What impact will the abrogation of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) have on the battlefield? Absolutely none.

The government’s strange decision to withdraw from the CFA at this time means absolutely nothing. Eelam War IV has been raging for more than two years now, with thousands killed on both sides.

The government’s decision in fact has little to do with realities of the war. It is clearly a political move to appease the hard-line political parties – the JVP and the JHU – which have been capitalising on the government’s reluctance to abrogate the CFA up to now.

In fact, the decision had little to do with the bomb blast at Slave Island on the 2nd of January. Far worse acts of violence have been committed by the LTTE over the last two years, including the blasting of a civilian bus in Kebithigollewa which killed 84 people.

This week’s violence in Colombo also has little impact on the course of the war. The killing of UNP MP T. Maheswaran, although initially blamed on the LTTE by top police officials, does not bear the hallmarks of the Tigers’ Pistol Group. The fact that the assassin was wounded and captured speaks volumes with regard to this, since it is most unlikely that an LTTE cadre would allow himself to be captured.

In the end, the assassination will merely go down as yet another assassination, added to the long list of dozens of Members of Parliament and other political leaders who have fallen to the assassin’s bomb or bullet in the country’s torturous political history, starting with Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah who was personally shot dead by LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in 1975, or even earlier with the assassination of Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.

The bomb blast in Slave Island also means little in the long term, apart from the carnage that it caused to innocent civilians and soldiers.

The end of the CFA does not mean the end of the peace process. A peace process can be re-started at any time, regardless of the war situation. The only requirement is that both sides must be willing to talk.

The government has not yet decided to ban the LTTE. However, such a move, if it is ever decided upon, is also not one that will have much impact on the battlefield. At present, anyone suspected of being an LTTE cadre is arrested by the armed forces or police, anywhere in the country. Being a member of an LTTE that is banned will be no different, except that the very act of being a member will become a punishable offence with a small jail term which at present it is not.

Much more serious is the pullout of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), with the lapse of the CFA as their mandate will end. What this means is that there will not be any international body to document atrocities and incidents committed by either side. The SLMM has not been actively investigating every reported incident, but has continued to document incidents.

With the end of the CFA and the withdrawal of the SLMM, the role of the Norwegian government may or may not diminish further. However, this too is entirely dependent on the two sides – the government and the LTTE. If both sides request that Norway try to broker another truce or attempt to restart negotiations, we may see their active involvement again. Certainly, their knowledge of Sri Lanka’s conflict over the years puts them in a more advantageous position to assist as facilitators than most other countries.

The CFA itself died a few days after the election of President Mahinda Rajapakse, when the LTTE launched a series of attacks in the Northeast. Despite the continued attacks, the government waited more than three months without responding, hoping that the Tigers would come back to the negotiating table. It was only when the Commander of the Army, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, was critically wounded in a suicide bomb blast at Army Headquarters, that the government struck back. Even then, it was only through selective air strikes on LTTE targets.

However, things changed when the LTTE took control of the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru tank in the Trincomalee District, and refused to release water for Sinhala and Muslim paddy farmers in the area. Under pressure with the JHU leading a protest march into the area, the government launched an army operation to recapture the area.

The Tigers responded by attacking Muttur town, and shelling Army, Navy and Air Force installations in Trincomalee town, including the harbour. With artillery shells falling all around, the government moved to retake Muttur, and then drove the Tigers out of Sampur, where the Tigers’ heavy guns were based.

When the LTTE cadres retreated southwards to Vakarai in the Batticaloa District, the Army moved to quash them from north and south. The heavy fighting which involved this operation took several months, and the Tigers retreated further to Thoppigala (Baron’s Cap). The army followed, and Thoppigala was taken only last June.

More operations followed to drive the LTTE out of the entire Eastern Province. But by the time the armed forces turned their attention to the North, the Northeast Monsoon was about to break, and major operations proved impossible. Several half-hearted attempts to gain ground in the Vavuniya area ended in deadlock. Although some ground has been gained around Mannar, there is still no major threat to the LTTE stronghold in the Wanni.

Through all this, the CFA continued to be in existence only as a worthless scrap of paper.

The million-dollar question that remains unanswered is: Why did the government really withdraw from the CFA at this present time?

That is, apart from the obvious reason of appeasing the JVP and JHU. Viewed in the context of statements by the top political leaders and army top brass that they will wipe out the LTTE in 2008, it is clear that the abrogation of the CFA is a precursor to a massive ground assault on the Tigers in the Wanni, backed by air attacks.

This operation has been a long-time coming. As this column pointed out last July, the slow progress in the East over 18 months of warfare meant that the army’s attention was finally turned to the North only shortly before the Northeast Monsoon was about to break. So operations conducted there so far have been on a smaller scale.

But now, with the monsoon easing up, and expected to end completely in about a week, the way is clear for a massive attack on the weakened Tigers. There will then be at least nine months of almost continuous good weather over the North, which means that the time has come for the army to turn its words into action.

With overwhelming air and seapower, as well as a huge numerical advantage, all odds are massively in favour of the armed forces. However, the Tigers have had many months to prepare their defences and contingency plans. What this means is that the advance is likely to be slow, through heavily mined and boobytrapped areas. 2008 may turn out to be a very bloody year in the North for both sides and for civilians.