This book is a personalized account of a Division Commander attempting to suppress insurgency on foreign soil and combat environment. The heart of the Tamil resistance in Sri Lanka remains to this day the Jaffna Peninsula - the area of responsibility of the author's command in 1988.

Janus-faced, he had to stride the divide between:

* Strategic perception and tactical reality of vicious and sudden counter-insurgency action;
* Being the combat leader and a diplomat simultaneously;
* Being a healer as well as the perpetrator of counter-terror violence of a strictly controlled nature;
* Being the retainer of military initiative and giver of grace periods.

This account is unsparing as it unfolds the fractured efforts of the Indian higher command echelons in persisting with failed methods to bring in �success' at any cost; the manic, fanatical, indeed suicidal resistance of the LTTE; and the feeling of a proud and sensitive people caught between the nutcracker formed by their desires and perceptions of the future and the proximate reality of the IPKF-LTTE face off for the battle for their hearts and minds.

In the end it becomes obvious that the common wisdom on �winning' and �losing' simply do not apply to assignments that were given to the author and his command. They could pave a path but not the whole way to the desired destination.