Catch a Tiger by the Toe
by Aaron Mannes
While the world focuses its attention on Lebanon, the bloody civil
war in Sri Lanka looks poised for yet another flare-up. Even excluding
the Sri Lankan army's current offensive, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam's (LTTE) June 15 bombing of a passenger bus that killed 64 people
and the June 26 assassination of a top Sri Lankan general, LTTE
terrorism and Sri Lankan military reprisals have claimed hundreds of
lives this year. Sri Lanka is a democratic ally, but the United States
has limited options for preventing further bloodshed.
However, international frustration with LTTE intransigence has
created a rare, low-cost opportunity for American leadership in the
region. If the United States can effectively target the LTTE's
international finance and smuggling networks, a lack of money and
weapons will reduce the group's capability to commit terror attacks,
increase the possibility of a political solution in Sri Lanka, and
improve the regional situation in Southeast Asia.
Long before the terms entered the American lexicon, the LTTE's
struggle for an independent, ethnically Hindu Tamil homeland in northern
Sri Lanka featured hundreds of suicide bombings and IEDs at a cost in
lives now estimated to exceed 64,000. According to the United Nation's
Children's Fund, the LTTE has a history of recruiting child soldiers
(including children orphaned by the December 2004 tsunami.).
The LTTE has bombed Sri Lanka's World Trade Centre and assassinated
dozens of political leaders, including two national leaders: former
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President
Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. Sri Lanka's Tamils have legitimate
grievances against the Sinhalese Buddhist-dominated Sri Lankan
government. But Sri Lanka is a democracy and Tamils have held high
positions in the government. Furthermore, the LTTE pursues a strategy
designed to stoke ethnic tensions and provoke attacks on the island's
ethnic minority, hamstringing the Sri Lankan government's faltering
attempts at a political solution.
The LTTE has two major sources of revenue with which to fund its war:
maritime smuggling and the international Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. The
LTTE, with its base of operations in close proximity to some of the
world's busiest shipping lanes, maintains its own fleet of ocean-going
ships that engage in commerce both legitimate and otherwise. LTTE arms
buying expeditions have ranged from southern Asia to Africa and beyond.
Meanwhile, the international Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora has provided
financial and political support critical to the group's survival. Much
of this support, according to a Human Rights Watch report, may be
coerced through the intimidation and even murder of diaspora Tamils who
criticize the LTTE.
These international fundraising and smuggling networks are vulnerable
to concerted international efforts. Canada, home to the world's largest
Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate community, banned the LTTE this April after
the release of the Human Rights Watch report. The EU, frustrated with
LTTE obstruction of the Norwegian-sponsored peace process, banned the
LTTE in May.
While these bans have not brought the LTTE back to the negotiating
table, they could be part of a long-term effort to cripple the LTTE's
international networks. But such an effort would be futile without
American leadership. Only the United States, which banned the LTTE in
1997, could facilitate international intelligence sharing, and ensure
the dismantling of the LTTE's international networks by applying the
procedures and policies used to target Al-Qaeda's financial network.
Although the LTTE is not an Islamist terrorist group, an LTTE
crackdown should not be viewed as distraction from the war against
Islamist terror. Attacking the LTTE's smuggling and financial networks
will likely reveal a wealth of data on other criminal networks in the
region. For example, exposing and dismantling the organizations which
supply such lethal weaponry to the LTTE could only reduce the
availability of arms to the region's Islamist terrorists as well.
Violence in Sri Lanka also has implications for India. The 50 million
Tamils living in southern India will be distressed by the suffering of
their brethren in Sri Lanka and could demand action. Inspired by the
LTTE, India's Tamils may come to nurture their own separatist ambitions.
The LTTE's establishment of a satellite television station that reaches
throughout Southeast Asia only heightens Indian concerns. American help
containing the situation would build bridges with India in a sector
where Pakistan, India's traditional rival, has minimal interests.
Certainly, the United States should continue to facilitate
development and improvement of human rights policies in Sri Lanka. But
adding a few dozen analysts, special agents, and diplomats to pressure
the LTTE is an inexpensive way to help ameliorate the violence in Sri
Lanka and move the island beyond its past of ethnic conflict.
Aaron Mannes, author of the TerrorBlog and Profiles in Terror: The
Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations (Rowman & Littlefield-JINSA
Press), researches terrorism at the University of Maryland's Information
and Network Dynamics Laboratory.
(Weekly Standard USA.)
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