SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 12, No. 42, April 21, 2014

SRI LANKA

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Terror Interrupted
Ajit Kumar Singh
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

Apprehensions of an attempted revival by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) were proven true when, in the early hours of April 11, 2014, a Security Forces (SFs) team launched a cordon and search operation in the forest area off Padaviya in Anuradhapura District, and was fired upon by militants hiding in the forest. The SFs killed three armed local LTTE leaders, reportedly in retaliatory fire. The dead were identified as Selvanayagam Kajeepan alias Gobi, Sundaralingam Kajeepan alias Thevihan and Navaratnam Navaneethan alias Appan.

Earlier, on April 10, 2014, troops had recovered four back-packs containing rations, medicine, clothes, etc., believed to be have been used by the slain cadres, near the encounter site. The SFs had intensified their operations in the Northern Region following a shootout in the Dharmapuram area of Kilinochchi District on March 13, 2014, when Gobi, who had returned to the country after fleeing overseas at the end of the war, had escaped after injuring a Police officer. On March 22, 2014, Police announced a reward of LKR One million for any information leading to Gobi's whereabouts.

Crucially, reports suggest that the neutralized local group was functioning under the instructions of LTTE leaders, Norway-based Perimbanayagam Sivaparan alias Nediyawan and France-based Vinayagamoorthi Sekarapillai alias Kadiragamaseram Vinayagamoorthi alias Kamanan Vinayagam Sekarapillai alias Vinayagamoorthy Arivazhaghan alias Arivalahan alias Kathirgamathamby Iyyana  alias Vinayagam. According to a Press Release issued by the Media Centre of the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development,

They were preparing the ground for another armed struggle. Immediate objectives of the local group included the recovery of war like material dumped by the LTTE during retreat, re-establishment of LTTE intelligence network, regrouping of the potential cadre including those rehabilitated, collecting information on potential targets, including in other provinces… Investigations revealed that the funds for these activities that came from Europe were being transferred using Hawala system. It was also revealed that many safe houses, vehicles and other resources required for resurgence of the LTTE had been procured by them using this money.

The SF Commander in Kilinochchi, Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, in his meeting with rehabilitated former combatants of the LTTE in Kilinochchi District on March 26, 2014, alerted them to external threats that would be directed at them by parties interested securing their return to violence. Significantly, out of 11,800 ex-LTTE cadres who surrendered to the SFs after the end of war in May 2009, only 232 have been left in camps, while the rest have been rehabilitated. 

Indeed, investigators trailing Gobi's team had already reportedly arrested at least 67 suspects, including some top LTTE leaders, in separate incidents since March 5, 2014, of whom 23 were subsequently released. A huge cache of arms, ammunition, explosives and other material that were in their possession was also recovered. On March 6, 2014, for instance, Subramaniam Kapilan alias Nanda Gopan, the head of LTTE’s international media network, was arrested after his arrival at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo, following his deportation from Malaysia. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, at least 376 former LTTE cadres/sympathizers have been arrested (from within and outside the Country) after the end of war in 2009.

Significantly, on September 17, 2013, Adjutant General, Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe, asserted that there was a possibility of about 4,000 former LTTE combatants, who were still at large, regrouping.

The October 2, 2009, incident in which an unidentified gunman killed two Army soldiers and injured another at Paranthakadathan in Mannar District was the last terrorism-related fatality till the April 11, 2014, incident. However, several violent incidents related to former LTTE cadres and sympathizers have been recorded in the intervening period, including one prominent incident in India: on March 18, 2013, Tamil activists in Tamil Nadu, India, assaulted a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk, identified as Bandara, at the Central Railway Station in Chennai, in support of the LTTE. On May 23, 2012, Police arrested five persons for the murder of Andrew Mahendrarajah Anthonipillai, a Canadian Tamil of Sri Lankan origin, who was killed at Kaagncheepuram lane near the Paranthan Junction in Kilinochchi District on May 3, 2012. One of alleged killers, identified as A. Akilan, was a former LTTE militant. Investigations are still on in the case.

