there would be a point-based or tally system. It didn’t really matter whether you won one Gold or three Bronzes, because each award was apportioned a point value, and at the end of the night, you totted up the score, and the agency with the most points won. To make matters worse, a fourth place slot was created so that if your work was too crap to win a Bronze, you’d still get a point for it. Then, to add an element of farce to the night (and no, I don’t mean the drag show), the Chillies decided there would be a Grand Prix and a Best of Show! Now, ladies and gents of the Chillies, I hope you’ve noticed that Grand Prix means “great prize” in French — in other words, yup, the best of show. So while international ad shows have one or the other, we have both.

Lies and a Tiger — How a Diaspora is Killing its Own

Pro-LTTE demonstrations in Sydney (tamilsydneydotcom31/flickr)

As the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam grinds inexorably towards certain defeat for the self-proclaimed representatives of the Tamil nation, there seems to be no great fanfare, no glorious last stands. This revolution dies not with a bang, but with whimpers and cowardice. And lies.

For a year the Tamil diaspora, spread from Tamil Nadu to Toronto, watched open-mouthed with disbelief as the iron fist of the Sri Lankan infantry divisions cut the Tiger formations to pieces, hammering them back into a tiny pocket close to Mullaitivu on the island’s northeastern coast. Now, as the world watches, a mortally wounded Tiger cowers behind the very people it claims to defend, mauling them as it dies.

As the pace of the offensive slows down in the heavily populated Mullaitivu District, the Tamil diaspora has finally found its voice, and a cause worthy of its outrage – the Tamil population of the Wanni, trapped in the fighting and suffering horribly. They lack everything human beings have a right to expect – food, shelter, clothing, security, life itself. If anything in the northeast is worthy of our attention, it is these people, held hostage by their proclaimed protectors, forced to face the guns and tanks of the SL Army in the cynical hope that if enough of them are killed or maimed, the world might step in and save the LTTE.

Tamil family sit by a trench in the LTTE-occupied No Fire Zone (Human Rights Watch)

The diaspora, organized and spurred by LTTE front organizations, chants its mantra of concentration camps and Sri Lankan government genocide of the Tamils, ignoring the fact that it is the LTTE, and not the government, that is holding the Wanni Tamils in these inhuman conditions. And like all human catastrophies, this one too, has spawned its celebrity hangers-on. First, Sri Lankan-born British rapper MIA, and now at the eleventh hour, Booker Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy. These two individuals more or less represent the two strongest tones of voice we hear calling for a cessation of the Sri Lankan military offensive against the Tigers.

For This All that Blood was Shed

SL Army infantry in the Wanni (Defence.lk)

In the closing days of March and the first week of this month, April, the SL Army outflanked, cut off, and destroyed the Charles Anthony Regiment of the LTTE, in one of the most decisive battles of the war. For almost a year, the SL Army, sweeping across the Wanni from west to east, had attempted to pin down the LTTE and cause it significantly large casualties. However, the ever elusive Tigers have always prefered to slip away when outflanked, rarely allowing themselves to be trapped in large numbers, sacrificing rearguard units so that the larger forces could escape. While the casualties came in trickles, the jugular sought by the military high command was not forthcoming. Thus, the encirclement and destruction of the Charles Anthony at Aanandapuram, east of Puthukkudiyiruppu, could be celebrated as a memorable victory for the SL Army.

However, what makes this defeat a catastrophic one for the LTTE is the
fact that along with the Charles Anthony went almost every remaining unit commander of the LTTE, and many of their deputies as well. In a stroke, the Tigers have been virtually emasculated. The fact that the GoSL has now declared a 48-hour ceasefire over the Buddhist and Hindu New Year, is indicative of the SL Army’s confidence in defeating the LTTE in a matter of weeks rather than months.

On March 30th, elements of the SL Army’s 53rd and 58th divisions and Task Force 8 advanced out of Puthukkudiyiruppu in a pincer movement intended to outflank the Charles Anthony Regiment which held the eastward-running Puthukkudiyiruppu-Iranappaalai-Puthumaathalan road. A brigade of the 58th Division swung east and then south, while another from the 53rd, along with TF8, commanded by Col GV Ravipriya, attacked east and then north; both pincers meeting at Pachaipullumottai junction in the rear of the Charles Anthony. The Tigers fought fiercely to prevent the encirclement, but were overwhelmed. Lt Col Gopith, CO of the Charles Anthony and his 2/ic Amuthab were killed on the 31st, and demoralised and leaderless, the Tiger troops were encircled. Outnumbered nearly ten to one, over a thousand Tigers faced almost 10,000 troops of the 4th, 6th, 8th, 12th, 14th and 20th Gajabas, the 11th and 20th Light Infantry, the 5th Vijayabahu Infantry, and the 9th Gemunu Watch. Also in action was the SL Army’s elite special operations forces — elements of the 2nd Commandos and the 1st Special Forces.

