Operation Pawan (1987–1989)

The morning after the promise

Dawn in Jaffna smelled of dust and burned thatch. Streets that had once been busy with fishmongers and schoolchildren were punctuated now by armored hulls and the tentative shapes of soldiers. For many civilians the presence of Indian troops felt, at first, like protection — an answer to months of fear under blockade and bombardment. For others it was the moment a foreign army stepped onto their soil.

The Indian intervention began under the most public of diplomatic gestures: an airdrop, a signed accord and a plea to put weapons aside. What nobody could have guaranteed, least of all the men in fatigues watching the grey light, was that those first, hopeful hours would soon give way to pitched fighting, ambushes and a war that neither New Delhi nor Colombo had fully prepared to finish.

Airdrops, accords and the shape of an uneasy peace

To understand Operation Pawan you have to go back to Black July. The anti‑Tamil pogroms of 1983 ruptured the already fragile trust between Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhalese majority and turned grievances into armed revolt. The LTTE consolidated itself through the 1980s, increasingly controlling towns, roads and coastal approaches in the north and east. India — and particularly Tamil Nadu — watched with a complicated mixture of anger, sympathy and political pressure. New Delhi tried a mix of patronage, pressure and negotiation with the Tamil militants.

When Sri Lanka tightened a blockade around the Jaffna Peninsula in 1987, India sent a message it would not ignore. On June 4, 1987, Indian aircraft dropped essentials over Jaffna in Operation Poomalai — a bold, public reminder that New Delhi could act on behalf of Tamil civilians. A few weeks later, on July 29, 1987, Sri Lanka and India signed the Indo–Sri Lanka Accord. The Accord aimed to devolve power to provinces and requested Indian forces to assist with disarmament and restore normalcy. India obliged by deploying the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF).

The political compact was simple on paper: India would help disarm militant groups and secure a ceasefire while Colombo undertook constitutional changes. On the ground, the lines blurred. The LTTE mistrusted the arrangement and the rival Tamil groups that it had been fighting for influence. Local loyalties and grudges mixed with national and regional politics. Negotiations that were supposed to calm the situation descended into a slow-motion collapse — and then fighting.

When patience ran out and the peninsula became a battlefield

Indian landings and deployments began in July and August 1987. Initially, the operation had the feel of a peacekeeping mission: checkpoints, convoys and patrols meant to keep supply lines open and to separate fighters from civilians. But the LTTE refused to surrender arms. Skirmishes, ambushes and provocations multiplied.

Many historians and contemporaries mark October 1987 as the month the conflict changed its character: what had been a stabilizing presence became an occupying force in the eyes of many locals, and the IPKF shifted toward offensive operations to seize Jaffna and compel the LTTE to disarm. This is the phase most commonly referred to as Operation Pawan. Indian commanders orchestrated heliborne insertions, amphibious moves and mechanized advances aiming to seize towns, control approaches to the peninsula and cut off the LTTE’s freedom of movement.

The urban fights were gritty and small — close streets, booby‑trapped houses, snipers on rooftops. The LTTE, adept at guerrilla tactics, melted into neighborhoods and farm tracks; they set mines and staged sudden, murderous ambushes on convoys. The IPKF’s conventional formations found themselves fighting a foe who knew every alley and every orchard, and who had time and motive to turn civilians into informants, shields or victims.

Chaos in the streets

In Jaffna city and its approaches, battles were fought block by block. Soldiers moved with caution through powdered streets littered with shattered glass and collapsed walls. Helicopters became vital — both for inserting troops and supplying besieged units — but also hazardous, frequently targeted with small arms fire and anti‑aircraft weapons. Night operations and house clearances left neighborhoods hollowed out.

Casualties mounted on both sides. Indian battalions paid for every yard with men killed, wounded and missing. For civilians, the choice was seldom between safety and danger; it was between two dangers. Homes were damaged or destroyed, livelihoods were interrupted, and hospitals struggled to cope with both combat injuries and the everyday needs of the displaced.

The war that wore the uniform of peacekeeping

After the initial October–December offensive, Operation Pawan did not come to a tidy close. The IPKF’s work evolved into a long, grinding counter‑insurgency campaign that extended through 1988 and into 1989. The LTTE dispersed into jungle and thicket, launching ambushes and mines against supply columns, then melting back into the countryside. The IPKF rotated through garrison towns and highway defense, trying to hold a fragile order.

This phase exposed a familiar problem: conventional armies are trained to seize and hold ground, but counter‑insurgency demands a different mix of intelligence, local trust and political clarity. When those elements are missing, force can win battles but not necessarily the peace. Allegations of excesses — from unlawful detentions to more severe abuses — were raised by human rights groups and local witnesses. Each allegation fed mistrust, eroded the IPKF’s legitimacy among civilians, and hardened the LTTE’s resolve.