Former cadres/sympathizers of the LTTE have also clashed with SFs on several occasions, while attempting to commemorate the death of their comrades during the Eelam Wars. In the worst such incident since the end of war in 2009, some students at Jaffna University, sympathetic to the LTTE, commemorated Maaveerar Day (Martyrs’ Day, which commemorates dead LTTE fighters) on November 27, 2012. The following day, a tense situation developed at the campus, resulting in a violent clash between students and SFs. Later, on December 5, 2012, 10 students were arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Police claimed all of them had been involved in "terrorist activities" with the LTTE before 2009 and none of them had completed a Government rehabilitation course for LTTE suspects.

In addition, the LTTE is believed to have assisted several of its cadres to escape from prisons. In the latest of such incidents, four LTTE cadres were helped to escape from the Trincomalee Jail in the early hours of November 12, 2013. Earlier, on April 17, 2013, an LTTE cadre, identified as Mahendra Rajah Shashidharan alias Cristy, who was arrested in November 2011 and imprisoned after being found guilty of killing 10 persons, escaped from the Pottuvil Court premises at Pottuvil town of Ampara District. In a more violent incident inside prison, on June 28, 2012, a group of LTTE cadres at the Vavuniya Prison, reportedly led by former Sea Tiger (Sea Wing of the LTTE) leader Shashi Kumar, took three jailers hostage, demanding that authorities recall LTTE suspects who had been transferred to the Boossa Detention Camp in Galle. On June 29, 2012, SFs launched an operation and rescued the jailors. Several prisoners sustained injuries, and two LTTE cadres died later.  On July 3, 2012, Prisons and Rehabilitation Minister, Chandrasiri Gajadeera, observed that the unrest in the Vavuniya Prison was a well-planned conspiracy of the LTTE international network, as the LTTE suspects at the prison were found to have satellite mobile phones and other communication equipment in their possession. Crucially, there are 810 former LTTE cadres in remand custody, dispersed across several prisons and, Gajadeera noted further, “they are not political prisoners but hardcore LTTE cadres who ordered killings and other heinous terrorist activities.”

There is, however, little evidence of the Sri Lankan Government lowering its guard. Indeed, Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne told Parliament that provisions of the PTA were required to take action against LTTE suspects who had not surrendered after the war ended. Recently, the Sri Lankan Government in a gazette dated March 21, 2014, proscribed the main LTTE and another 15 alleged front organizations of the outfit, prominently including the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC). According to sources these organizations fall under four broad categories under the overall control of four key individuals: Nediyawan, Fr. Sleemanpillai Joseph Emmanuel alias S.J. Emmanuel, Rudrakumaran Vishvanathan alias Kumaran Visuvanathan alias Rudra, and Vinayagam. Some 422 individuals, including 32 people presently residing in India, were named in the gazette. Further, the Sri Lankan Police has obtained Interpol "red notices" flagging foreign operatives of the LTTE. "In addition to the 40 Red Notices by Interpol another 56 non-LTTE operatives have also been flagged," Police spokesman Ajith Rohana disclosed on April 17, 2014. These Red Notices include Vinayagam and Nediyawan, who are suspected of financing and re-organizing the LTTE.

Regrettably, the international community, which appears to have failed to come to terms with the defeat of the LTTE in 2009, continues to create hurdles for Colombo’s attempts to wipe out lingering irritants. On, March 27, 2014, a resolution was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) allowing for a UN probe into allegations of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan Government during the terminal seven years of the conflict. UN investigations are expected to begin in their work in May 2014. The Sri Lankan Government, meanwhile, has vehemently rejected the resolution and pledged to prevent UN investigators from entering the country.

Expressing deep concern over the international moves, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, on April 16, 2014, observed: “Though there was no more terrorism in Sri Lanka, the LTTE’s global network continued to function largely unhindered. The network continues to sustain an international propaganda campaign against Sri Lanka through front organizations that have now put on a democratic face. Some nations seem to have chosen to turn a blind eye to these front organizations and their activities because they claim to support political activism or humanitarian relief.”

On the domestic front, the democratically elected Tamil National Alliance (TNA)-led Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Government has also sought to obstruct efforts to contain terrorism, insisting on the removal of the Army from the North and East, despite visible residual threats. Significantly, military personnel had been reduced from 26,400 in December 2009, to approximately 13,152 presently. Any further cuts will certainly jeopardize the authority of the state and peace in the region.

