war - what is happening?

note: above map does not pretend to be exact and is only a rough guide. click to enlarge

with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war i have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either i was present myself at the events which i have described myself or else i heard them from eye-witnesses whose reports i have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. not that even so the truth was easy to discover: different eye-witnesses gave different accounts of the same events, speaking out of partiality for one side or the other or else from imperfect memories.
book 1, 22. history of the peloponnesian war - thucydides (one of my favorite books btw)

it’s a pity that most reporters do not follow in the footsteps a historian who reported on a contemporary conflict 2400 years ago. reports about current (and on going) fighting in trincomalee district is a good example. no one can give casualty figures or assert who is controlling what while the fighting is taking place, but some people pretend to. government and ltte does that for propaganda purposes. accounts of the eye witnesses (including ones i have spoken to myself) are contradictory. media just repeat these almost certainly false figures or narratives. in fact only thing we can be certain is that they are inaccurate. that is why i will not relate what i heard ( besides i cannot produce my eye witnesses, as such others cannot verify my account and it becomes useless as i have said earlier ) .

so how do we know what happened?

there is nothing to do but to wait till the situation stabilizes, as it probably will in a few days, if we want to go into details.

in a general sense however we can say the following.

• government's ground operation to take over the sluice-gate of the mawilaru anicut is moving at snail's pace (if that) at present but this was expected. this operation reportedly had several prongs and some of the prongs moving in from different directions seem to have joined up with each other.
• ltte artillery attacks (originating in sampur area) on navy movements were unsuccessful. only time they came close to success was in their attack on 'jetliner' ferry carrying 800+ military personnel, but that was a suicide mission like the one on day before wesak. even that failed. this failure on the part of tigers is probably the most significant event militarily. some analysts feared before this that ltte's was capable of effectively blockading trincomalee harbor, thus cutting off supplies to troops in jaffna.
• ltte launched attacks against several army camps and muttur town 2days ago. indications are they were not successful against the army camps. it may be that ltte didn't plan to overrun them in the first place, but merely to distract them. on the other hand their raid on muttur was successful initially. military was certainly not in complete control of the town by august 2nd night, that does not mean ltte was in control either. situation probably changed by last (3rd) night after government sent in reinforcements. military seem to have got the upper hand there but we can't be certain till situation stabilizes.

how do we judge who won?

that can only be done if and when situation is stable.
if at that point sluice-gates are open without government giving in to ltte demands and muttur and other areas under government control are free of pussies government would have won.
let's hope they do.