I hadn’t met Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary, for over four years. He was on a private visit to India last week, and at a dinner hosted for him by industrialist Malvinder Singh I found he hadn’t changed much. His salt-and-pepper hair still swept across his forehead like choppy waves on an ocean. He was as usual phlegmatic and careful not to reveal too much.

The last time I had met him was at his heavily guarded Colombo office on May 20, 2009, the day it was officially confirmed that V. Prabhakaran, the dreaded LTTE chief, had been killed. It was a historic day for Sri Lanka for it also marked the defeat of the separatist movement for a Tamil homeland by its largest ethnic minority. It was then widely acknowledged that as Defence Secretary Gotabaya had contributed substantially to the Lankan Army’s success in liquidating the LTTE.

Gotabaya, a retired lieutenant colonel, had joined the government in 2005 after President Mahinda Rajapaksa came to power. Being the younger brother of the President helped, for he was able to forge a rare politico-military unity that facilitated cohesive and timely decision making. That day when I spoke to him in Colombo he remained stoic in victory, arguing that Prabhakaran had made plenty of mistakes in his final years which led to his downfall and ultimately his death.

I recall Gotabaya telling me, “Prabhakaran believed that the Sri Lankan armed forces would continue to use the old methods of the past 30 years. That we politicians would do the usual balancing act because we had to take pressures internally and externally. That our military campaign would be halted because of these pressures and we would eventually take the middle path and go for peace negotiations. But we were clear this time — we were unwilling to yield to terror. This time when we fought we adapted our political, military, tactical and strategic approach based on what we had learnt from the past.”

Gotabaya ensured that the Sri Lankan army doubled its size by adding a lakh more personnel and saw to it that there were no budget cuts for armaments. Then he backed the army’s plan to corner the feared LTTE chief and its top brass by taking the battle into the Wanni jungles and using guerrilla tactics to shock and demoralise the opponent. That included winning over Prabhakaran’s former key lieutenant Karuna and using his knowledge and contacts to build intelligence and counter his tactics.

Soon after the military triumph, the Rajapaksa government fell out with the then army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, who they suspected was trying to engineer a coup. Fonseka was subsequently arrested and jailed on corruption charges. When I asked Gotabaya last week why the one-time war hero fell from grace, he said cryptically that the general had political ambitions and had begun to overstep the line. He diplomatically avoided any questions about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision not to attend the CHOGM summit held recently in Colombo stating that he understood the internal political compulsions.

There are good reasons why Gotabaya chose to be discreet on his visit to India this time and avoided the spotlight. The Sri Lankan establishment may be seething with anger over the Indian PM’s decision not to attend CHOGM but it can’t afford to fly off the handle. India is still Sri Lanka’s largest investor and trading partner apart from being a major donor for rehabilitation projects. Also Indian tourists now outnumber the rest of the foreigners at its beach resorts, bringing in much needed foreign exchange.

Nor can Sri Lanka afford to forget that in the early Eighties, when it tried to cosy up to the US and thumb its nose at India, Delhi turned on the heat by extending covert support to the separatist Tamil movement. So while Sri Lanka hobnobs with China and Pakistan, it understands that it can ill afford to antagonise India beyond a point. With the UN Human Rights Council scheduled to meet next March over the allegations of serious war crimes against Tamil civilians by the Army, Sri Lanka’s concern is that it may call for an international independent investigation. It, therefore, needs all the support to block such a development.

Coming back to Gotabaya, he did not want to be drawn into explaining his controversial statement made a year ago calling for the abolition of the 13th Amendment that was to devolve greater autonomy to the Tamil dominated provinces. One major reason why Manmohan Singh didn’t go to CHOGM is that Mahinda Rajapaksa seems set to have the 13th Amendment smothered by the Sinhala majority in Parliament.

Gotabaya tactfully avoided the hard questions and said the world should look at the new emerging Lanka that is doing its best to heal the wounds of a nation that saw over 60,000 killed in the civil war. Yet in the absence of a grand integrating vision that would give the ethnic Tamil minority the equality it seeks, the ghosts of the past may begin to haunt Sri Lanka again.

raj@tribuneindia.com