Combined military forces of Sri Lanka
The Sri Lanka Armed Forces is the overall unified military of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka encompassing the Sri Lanka Army, the Sri Lanka Navy, and the Sri Lanka Air Force; they are governed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The three services have around 346,700 active personnel; conscription has never been imposed in Sri Lanka. As of 2021 it is the 14th largest military in the world, with 1.46% of the Sri Lankan population actively serving.
History.
Sri Lanka has a military history going back to more than 2000 years. The roots of the modern Sri Lankan military lead back to the colonial era when the Portuguese, Dutch and British established local militias to support their wars against the local Kingdoms. The British created the Ceylon Rifle Regiment during the Kandyan wars. Although it had natives in its ranks, it was largely composed of Malays. It was disbanded in 1873.
Imperial service.
The lineage of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces dates back to 1881, when the British created a volunteer reserve on the island named the Ceylon Light Infantry Volunteers. Created to supplement the British garrison in Ceylon in the event of an external threat, it gradually increased in size. In 1910 it was renamed the Ceylon Defence Force (CDF) and consisted of several regiments. The CDF mobilized for home defence in World War I and again in World War II when its units were deployed along with allied forces in Asia and Africa. At the end of the war it has grown in size to that of an independent brigade, but was de-mobilized in 1946 and disbanded in 1949. In 1937 the Ceylon Naval Volunteer Force was established (later renamed as the Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (CRNVR)), it was mobilized for war in 1939 and was incorporated into the Royal Navy.
Dominion of Ceylon.
Following the establishment of the Dominion of Ceylon with Britain granting independence in 1948, work began to establish a regular military. The Army Act No. 17 of 1949 was passed by Parliament on 11 April 1949 and formalized in the Gazette Extraordinary No. 10028 of 10 October 1949. This marked the creation of the Ceylon Army, and the CDF and the CRNVR were disbanded to make way for a regular navy. On 9 December 1950 the Royal Ceylon Navy (RCyN) was established. Finally, in 1951 the Royal Ceylon Air Force (RCyAF) was established as the youngest of the three forces. From the outset Britain played a significant role in helping the Ceylon government in developing its armed forces.
The growth of the Ceylon Armed Forces was slow due to lack of foreign threat, since Ceylon maintained cordial relations with its neighbor India and had a defence treaty with Britain. In the 1950s it was mainly employed in internal security assisting the police. There was an attempted coup in 1962 by a group of reservists, which led to cuts in military spending and the disbandment of several regiments. This, together with the lack of an intelligence agency, left it ill-prepared for the insurgency launched by the Marxist JVP in April 1971.
First JVP Insurrection.
The 1971 JVP Insurrection saw Ceylon Armed Forces mobilizing for combat operations. for the first time and its size grew rapidly. The insurrection was brought under control in a few months.
Republic of Sri Lanka.
In 1972, Ceylon became the independent socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, with it the Ceylon Armed Forces became known as the Sri Lanka Armed Forces as the Ceylon Army became the Sri Lanka Army, the Royal Ceylon Navy became the Sri Lanka Navy and the Royal Ceylon Air Force became the Sri Lanka Air Force.
Sri Lankan Civil War and the Second JVP Insurrection.
By the early 1980s, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces mobilized against the insurgency of Tamil militant groups in the north of the island. This was the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The size of the Armed Forces grew rapidly in the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, the Armed Forces began launching operations in the like of conventional warfare against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which had by then became the most powerful of the Tamil militant groups and had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Sri Lanka.
This led to India intervening by entering Sri Lankan air space to carry out food drops. Shortly afterward the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord was signed and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was sent to Sri Lanka to establish peace.
The military was redistricted to its bases but was soon involved in another insurrection by the JVP in the south of the island from 1987 to 1989. In the north, tension increased with the LTTE and the IPKF leading to open war with the two suffering heavy casualties. In 1990 the IPKF pulled out and the war commenced with the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the LTTE.
In 1994, a brief ceasefire came into place and peace talks began. The ceasefire ended when the LTTE sack two SLN gunboats. The phase of the war that followed, known as Eelam War III, saw a conventional war taking place in the northern and eastern provinces of the island and LTTE attacks in other parts of the country, which included several largescale suicide bombings. The Sri Lankan Army began deploying full divisions in offensive operations and the Navy and Air Force increased their inventories to support the Army.
In 2002, a new Cease-Fire Agreement (CFA) was established with Norwegian mediation and peace talks began. The SLMM was established to monitor the ceasefire and certain progress archived until the LTTE withdrew from the peace talks in 2003. Although the ceasefire continued no peace talks took place till 2005. In 2006, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) reported that the LTTE had violated the CFA 3,471 times and the Sri Lankan security forces 162 times since the signing of the ceasefire.
