Vanquished.

The IPKF should have been Sri Lanka's saviour in its dark hour. Instead it ended up being hated by the very people it went to save. Hated and condemned.

It suffered too. Suffered terribly in an alien terrain, fighting an enemy which had the full support of the people and the government, fighting a war which was not its. It killed thousands, lost thousands. And came home under a cloud so dark and heavy that it has cast a permanent shadow over the fourth largest army in the world.

What went wrong?

In an explosive, exhaustive series over the next fortnight, rediff.com uncovers facets of the operation that have never been revealed.

ON TO PART 1
Totally unprepared and ill-equipped, that was the IPKF

Design: Dominic Xavier