Speaking at a conference at the University of Jayawadenepura in Colombo last week, Sri Lanka's former Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka who led the island nation to its historic military triumph said the victory was achieved by adopting guerilla tactics while letting the terrorist group adopt conventional military strategies.
Pakistan, another South Asian country, attacked by guerillas has already expressed their desire to send small groups of combat troops to Sri Lanka to learn from the Sri Lankan experience.
General Fonseka, who has now been elevated to the position of the Chief of Defense Staff by President Rajapaksa described the secret of success of the Sri Lanka Army at as the transformation of the way of going into battle at the Eelam War 4 and reversal of methods both by the army and the terrorists.
General Fonseka said the LTTE as expected behaved almost like a conventional army while his forces stepped into the shoes of a guerilla warfare.
He said the army, as guerillas do, started making incursions into LTTE strongholds in small groups carrying out daring attacks when the terrorists challenged the army inside the jungle.
He described the Sri Lanka resolution to go to war was a political one and said with the other forces, like the navy, air force police and the civil defense force in unity fought the war with that political will.
He said, "Thirty years of war had caused a lot of frustration to the people, who had lost their faith in the Army.... I restructured the entire Army deviating from traditional methods, appointed new people of my choice untainted with corruption and dramatically increased the manpower of the Army with recruitment.
"We commenced our assault from the A9 road, the Maddu road, Mannar and the Mullaittivu jungles. Sometimes it took us four to five days just to take control of one or two kilometres. But the results were good. We minimised our casualties and increased losses of the enemy."
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