The sad and tragic part here is that the state has never comprehended that brute force backed by superior numbers and support services at enormous cost, escalating from year to year by about 25 percent, has as yet to show any tangible results after a very long journey of nearly 19 months. The assumption of certain military victory, reflected in the term Jaya Sikurui (Victory Assured), shows clearly a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of conflicts.

Few seem to know that wars of this kind lasts a very long time. Their duration can be measured in decades rather than in years.

We are under an illusion that the systematic slaughter of Tigers will bring an end to hostilities sooner or later, which is probably within the realm of possibility in a conventional type of war where you outnumber the enemy many times over. In a guerilla warfare which we witness today, even a ratio of ten to one in your favour cannot "pull the chestnuts out of the fire".

Moreover, we seem to believe that killing 'terrorists' will eventually kill 'terrorism', but what is not known is that if terrorists are perceived by the people who are supposed to be represented by them, as freedom fighters, then the latter’s recruiting base will never dry up as we see elsewhere in the world - in the Middle East, Africa, S. America, etc.

It is this phenomenon that is prevailing in the North and East today. The LTTE, (with its cadre strength in five figures, in spite of daily battlefield losses - may be through persuasion and propaganda than enforced conscription as touted by the state) keeps its human resources-pot brimful, except for seasonal variations of short duration. How else do you explain the manner in which the LTTE has managed to sustain itself these past 1½ decades where their death toll as claimed by the government itself is almost 23,000?

Those 'teenagers' that form the great majority of their fighting strength, were either just being born or were 'babes' when the conflict first erupted but today they make up the second generation of fighters or rebels. Whatever name given to them, and I am pretty certain of one thing: they are more motivated than their counterparts on the battlefield.

It is against this backdrop of a bottomless vessel of dedicated cohorts prepared to give up their lives, silently supported by the vast majority of the elders of their community, that the state needs to look anew at the options available to them.

In order to exercise the correct option one must comprehend the nature of this war. It is a war of attrition. But it would appear that the political establishment at the highest level would prefer to see it as a conventional one, where a military "victory is assured" with the use of superior and sophisticated weapons of destruction backed by overwhelming human resources.

As a result, there is a huge conceptual chasm between the two sides to the conflict in the manner in which this war is fought.

On the one hand, while the Sri Lanka general staff has changed at frequent intervals (by retirement, death whilst on duty, removal from high office, etc.) the LTTE has been commanded by one man throughout the entire period of over 15 years.

There is thus a strong presumption that he must know more about this war than his Sinhala counterparts. Despite this there has never come from him an assertion of confidence in military victory, least of all by a particular date or period. He has not spoken in terms of victory or defeat. The conclusion is inescapable that he understands the nature of the war, i.e., that it is a war of attrition and, even more significantly, that he understands what such a war means.

On the other hand, whenever our politicians make pronouncements on the war they betray a high degree of ignorance of the fundamental realities of this type of war.

First and foremost, is the failure to understand that the adversary represents a cause - self determination. The most simplistic delusion is that the war is a result of "Prabhakaran’s wickedness" or "bloody-mindedness", and if he were somehow removed, the war would be victoriously concluded. Another mistaken belief is that he is a dictator hated by the Tamil people.

What is also not known is that in a war of attrition, the challenger is able to absorb casualties on a scale far beyond the expectations or comprehension of the conventional military authorities.

The latter know from their own experience how difficult it is to recruit personnel even to make up for operational losses, let alone for an overall increase of cadre. Not only are they convinced that their opponent must experience the same difficulty but they also believe that after every battle, the LTTE is permanently diminished to the extent of the losses inflicted on it.

They cannot comprehend how the LTTE can replenish its losses, still less how it augments its total cadre. It is this lack that leads to the belief that the LTTE is close to collapse when the very opposite is the case.

Our Commander-in-chief, aided and abetted by her deputy, speaks with conviction of a victorious military conclusion by the end of this year (after adjusting many time frames in the past three years) but neither they nor a section of our passionate Sinhala society understands that the conflict is now only in its earliest stages and is poised to continue well into the next decade.

The frequent, now numberless and increasingly tiresome pronouncements of imminent victory, are classic symptoms of the malaise - an established state’s failure to comprehend what a war of attrition means.

Such wars have never ended with the collapse or extermination of the challenger to the State.