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COMMENT
The transformation of
terror?
By Rohan Gunaratna
 The peace talks
between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in Thailand last
week are a first step in a process that is expected to
culminate either in the restoration of a permanent peace
or two separate nation-states on the island of Sri
Lanka.
In the immediate aftermath of September
11, the LTTE embarked on a sustained dialogue for peace
to evade further blacklisting as a terrorist group by
governments worldwide. The LTTE has been proscribed,
designated or banned as a terrorist group by a number of
governments - India, Malaysia, the US, Canada, the
United Kingdom, Australia - countries where the LTTE has
a significant terrorist infrastructure for disseminating
propaganda, raising funds, procuring and shipping
supplies to support their terrorist campaign in Sri
Lanka.
Stating that it would damage the on-going
peace process, LTTE propagandists have been urging
European governments and New Zealand not to include them
in their terrorist lists. As the LTTE operates through
community organizations and also applies pressure on
host politicians, using significant constituency
pressure, some governments have responded to the LTTE
plea. After getting the LTTE de-proscribed in Sri Lanka,
the current LTTE strategy is to get the foreign
governments to take them off their terrorist lists as
well. This is partly why the most prominent members of
the LTTE peace delegation are from overseas - Adele Anne
and Anton Stanislaus Balasingham from the UK; V
Rudrakumaran from the US and Jay Maheswaran from
Australia, all heads and deputy heads, if not prominent
office bearers of the LTTE, in countries where the LTTE
has been blacklisted.
The LTTE is one of the
most successful terrorist groups in the world. Its
leadership, headed by Velupillai Prabhakaran, is
confident that it is only a question of time before it
achieves a military victory against the Sri Lankan
security forces in the northeast. However, the LTTE is
aware that it desperately needs to restore the
international legitimacy it has lost in over a quarter
of a century of unbridled terrorism since Prabhakaran
was involved in the killing of Alfred Duraiappah, the
then Tamil mayor of Jaffna, in 1975.
The LTTE
has consequently been exerting efforts to move away from
terrorism (targeting civilians) and building guerrilla
capabilities (targeting security force personnel),
especially after it suicide-bombed Sri Lanka's World
Trade Center twin towers in January 1996. Even its
leader "Chairman Prabhakaran", also self-styled as "the
national leader of the Eelam Tamils", has changed his
macho appearances in army fatigues, holding a firearm,
into a statesmanlike figure in a safari suit. In trying
to change their leader's image of a "ruthless
megalomaniac" or as "Asia's master of terror" into a Sri
Lankan Nelson Mandela, the LTTE website quotes Nelson
Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
The LTTE realizes
that India still holds the key to a durable peace in Sri
Lanka, and India was the LTTE's first choice of the
venue for the peace talks. The LTTE requested Norwegian
mediators to lobby New Delhi to lift its proscription
against the group, and sought to re-establish a
strategic support base in Tamil Nadu. The Indian
government, however, saw through the LTTE intention and
opposed the re-use of Indian soil by the LTTE. Today,
New Delhi holds the LTTE leadership responsible for the
suicide assassination of former prime minister Rajiv
Gandhi and the death of 1,555, and injury of some 3,000
Indian peacekeepers in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990.
Having aided the LTTE from 1983-1987 and
subsequently burnt its fingers, India is also aware that
the LTTE has not truly changed its spots. India's vast
intelligence community has been monitoring the LTTE at
the same level that it monitors other terrorist groups
that threaten India. Unlike the Sri Lankan intelligence
service that was politicized after Chandrika Kumaratunge
took to office in 1994, both India's foreign and
domestic security services have been monitoring the
LTTE's banking, procurement and shipping network. The
LTTE's pronouncements that it wishes to abandon violence
and enter mainstream politics are inconsistent with the
findings of the Indian services that the LTTE is
continuing to build a significant military capability.