Secret Agent Needle Bawa 006.5

I normally can’t be arsed blogging about the idiots I come across daily in the SL blogosphere. But in this case, I think I’ll make an exception, mostly because it’s a sort of public service.

I noticed quite a few bloggers seem to be worried at the Bond-like abilities of NB. He doesn’t seem to have any of Bond’s charms, and only half the wit, but his all-seeing gaze, via the London Met, seems to have scared the crap out of a lot of you.

Well, fear not, Bawa’s just got his bawa in a knot. You see, ol’ RD, being the gentleman that he is, actually mailed Nibbsy from his business mail. And Nibbsy, brainiac that he is googled RD’s office — voila, Bondish, eh? All RD’s info is on his business website. So Nibbsy doesn’t have x-ray vision, or a direct line to Gordon Brown, it seems. Pretty much clear now why he got poor ol’ DeeCee mixed up in this (though she’s not old actually).

Now, NB, pay attention. It’s time you behave. You see, as you yourself pointed out, no one’s really smart enough. And it’s pretty easy to get your phone numbers, fax, home addresses, your mum’s mobile number, your business partners’ and clients’ email addresses, etc. We wouldn’t want Shehla hearing about all this, would we? Also, it’ll be embarrassing if those grovelling ‘brotherly’ mails you sent to RD were to appear all over kottu.

So back the fuck off and we’ll forget about you soon enough. Remember the Maharaja of Sad — no? Neither do we. If not, you just might remember me for all the wrong reasons.

Oh, and btw, do you realize you’re cross-eyed?

The Promise

If you wait for me then I’ll come for you
Although I’ve traveled far
I always hold a place for you in my heart
If you think of me
If you miss me once in awhile
Then I’ll return to you
I’ll return and fill that space in your heart
Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I’ll find my way back to you
If you’ll be waiting
If you dream of me like I dream of you
In a place that’s warm and dark
In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart

Remembering
Your touch
Your kiss
Your warm embrace
I’ll find my way back to you
If you’ll be waiting
I’ve longed for you and I have desired
To see your face your smile
To be with you wherever you are

Red Light

Red’s always been my favourite colour. As a kid, and a teenager, it was constantly my choice. But never before has it had this effect on my emotions, on my state of mind. In recent months my senses have become so totally attuned to that blip of brightness, that I watch for it, wait for it, even hallucinate it sometimes. It draws my eye, like a luminescent ruby, no matter what I’m concentrating on — a book, the screen, driving. The glow of a cigarette end makes me double take, my heart skipping, only to look away in disappointment. I wake in the darkness and look for it, out beyond my pillow, hoping. Waiting. Too often, the red light just signals more sadness, continued despair, but still I look for it, long for it, hoping that this time it will flash out in the gloom and she’ll tell me she still misses me.

Before it’s Too Late

I wonder where she is, and if her heart is safe. I think of her eyes and the way that they take my breath away. I miss her with an ache that never leaves me. My heart throbs with hope that floats me over the pain, and I wonder if she’ll be there to catch me when I fall. I wish so much that I could write really well, and tell her it’s not too late. Girl, if you’re reading this, it’s for you.

I wonder through fiction to look for the truth
Buried beneath all the lies
And I stood at a distance
To feel who you are
Hiding myself in your eyes

And hold on before it’s too late
We’ll run til we leave this behind
Don’t fall just be who you are
It’s all that we need in our lives

And the risk that might break you
Is the one that would save
A life you dont live is still lost
So stand on the edge with me
Hold back your fear and see
Nothing is real til it’s gone

Hold on before its too late
We’ll run til we leave this behind
Don’t fall just be who you are
It’s all that we need in our lives

So live like you mean it
Love til you feel it
It’s all that we need in our lives
So stand on the edge with me
Hold back your fear and see
Nothing is real til it’s gone

And hold on before its too late
We’ll run til we leave this behind
Don’t fall just be who you are
It’s all that we need in our lives

And hold on before its too late
We’ll run til we leave this behind
Don’t fall just be who you are
It’s all that we need in our lives

It’s all that we need in our lives
It’s all that I need in my life

–Goo Goo Dolls