It is difficult for the LTTE to regain its influence at the present juncture, as Colombo has succeeded in detecting and neutralizing each conspiracy in its early stages. Nevertheless, the sustained efforts of the radicalized Tamil Diaspora, and a substantial force of LTTE cadres who have refused to surrender offer evidence of continuing efforts to revive the terror, leaving no room for complacency. Given the unrelenting hostility of a dominant segment of the international community to the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, Colombo will continue to have to fight on three fronts, against the orchestrated international campaign against Sri Lanka; against incipient efforts to resuscitate LTTE terrorism; and to secure an enduring resolution to the unsettling ethnic polarization in the country.

BANGLADESH

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Strategic Skirmish
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
S. Binodkumar Singh
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Amidst continuing street mobilization, violence and a strident debate over the ‘legitimacy’ of the January 5, 2014, Parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, another battle of the ballots is currently playing out, commencing on February 19, 2014, and going beyond May 19, 2014, at the local sub-District level. Unlike the Parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the entire Opposition, and even by some of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed's erstwhile allies, candidates backed by almost all political parties participated in the fourth Upazila Parishad (Sub-District Council) polls.

So far, elections for a total of 459 out of 487 Councils have been held. The ruling Awami League (AL)-backed candidates won 231 Chairman posts while their challengers, favored by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured 162. Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI)-backed candidates cornered 36 Chairman posts; Jatiya Party (JP), the main opposition in Parliament, won four; and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) one. Apart from these, eight candidates from the Parbatya Chittagong Jana Sanghati Samiti (PCJSS), four from the United People's Democratic Front (UPDF), and 11 independents and others, won Chairman posts. Results of two Councils were withheld because of the suspension of polling in several stations there.  

The Election Commission (EC) would need to hold polls to another 28 Councils. On April 16, Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad announced the schedule of the 6th-phase polls to be held on May 19 in 14 Upazila Parishads. No information is currently available about elections for the remaining 14 Councils.

As compared to the General Elections which were marred by large scale pre- and post-election violence, the Council polls were relatively peaceful. While a total of 151 people killed during the Parliamentary polls, 10 persons have been killed during the Council polls. While, no fatality was reported in the first phase, one Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS, student wing of the JeI) cadre was killed on the poling day (February 27) of the second phase. Three people died and 68 persons were injured in violence on March 15, the polling day of the third phase. Violence was widespread and deadlier in the fourth phase leaving at least four people dead in Munshiganj, Brahmanbaria, Jhalakathi and Comilla Districts on the polling day (March 23), and more than 200 people, including about a dozen Policemen, were injured across the country. Although the fifth phase was comparatively peaceful, a leader of the Jubo League, the youth wing of AL, was shot dead in Laxmipur District five hours before the polling began on March 31. In a separate incident, a voter died from injuries suffered in a clash between activists of the AL and the JeI in Moulvibazar District. More than 100 people were wounded in clashes between AL and BNP supporters in at least a dozen Councils during polling hours. Indeed, street violence which had become the order of the day in Bangladesh since the establishment of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), has subsided considerably since the January 5, 2014, General Elections.

Crucially, according to the EC, the total voter turnout was 61 percent. Significantly, the voter turnout in the January 5 General Election was a modest 40 per cent.

Though Bangladesh has a unitary form of government in which all governing powers resides in a centralised government, for administrative convenience, the country is divided into six divisions; and each division is subdivided into Zilas or Districts and Upazilas or sub-districts. There are 64 administrative Districts; and 487 Upazilas. The Upazila election system was started by military ruler Hussain Mohammad Ershad, under whose regime the first Upazila elections took place in 1985. The elections again took place in 1990. The BNP scrapped the system after coming to power in 1991. However, AL had taken a decision to revive the local government system after taking office in 1996, but could not hold elections. The AL finally conducted the elections in 2009 after returning to power at the Centre.

Demonstrating a clear shift in political strategy, BNP participated in the present Upazila elections, seeing them as an opportunity of re-bonding with the political arena at the local level, after boycotting the January 5 National Elections over the demand for non-partisan arrangements. Clarifying BNP's "motive", the Party's acting secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Alamgir, observed on April 13, 2014, that BNP took part in the Upazila polls as part of its movement to unseat the present Government. By participating in Council elections, the BNP has also attempted to prove that it is a dynamic, pro-election party, with a strong base at the local level. The party also seeks to renew and revitalize its grass-root leadership and revamp its tarnished image as a party that supported a wave of political violence in 2013.

