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Sri Lanka Foreign Military Presence
Under the provisions of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord, an Indian
military contingent was dispatched to northern Sri Lanka. This
contingent, named the Indian Peacekeeping Force was composed of
army and paramilitary units from the Indian Army's Southern
Command, headquartered in Madras. The IPKF, when it was initially
dispatched to Sri Lanka, numbered about 1,600 personnel. As the
cease-fire failed to take hold, and as the tenacity of the Tamil
insurgents became increasingly evident, the force was steadily
augmented. Within three months of its deployment, the IPKF
presence in Sri Lanka had grown to 20,000 personnel. At the end
of the year, two brigades of Muslim troops were introduced into
Eastern Province to deal with growing tension in the Islamic
community of that area. By January 1988, the overall force had a
total strength of 50,000 personnel from three Indian Army
divisions, plus supporting units. The following month it was
announced in the Indian Parliament that the IPKF would be
increased to 70,000 personnel organized tactically into fifteen
brigades. Some Sri Lankan sources said privately that the force
had grown well in excess of this total, possibly surpassing
100,000 troops, and that its presence in Sri Lanka might well
exceed the duration of the insurgency. In mid-1988, however, the
Indian government did withdraw from Sri Lanka some of its more
heavily armed artillery and armored units that were obviously
unsuitable for fighting a counterinsurgency war.
At the time of its deployment, the IPKF was intended as a
truce supervisory force that would oversee the disarming of the
Tamil insurgents and the disengagement of the Sri Lankan
government forces. As the cease-fire between the two sides broke
down, however, the Indians were compelled to assume a combat role
and were sent into action against the Tamil guerrillas
overrunning the Jaffna Peninsula. In this operation, codenamed
Operation Parwan, IPKF units of the 54th Indian Army division
launched a five-pronged attack to clear the area of insurgents.
After sixteen days of fighting, Jaffna fell to the Indians, and
the Tamil combatants retreated to the more inaccessible areas of
Northern and Eastern provinces.
Among the residents of Jaffna, the assault on the city
provoked widespread bitterness toward the Indian troops, as
reports spread of atrocities and high civilian casualties caused
by careless bombardment of populated areas. Many of these reports
were believed to be the result of Tamil insurgent propaganda.
Nonetheless, in early 1988 the Indian Army acknowledged that
there had been serious disciplinary problems during the campaign,
and a number of soldiers were sent back to India after conviction
on rape charges. Such gestures also hinted that the IPKF seemed
disposed to apply the lessons learned from the Jaffna offensive
and to abandon its previous hamfisted tactics and insensitivity
to the civilian population. When continued insurgent activity
required redeployment of IPKF units to Eastern Province and the
inland districts of Northern Province, the Indian forces embarked
on an aggressive civic action program to restore the
infrastructure in war-ravaged areas, and on an intensive campaign
of heavy patrolling to keep the guerrillas off balance. The
Indians gained experience in both urban and counterinsurgency
warfare and made some progress in keeping the Tamil insurgents at
bay. However, the guerrillas were proving a more intractable foe
than anticipated, and observers were not optimistic about an
early conclusion to the conflict.
Data as of October 1988
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