ABSTRACT
Fighting had become general along the Wanni with the army beginning to probe rebel defences, by the end of 2007. As in the East, the army's objectives in the Wanni were in marked contrast to the previous attempts to penetrate the region. With the East slipping from the rebels' grasp, the Wanni was shaping as the decisive and final battleground. The Tigers had been attacked in this stronghold many times in the past, and each time they had succeeded in bouncing back. The loss of the East, and the failure to obtain vital supplies from abroad, placed considerable strain on a rebel war machine already beginning to stutter and creak. The Tiger territories were ill defined and somewhat scattered rather than contiguous; Tiger-dominated settlements lived cheek by jowl with areas dominated by the Security Forces. The army's objective was to take over the so-called rice bowl of Mannar and then move northwards, rolling up the rebel-held western coast.