Thailand has been a safe haven for the LTTE
after its head of banking, procurement and shipping,
Tharmalingam Shanmugam Kumaran alias Kumaran
Pathmanathan, moved out of neighboring Malaysia after
the Malaysian Special Branch detected and seized an LTTE
ship in 1990. In addition to setting up a number of
lucrative businesses, the LTTE established a
state-of-the-art boatyard that manufactured a dozen
different boats, including a mini-submarine for
debussing divers. As LTTE attack crafts and suicide
boats were getting hit in surface battles with the navy
that had managed to procure fast craft and long range
guns, the LTTE wished to improve their capability by
sneaking in divers armed with explosive devices into Sri
Lankan ports.
The Thai authorities detected the
LTTE operation on the island of Phuket, but since it was
not an offence to build a submarine in Thailand, the
Thai authorities released the head of the boatyard, a
Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, who then returned to Norway.
For a long time, both the Indian and Sri Lankan
intelligence communities have been aware of LTTE
activities in Thailand, especially its procurement and
shipping activities. For instance, the LTTE ship Horizon
(Julex Comex 3), detected and destroyed in a joint
Indian-Sri Lankan operation, originated from Thailand.
Similarly, Cholakeri, a ship with a wooden hull
transporting weapons to Sri Lanka, sank off the coast of
Thailand due to excessive weight. Foreign intelligence
services have reported that the LTTE works with corrupt
politicians and military officers in the service of the
Thai government who protect its operations. The choice
of Thailand as the venue for talks, consequently, was no
surprise.
What is important is for Norway, Sri
Lanka and other governments with an interest in peace in
Sri Lanka to grasp this opportunity to facilitate the
LTTE's entry into the political mainstream. If
sufficient political, military and economic pressure is
applied on the LTTE, it can be made to abandon its
avowed goal of an independent mono-ethnic Tamil state.
Since early 2002, there has been a failure on the part
of Norway and others to move the LTTE in the direction
of peace. On the contrary, the LTTE has strengthened
itself militarily, consolidated itself politically and
is planning to harness the economic aid that is likely
to come its way in the next few months.
As long
as a terrorist group is unwilling to compromise on
fundamental issues, a peace process would prove a waste
of time and energy, unless the government itself needs
time to rebuilt its economy and its security forces. In
the current Sri Lankan context, there is no evidence of
the government restructuring, reorienting or
strengthening its military. On the contrary, there is
evidence of a military build-up by the LTTE, not only in
terms of continuous recruitment (including forcible
recruitment), procurement of supplies overseas, and
training of cadres and fund raising (even by extortion),
but also of a bid to go high-tech, procuring the
services of a computer engineer to develop a computer
guided integrated air defense system and underwater
weapons to deter and cripple the Sri Lanka navy.
Sri Lanka's capability not only to fight
terrorism but also to defend itself against the
terrorist threat has suffered gravely in the recent
past. In their attempts to survive, most Sri Lankan
leaders have made the ethnic conflict a political
football. Instead of strengthening the hand of, and
working together with, the six Tamils groups that joined
the political process in 1987, they looked to the LTTE
that remained committed to establishing an independent
mono-ethnic Tamil state.
By politicizing the
military and the intelligence community, past
governments emasculated these national institutions and
rendered them impotent. They dispatched the best
military generals as ambassadors and high commissioners,
retaining weak yes-men around them. Appointments and
promotions were not on merit, ability and performance,
but on personal and party loyalty. Sri Lanka must build
a professional military with at least 40 percent elite
troops (commandos, special forces, etc), as its regular
soldiers with six months training cannot fight the LTTE
effectively. In addition to inducting fresh blood and
training, Sri Lanka has no option but to professionalise
its intelligence services - the eyes and ears of the
state. A well-trained (and retrained) and well-led
military is a credible threat to the LTTE, as opposed to
a numerically large military. Similarly, an intelligence
community that can penetrate the terrorist group and
know its inner workings is an asset, both in war and
peace. Sri Lanka cannot be an exception to how other
governments with similar threats manage their business.