Some defense reforms also commenced in 2002 when the Prime Minister established the Defence Review Committee (DRC) which formulated extensive recommendations that encapsulate force modernization as well as the restructuring of command and control in ways that would make the army more responsive to civil control. The first task of the Committee was to assess the Higher Defence Organisation, given the decision by the President to relinquish the defense portfolio. When a paper drafted by the Committee was inadvertently made public, concerns were raised that the Committee's recommendations for restructuring Higher Defence Organisation might be constitutionally flawed in relation to the role of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Sri Lankan armed forces. Although the work of the Committee thereafter proceeded apace, the DRC itself became a political football amidst the growing tension between the President and the Prime Minister. In 2003 the President took the decision to bring an end to the work of the DRC and, instead, assigned the task of SSR to the Joint Operations Headquarters, since when little progress has been evident.
In April 2006 following a suicide bomb attack on the Commander of the Army, airstrikes began followed by skirmishes, however, both the government and the LTTE claimed that the ceasefire was still in place. The offensive by the Armed Forces was launched when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Aru reservoir on 21 July and cut the water supply to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. This led to several major attacks by the LTTE in the eastern province and the north. The Armed Forces went on the offensive successfully recapturing LTTE control areas in the eastern province during 2007. By then the LTTE had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries.
In 2017 Sri Lanka Armed Forces deployed nearly 10,000 personnel and equipment for relief, help and rescue operations of 2017 Sri Lanka floods. This is the biggest military deployment of the peacetime.
On 3 January 2008 the government informed Norway of its decision to quit the ceasefire, with it the ceasefire officially ended on 16 January 2008, following several bombings in the capital. Along with the ceasefire operations of the SLMM also ended.
During 2008 there was heavy fighting in the northern province where the Sri Lanka Armed Forces launched major offensives and succeeded in recapturing LTTE controlled areas of the Mannar District, the Vavuniya District and moving into the Mullaitivu District and Kilinochchi District. During December 2008, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces were engaged in offensives on all fronts, with heavy fighting around Kilinochchi (where the LTTE had its headquarters) and close to Mullaitivu.
In early 2009 the Armed Forces recaptured in quick succession Kilinochchi and the strategically important Elephant Pass. Thus establishing a land route to the government controlled Jaffna Peninsula which had been supplied by sea and air for over 10 years after its recapture in 1995. Shortly thereafter Mullaitivu was recaptured by the 59th Division of the SLA. Boxed into a small land area north of Mullaitivu, the LTTE with its remaining cadres and leadership was effectively trapped, with this land mass being slowly reduced until May 2009.
On 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces won its final battle against the LTTE with the death of several LTTE leaders, including its head Velupillai Prabhakaran while he was attempting to flee.
On 22 May 2009, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa confirmed that 6,261 personnel of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces had lost their lives and 29,551 were wounded during Eelam War IV since July 2006.
The Armed Forces along with the LTTE have been accused of committing war crimes during the war, particularly during the final stages. A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE, with most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war being blamed on indiscriminate Sri Lankan Army shelling and the LTTE being blamed for using civilians as a human buffer. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused the Sri Lankan Armed Forces of committing widespread and often extremely brutal sexual violence against both Tamil females and males alike in a report in 2015.
Funding.
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Strategic importance.
The posture of the military has been defensive due to the nature of the strategic threats to Sri Lanka. In the short-term, internal security is considered the main threat to the nation's future. In the long-term, the threat is seen as primarily external from current and future superpowers in their rival quests for dominance of the Indian Ocean; at one point these were the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or more commonly known as the Soviet Union
Command organization.
As head of state, the President of Sri Lanka, is nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The National Security Council, chaired by the President is the authority charged with formulating and executing defence policy for the nation. The highest level of military headquarters is the Ministry of Defence, since 1978 except for a few rare occasions the President retained the portfolio defence, thus being the Minister of Defence. The ministry and the armed forces have been controlled during these periods by either a Minister of State, Deputy Minister for defence, and recently by the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. Prior to 1978 the Prime Minister held the portfolio of Minister of Defence and External Affairs, and was supported by a Parliamentary Secretary for Defence and External Affairs.
The Ministry of Defence is responsible for the management of the forces, while the planning and execution of combined operations is the responsibility of the Joint Operations Command (JOC). The JOC is headed by the Chief of the Defence Staff who is the most senior officer in the Armed Forces and is an appointment that can be held by a General, Admiral, or Air Chief Marshal. The three services have their own respective professional chiefs: the Commander of the Army, the Commander of the Navy and the Commander of the Air Force, who have much autonomy.
Deployments in peacekeeping missions.
Ceylon's first involvement in United Nations peacekeeping took place in 1957 in the wake of