With the police cracking down heavily on all the deserters who did not surrender during the government amnesty earlier this month, the runaway soldiers are adopting extreme measures to avoid returning to the front. According to government estimates, only 6,000 of an estimated 15,000 deserters gave themselves up voluntarily in an amnesty announced by the government earlier this month. When the May 10 deadline of the amnesty expired, the government began a crackdownon the remaining. But so far, only about 2,000 have been rounded up while the rest continue to evade arrest.

As news filtered out that many deserters had fled the country for jobs in the Gulf, the government tightened surveillance at the international airport but that is not preventing other runaway soldiers from attempting to do the same. Many are believed to have acquired passports with false identities to prevent detection and are preparing to join the vast number of illegal Sri Lankan immigrants abroad.

Whether they surrendered during the amnesty or were arrested later, all returning deserters are sent to the war front in the Vanni where the military is engaged in its most ambitious operation against the Tigers. The only difference is that the arrested deserters are heavily penalised before being sent to war.

"We might have been able to arrest more if we could imprison them. But we need every pair of hands we can get, at the front," said a senior official.

The people of the lion, as the Sinhalesedescribe themselves, seem to have lost the will to fight the Tigers. Earlier this month, army chief Lieutenant-General Rohan Daluwatte said the failure of recruitment drives, ever since the massacre of 1,200 soldiers by the LTTE on a single day at Mullaithivu in July 1996, had left the military with "no alternative" but to depend on deserters. Defence officialdom is reluctant to admit that the desertions are due to an increasing reluctance to face a tough, well-equipped and committed enemy, and is eager to emphasise instead that soldiers abandon the battlefield for "personal reasons", as if these reasons exist in a vacuum.

"When they come home on leave, they stay on beyond their leave because their families ask them to," said Lakshman Seneviratne, Senior Superintendent of Police of Kurunegala in central Sri Lanka where 163 deserters were arrested in the last 10 days. This month's amnesty was the eighth in three years. Though it was grandly described as the "final" call to the errant soldiers, another "lastchance" is being given for 16 hours this Sunday, "at the request" of religious leaders and relatives of the deserters. Going by past experience, the response to this renewed offer may be also be lukewarm.