The defeat and destruction of the Tamil Tigers should interest students of insurgency. The Sri Lankan Armed Forces under the command of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has achieved in 26 years a total defeat of the Tamil insurgency with the death of its top leaders. The question is whether the Republic of the Philippines under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo can do the same thing.

Successive Sri Lankan and Philippine presidents have publicly declared total defeat of their respective insurgencies. The Philippine insurgencies are somewhat similar to the Sri Lankan one with ethnic and religious minorities taking armed action against perceived discrimination and central government neglect. The Moro insurgency in the Philippines took somewhat a conventional start and as the conflict became more protracted, took a guerilla approach. The Tamil insurgency took a largely conventional route.

The NPA right from the start took a guerilla approach under Jose Maria Sison’s idea of insurgency. However the NPA has not been defeated and it is highly unlikely that Sison’s ideas of Maoist revolution will ever succeed. Maoism is too foreign to the masses.

Al Qaeda is largely responsible for turning off the tap of foreign money coming into these insurgencies. The Tigers, CPP-NPA, Abu Sayaff and MILF are considred Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) by the USA and the EU. With China showing the ultimate form of Maoism (Capitalism) and Joma Sison can’t accept this, the NPA’s China cash dried up. Similarly the Moro insurgencies suffered a drying up of contributions from Libya and other Arab states. In the Tamil Tigers’ case, expatriate contributions (mainly from Europe and the USA)  from Tamils were severely constrained.

All these insurgencies had to live on forms of extortion.

Unlike the Joma Sison’s CPP-NPA and Hashim Salamat’s MILF, the Tigers really held large swaths of  territory and established a de facto state with a three service armed forces. Thus the Tigers became a conventional force and were able to mount devastating attacks on Colombo.

This is where the Sri Lankan Army counterattacked. With the drying up of financial contributions and interdiction of arms shipments, the Tigers lost capability. In the end the insurgency was defeated. Successive proposals for a political settlement were rebuffed on either side. Thus when the army saw the opportunity for the kill, it went for it.

However can the AFP do the same thing? The NPA , Abu Sayyaf and MILF insurgencies don’t use conventional tactics and operate independently in each island. The archipelagic nature of the country may necessitate different tactics.

Now the Sri Lankan armed forces blockaded the northern coast and sank gunrunners. This proved successful to the extent that at the last battle the Tigers were trapped by a lagoon.

Can we blockade entire provinces and islands in order to starve insurgents and go for the kill? Does Gloria have the stomach for it? Should we continue to negotiate for a political settlement? The defeat of the Tamil insurgency should be an eye-opener for our defence establishment.

One thing that differentiates the CPP-NPA and the Tamil Tigers is that the Tigers’ leaders were in their territory until their defeat while the CPP’s leader is in Utrecht. Now what do you do with exiles?

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