Interestingly, BNP Chairperson, Khaleda Zia's speech at a rally on March 1, 2014, at Rajbari clearly spelt out BNP's political agenda. Zia had declared that a fresh movement would be built up soon after the conclusion of the Council polls to ‘dislodge’ the ‘illegal’ Government and hold fresh General Elections under a non-party administration. Significantly, BNP has enhanced its performance. As against just 79 Chairman posts in 2009, BNP-backed candidates have, thus far, won 162 Chairman posts.  The BNP-JeI combine has also demonstrated its "hold" by winning a total of 198 seats. This is likely to encourage a renewed round of confrontation and agitation in the near future, sponsored by this combine.

On the other hand, AL has failed to repeat its 2009 performance, when it won 331 Chairman posts. Thus far, its tally is just 231 posts. Nevertheless, AL’s victory, though with a reduced margin, in the local body elections in which all parties participated augurs well for Bangladesh politics, and Hasina's Government has certainly gained in legitimacy.

Sharp contestations are, however, inevitable. Even as a new political game unfolded in the Upazila elections, the Hasina Government, on March 13, 2014, declared that it would take steps to ban JeI by June 2014 for its involvement in crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971. Liberation War Affairs Minister A. K. M. Mozammel Huq clarified, “The Government is planning banning the anti-liberation force Jamaat, but it has no plan to ban other religion-based political parties.”

Further, on March 27, 2014, the War Crimes Investigation Agency, which suggested banning JeI and six organisations (Islami Chhatra Sangha, Shanti Committee, Al-Badr, Al-Shams, Razakar Bahini, and the JeI newspaper Dainik Sangram) that were associated with the party in 1971, handed over its report on the JeI to the prosecution on March 27, 2014. Tureen Afroz, who is leading the prosecution in the case stated that this was the first time they were going to press "war crimes" charges against an organisation. Earlier, the prosecution had pressed charges of crimes against humanity and genocide against accused individuals. The probe report against JeI comes at a time when five of its top leaders have already been convicted of war crimes while four others, including its chief, are facing trial. One of the convicts, Abdul Quader Mollah, was executed on December 12, 2013.

In an indication that its campaign of agitation and violence would shortly resume, JeI, on April 16, 2014, demanded the unconditional release of party leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee, who was sentenced to death on February 28, 2013, by Internationl Crimes Tribunal-1 (ICT-1), for crimes against humanity during the Liberation War. In a statement, acting ameer (chief) of the party, Mokbul Ahmad, and acting secretary general, Shafiqur Rahman, urged the country’s people to raise their voice against all the Government’s ‘plots’ against Sayedee. The statement declared, further, “We strongly condemn and protest the Government’s heinous plot against Moulana Sayedee".

Underlining the complete political polarization in the country, a court in Dhaka indicted Begum Khaleda Zia on March 19, 2014, in two cases involving charges of corruption for allegedly using an illegal fund to buy land for Zia Orphanage Trust and Zia Charitable Trust. Judge Basudeb Roy accepted the charges against Khaleda Zia, who was present in the court. Pressing the charges against Zia could further complicate the country's tense political situation. As expected, Zia has vowed to restart protests against Hasina to oust her from power.

The critical relevance of the local level elections lies in the fact that both AL and BNP needs to muster political support for their respective strategies. After the January 5 General Elections, international media widely branded the AL Government "illegal", because of the non-participation of the combined Opposition, led by the BNP-JEI combine. With the successful conduct of the Upazila elections, the Hasina Government seeks to strengthen its democratic credentials. On April 12, 2014, responding to Opposition allegations of rigging, Prime Minister Hasina thus stated, "People of the country exercised their franchise freely and fairly in electing their favourite candidates from Awami League, BNP and even Jamaat-e-Islami... Had the poll been rigged or manipulated by the Government of Awami League, not a single candidate of Jamaat could have won". On the other hand, the dynamics of the current Upazila elections and the participation of the BNP-JeI combine gave this political formation an opportunity to re-establish its own political outreach at the grassroots level, and, particularly for the JeI, to galvanise party workers and cadres to face off an imminent political purge.

Civilians

Security Force Personnel

Terrorists/Insurgents

Total

INDIA

Jammu and Kashmir

Manipur

Meghalaya

Left-wing Extremism

Jharkhand

Odisha

Total (INDIA)

PAKISTAN

Balochistan

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Sindh

Total (PAKISTAN)