Counting costs the world would not agree on

No single page in the record tells the full cost of Operation Pawan. Numbers are contested; fog and politics have left the final tally disputed and partial.

• Indian military deaths during the wider IPKF deployment (1987–1990) are commonly cited in the range of roughly 1,000–1,500 killed, with wounded figures often given between about 3,000–4,000. Some sources quote the figure near 1,200 killed. These are commonly cited estimates rather than universally agreed official totals.

• LTTE casualties and captures are reported in the thousands by various accounts, but precise figures vary widely and are politically sensitive.

• Civilian deaths and injuries are the most difficult to quantify reliably. Humanitarian organizations, journalists and local records documented multiple incidents of civilian harm, forced displacement and property loss; aggregate estimates run into the low thousands and upward depending on the period counted and methodology used.

The material damage was concentrated in urban centers such as Jaffna, in roads and bridges, in schools and clinics — the civic skeleton of the region. Economic disruption hit fisheries and agriculture, cutting off livelihoods. The human toll, however, was broader: a generation of civilians who would remember foreign troops patrolling their streets, young men who joined or were forced into militias, and families waiting for those who never returned.

Politics at home: the mission that divided New Delhi

Operation Pawan’s consequences were not confined to Sri Lanka’s north. In India the operation became a thorn in domestic politics. The human cost and the perception of an open‑ended military mission eroded support. Questions were asked in Parliament; veterans and families demanded attention for the care of the wounded and the bereaved. The IPKF experience forced a reckoning in India about its readiness for expeditionary operations, parliamentary oversight of military deployments abroad and the political price of intervention.

For Sri Lanka, the presence of Indian troops complicated national sovereignty debates. Some Tamil civilians initially welcomed Indian protection; others viewed it as a foreign occupation that failed to address their political aspirations. Colombo found the presence of the IPKF increasingly awkward even as it sought leverage against the LTTE. The result was a diplomatic and political tangle that only deepened with time.

Withdrawal and the slow closing of a chapter

By 1989 the IPKF was increasingly limited to garrisoned areas and strategic routes; the tempo of patrols and operations continued, but strategic momentum had dissipated. Political change in New Delhi shifted priorities, and a decision to withdraw the IPKF was taken. The drawdown began in stages and completed in March 1990. The Sri Lankan state reasserted control over territories vacated by Indian forces, and the civil war with the LTTE resumed full sway — ultimately ending only two decades later, in 2009, when the Sri Lankan military defeated the LTTE.

What the withdrawal did not resolve were the grievances, the allegations of abuse, or the deep sense of loss. Many survivors — soldiers and civilians — were left to carry memory, trauma and unanswered questions.

Lessons written in doctrine, memory and litigation

Operation Pawan forced hard lessons for military planners and policymakers. Indian military doctrine and training places more emphasis now on counter‑insurgency skills, civil–military coordination, intelligence integration and rules of engagement for peace enforcement. The campaign became a case study in the costs of sending conventional forces into a complex internal conflict without a fully integrated political strategy.

Human rights organizations documented alleged violations during the IPKF period and called for investigations and accountability. While some incidents were examined in media and NGO reports, there was no single comprehensive judicial reckoning that satisfied all parties. The moral and legal debates that followed the IPKF’s departure continue to shape conversations about accountability in internal and cross‑border interventions.

Reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in the north and east have been intermittent and tied to the changing fortunes of Sri Lankan politics and the course of the civil war. Over decades, rebuilding moved forward in fits and starts, but scars — physical and social — remained.

How memory keeps the story unfinished

Operation Pawan resists a tidy final sentence. For some in India it is a cautionary tale about the limits of military power used without clear political ends. For some Sri Lankan Tamils it is a period of both protection and betrayal. For veterans who served, it is a ledger of comrades lost and roads hard‑won. For historians, it is a complex episode that yields tactical accounts of battlefield action alongside strategic questions about regional power, sovereignty and the responsibility to protect.

What endures is not only the map of battles and dates but the human geography of a peninsula that saw armies walk into its streets and left behind rubble, memories and lessons. The operation changed military practice, strained diplomatic ties and shaped lives — outcomes that continue to be argued over and reinterpreted as archives open and survivors speak.

Operation Pawan did not end the conflict it was meant to solve. It interrupted it, redirected it and left a trace that neither history nor memory can fully reconcile. The men in fatigues left Jaffna in 1990; the consequences remained, folded into the longer war that would only end with the LTTE’s military defeat in 2009. The questions it raised about intervention, accountability and the price of peacekeeping in an unwilling theater remain, unresolved, and instructive for any nation that contemplates using force in the name of peace.