SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 10, September 23, 2002

Peace Talks: The Transformation of Terror?
Guest Writer: Dr. Rohan Gunaratna
Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, United Kingdom

The Government of Sri Lanka-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) peace talks that began in Thailand on September 16, 2002, 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 9-11, 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, USA, Canada, UK, Australia - countries where the LTTE has significant terrorist infrastructure for disseminating propaganda, raising funds, procuring and shipping supplies to support their terrorist campaign in Sri Lanka.

Stating that it will damage the on-going peace process, LTTE propagandists have been urging the European governments and New Zealand not to include them in their terrorist lists. As the LTTE operates through community organisations and also apply 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 - 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. The LTTE 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 killed 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 Centre 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 web sites quotes Nelson Mandella and Mahatma Gandhi.

The LTTE realises 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 politicised after Mrs. 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. 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 neighbouring 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 in Pukhet, 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, is to grasp this opportunity to facilitate 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 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 defence 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 politicising 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 per cent 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 9-11, along with several other groups, the international spotlight has been on the LTTE, one of the world's most ruthless terrorist groups. 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-9-11 policy response of the international community to criminalise and prosecute terrorist groups has placed all terrorist front, cover and sympathetic organisations, including the LTTE, under significant pressure worldwide. Nonetheless, all terrorist groups are creating new front, cover and sympathetic organisations 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 organisations supporting terrorism and terrorist groups. This is a labour intensive task requiring close cooperation and coordination between host and parent states. As a learning organisation, 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, LTTE today prefers to use trawlers that hug the coast, rather than large cargo ships it used in the 1980s and 1990s.

Like Al Qaeda, the LTTE is an international organisation. When responding to an international organisation, an international response is essential. It was US-UK cooperation against the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) raising funds and procuring technologies from the US that finally forced PIRA 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 pressurise 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 realise that they have no option but to go down this road. If continuous international and domestic pressure is not applied on the LTTE to dismantle their terrorist support infrastructure, the group is likely to mark time until the international focus shift 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 problems 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 behaviour, 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 centre 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, USA, 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.

ASSESSMENT

BHUTAN