Overall Operational Commander
Sri Lankan military title
Overall Operational Commander is the title held by the most senior commander in a theatre of operation at certain times in Sri Lanka.
History
It originated as a term Officer Commanding Troops of the Ceylon Army, when a senior officer was put in charge of multiple units in a geographical area. With the escalation of the Tamil militancy in the Jaffna Peninsula, President J. R. Jayawardene dispatched Brigadier Tissa Weeratunga to Jaffna as Commander Security Forces - Jaffna, with extensive powers under the provisions of Prevention of Terrorism (Special Provisions) Act No: 48 of 1979. Brigadier Weeratunga served as Commander Security Forces - Jaffna from 13 July 1979 to 31 December 1979 undertaking counter insurgency operations to reduce militant activities. In October 1981, Brigadier J. G. Balthazar was appointed Commander Security Forces - Jaffna following an increase of militant activities.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Overall Operational Commander” is sri Lankan military title. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Overall, Operational and Commander, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “sri Lankan military title” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96397895. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 1981.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Overall Operational Commander” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.