Cost of Conflict
The book is graciously available online, just click the headings for more info
I was poking around Barefoot and I found this interesting (if expensive) report on conflict in Sri Lanka. Specifically, how much the war has cost us. I personally know that the war has been going on my entire lifetime, but it’s great to see the raw numbers on troop strength, money spent and lost, people killed, etc. The book covers basically everything you want to know and I was particularily impressed that they’d published the LTTEs budgets and income sources. It’s also well laid out and there are lots of interesting graphs and stuff. This post is pretty data heavy, just listing some of the facts that interested me, but I’m reading through the thing to try and get beyond the biased media and idealogical hyperbole that seems to be the basis for most opinion making.
Time
The research targets a few movements in Sri Lanka over my lifetime. One is that we’ve become more militarized, more dead, and less wealthy over the course of this war. Specifically, the army has grown, the economy has slowed and many lives have been lost. The country has lost countless leaders (not including the JVP Communist rebellion) and the LTTE pretty systematically assassinates any independent Tamil voices. At the same time, there are ten times as many people leaving the country to work abroad – 213,000, up from 16,500 in 1986.
Armed Forces
Basically it’s 150,000 government troops versus 10,000 LTTE. Estimated. The LTTE also used Eastern Cadres as cannon fodder for northern battles, so it’s unclear how weakened they are by Karuna’s defection. On the ground GOSL is tossing up like 52 Multi Barrel Rocket Launchers (Pakistani I think) against 434 handheld RPGs. The LTTE has 17 Artillery compared to 162 for the Army, etc etc. The LTTE is also thoroughly outclassed in the air a few planes and 2-3 helicopters against 43 combat aircraft and 41 helicopters.
Sri Lanka has a strong army but the LTTE is still able to achieve parity through terrorism and guerilla warfare. We spend 4.1% of our GDP on the military, which is more than anyone in the region. It’d be better to spend more on development but it’s hard when you have such an intractable security situation. What’s interesting is that LTTE spends most of its budget on salaries for top leaders, arms and international propaganda. GOSL pays its soldiers better and has better arms, but they seem to spend precious little attention to international propaganda.
State of the LTTE
The LTTE makes about 200-300 million dollars per year. Most of that comes (100-250 million) through drug trafficking and arms smuggling. $40-50 million comes through contributions/extortion from the diaspora and $30 million from local taxation and extortion. As its international fund-raising is blocked the book says the LTTE is stepping up its connections to drug cartels to generate income.
State of the North and East
As per a warzone, the North and East are the worst hit. They have almost double the infant and maternal mortality of the nation as a whole, poorer health for chidren, lower literacy and a dropout rate of 15%, three times the national average. There is also spotty access to electricity, water, roads and telecommunications. The LTTE doesn’t provide organized social services so the government still provides basic health and education, but at much lower levels than the rest of the country (simply because they don’t have enough access).
The Dead
The book has an comprehensive list of leaders assassinated by the LTTE from Alfred Duraiyapah the mayor of Jaffna to Rajiv Gandhi to countless leaders of EPDP and PLOTE (other Tamil groups). They actually devote a whole nother section to assassinations of anti-LTTE Tamil Leaders. It may seem LTTE biased but they have honestly done and awful lot of assassinating. Not that the Sri Lanka forces don’t cause trouble for civilians in the North and East. When it comes to casualties, the LTTE and GOSL are suprisingly quite even. There are 13,393 reported LTTE casualties compared to 12,143 for GOSL. There were more LTTE dead at the beginning of the war but lately there are more GOSL dying.
Loss of Income
Sri Lanka was on pace with Korea, Malaysia and Thailand in the past, but the conflict has left us behind while those countries move into prosperity. The country is highly militarized and has stagnant and bloated government (2.3 Central Gov employees per 100 people, compared to the Asian average of 0.9). The war alone consumes about 4-5% of GDP and the ensuant dips in Foreign Direct Investment and Tourism means the country loses billions of dollars.
And those are all the things that stuck out. The book ends with two scenarios – Hell Let Loose and Paradise Regained. I won’t get into them yet, but lets just hope things work out. It’s good data regardless.
I recently wrote about gay marriage, which is not even on the radar in Sri Lanka. But we have another type of marriage discrimination here as well. Foreign marriage. If you marry someone non Sri Lankan, they can never become a citizen. Their lives and their rights to even be in the same country as their children are permanently unstable, and it’s patently unfair.
When 
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
Wow.. Reading that hurts.. So what would you say.. It’d be cheaper to just fight for a few months and end it all?
Ummm.. A side issue.. That link up there. ‘Say Thanks to Tony Blair’ http://www.thankyoutony.com That is tongue in cheek right? There’s no way that can be serious..
sounds interesting…when u say expensive, how expensive are we talking about?
Rs 1000 for the book. I was a bit twitchy paying that for a soft 30 something pages, but the illustrations are easy to grasp and the data is good
Interesting.
I am wondering how they secured data pertaining to LTTE budgets and income sources. You’d think that they’d be hard pressed to give up such information.
Well, either the Hindu or the Hindustani Times had run the LTTE’s estimated annual income (380 mil US, I think) and it was quoted in today’s Daily Mirror. It’s an estimated figure, not verified. For example it claims that upto 250 mil of that comes from drug traficking, but again it’s an estimate of course.
so who wrote this…?
what makes you so sure their numbers are real/tru/accurate?
why do i bother to respond to you all?
hmmm, maybe because it inspires me to continue… your ignorance spurs me to work harder… but not here… you’re lost…
You forgot a very important question to ask at the end of your question list:
“Why am I asking YOU all these question??”
Remember that newsreader in ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ :-) ?
i don’t think a grand is too much to spend if ur really interested in the content..
[...] The recent LTTE attack on Galle was a little push, a little dare. They are daring Sri Lanka to close up and crack down, but the country has so far controlled its temper. The reports are that only two people were killed (condolences to their families), but the impact was much higher. The LTTE is a small terrorist group of about 10,000 cadres funded mostly by drug trafficking and smuggling (Cost of Conflict). They recruit children and in the 90s nearly half of their dead were under 18 (!). The Sri Lankan Army is literally 20 times bigger and much better trained and equipped. Casualities have sorta reached parity, but while the LTTE has lost 150% of its current strength (about 14,000), SLA has only lost about 7%. That is why any LTTE attack on the south is largely symbolic. Sri Lanka, however, is at a time of great instability and a few more nudges could push us in the wrong direction entirely. [...]
[...] That’s from a Strategic Foresight report I discussed earlier. It’s not big secret that the LTTE recruits children, and Human Rights Watch has been covering it, The LTTE has a long history of recruiting children as soldiers and continues to do so in areas it controls. A Human Rights Watch report published in November 2004 documented LTTE recruitment of thousands of children since the beginning of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. The report found that the LTTE often used threats, intimidation and sometimes abduction to bring children into its ranks. Prior to the ceasefire, children were routinely used in combat, and often deployed on suicide missions.68 During 2006, UNICEF reported that it had received an average of about 55 reports per month of children being recruited into the LTTE forces, though the actual figure is believed to be several times higher (HRW on Protecting Civilians) [...]