The current international climate is likely to
restrain the LTTE from returning to violence in the
short term. Since September, along with several other
groups, the international spotlight has been on the
LTTE.
The threat of further international
isolation, especially the likelihood of the US and other
countries stepping up assistance to the Sri Lankan
government in the event the group returns to violence,
is understood by the LTTE. The post-September 11 policy
response of the international community to criminalize
and prosecute terrorist groups has placed all terrorist
front, cover and sympathetic organizations, including
the LTTE, under significant pressure worldwide.
Nonetheless, all terrorist groups are creating new
front, cover and sympathetic organizations periodically,
in order to disseminate propaganda, raise funds, procure
and ship supplies. The international community needs to
move a step further and develop updated secondary lists
that identify, name and act against individuals and
organizations supporting terrorism and terrorist groups.
This is a labor-intensive task requiring close
cooperation and coordination between host and parent
states. As a learning organization, the LTTE has adapted
to the international threat by seeking to operate below
the intelligence radar screen and becoming more
invisible. For instance, its procurement cells are
time-sensitive, where it would establish a cell in
Europe for a few weeks, procure supplies and then
dissolve the cell. Similarly, the LTTE today prefers to
use trawlers that hug the coast, rather than the large
cargo ships it used in the 1980s and 1990s.
Like
al-Qaeda, the LTTE is an international organization.
When responding to an international organization, an
international response is essential. It was US-UK
cooperation against the Provisional Irish Republican
Army raising funds and procuring technologies from the
US that finally forced it to abandon violence and enter
the political mainstream in the UK. Likewise, close
cooperation between Sri Lankan and other host security
and intelligence agencies aimed at disrupting LTTE
banking, procurement and shipping networks are likely to
pressurize the LTTE to accept a negotiated political
settlement. The only way the LTTE can be made to commit
to a permanent peace is by making it realize that they
have no option but to go down this road. If continuous
international and domestic pressure are not applied on
the LTTE to dismantle their terrorist support
infrastructure, the group is likely to mark time until
the international focus shifts away from the LTTE, and
then recommence its campaign.
There are other
issues that must be addressed principally in the peace
process. The most important is the core problem of
linking devolution to decommissioning, and not the
peripheral problems of development aid. As in the past,
the LTTE is likely to use development aid to strengthen
itself politically, economically and militarily, and to
resume the fighting in time. Sri Lankan and Norwegian
leaders must develop a long-range view of the problem -
otherwise they are likely to be entrapped by the LTTE.
What is happening today is consistent with the past LTTE
model of political behavior, with the LTTE extracting
the maximum by deception and deceit. Relief,
rehabilitation, and reconstruction are important, but
unless core issues are not resolved, the patterns of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict are likely to repeat
themselves in Sri Lanka. At the moment, all the actors
are wallowing on the periphery, leaving the center
untouched.
As a facilitator, Norway wishes well
for the people of Sri Lanka. However, if permanent peace
is to return, Norway must create a strategic umbrella of
states that will guarantee the peace process. Norway
itself has no political, economic or military strength
to reinforce an agreement between the government and the
LTTE. India, the US and Europe - countries that have
significant influence in Sri Lanka, both with the
government and the LTTE - must be part of this strategic
umbrella. As the Norway-brokered Israeli-Palestinian
Oslo Accords demonstrate, even if a strategic umbrella
is created, it is no guarantee that peace will prevail.
That, unfortunately, is the best one can hope for within
the context of current attempts to establish a permanent
peace in Sri Lanka.
Dr Rohan
Gunaratna, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of
Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St
Andrews, Scotland. He is also the author of the book,
Inside al-Qaeda. Previously, he was principal
investigator of the United Nations' Terrorism Prevention
Branch, and he has served as a consultant on terrorism
to several governments and corporations.
Published with permission from the South
Asia Intelligence Review of theSouth Asia
Terrorism Portal
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