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Experts:
Cambodia Fertile Ground for Tamil Tigers
Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka - Geneva -
Switzerland
02nd October 2007
Cambodian authorities recently broke up a human smuggling
network run in part by the Tamil Tigers. The involvement of the
Sri Lankan separatist group in illegal activities in Cambodia
came as no surprise to experts, who have watched the
sophisticated insurgency transform in Phnom Penh since it began
buying Cambodian weapons in the 1990s.
"The operations in Cambodia still exist to a great extent.
However, it may not be focused in the same areas that it was
focused in the late '90s," said Shanaka Jayasekara, a terrorism
researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, no longer need
Cambodia as a place to "mop up" old weapons, Jayasekara told VOA
Khmer, echoing other interviews with analysts and government
officials over several weeks.
Their weapons purchases are more sophisticated now, but the
criminal infrastructure put in place in the early 1990s, when
Cambodia was its primary arms bazaar, is still there, enabling
drugs and human smuggling, credit card fraud and money
laundering.
"The LTTE has been involved in the narcotics trade for quite
some time. They have also facilitated human smuggling of the
Tamil diaspora through some of the Southeast Asian countries,"
Jayasekara said.
Cambodia authorities say in August they broke up an operation
run in part by Tamil Tigers intent on smuggling up to 250
Pakistanis and Sri Lankans to Western nations and Australia.
The bust was an indicator that efforts from Sri Lankan and
Cambodian officials to unseat Tamil Tiger operations in the
county had not been successful.
The Tamil Tigers earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year
by collecting money from Tamil immigrant communities. The Tamil
people belong to a minority group in northern Sri Lanka and
southern India, but Tamil expatriates live in many Western
countries, including Canada, Norway and Australia. A lot of
money comes from these groups, either by choice or through
coercion, experts said.
Meanwhile, the Tamil Tigers also earn money by running guns to
groups like the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group in the
Philippines. And they smuggle Tamil people into Western
countries.
This helps the Tamil Tigers fill their war chest and continue
their separatist fight against the Sri Lankan government,
Jayasekara says.
"It's a kind of a business opportunity for the LTTE. They make
money out of it. They also do it to take their key operatives to
certain locations and place them in vital destinations so that
their international network can be run more efficiently,"
Jayasekara said.
At least two Tamil operatives escaped Cambodia's August dragnet:
Ranni Lerin and his brother, Lipton Lerin, who operated their
human smuggling ring out of a cafe in Phnom Penh, authorities
said in September.
The Cambodian government made a public call to Interpol to help
them capture the men.
Jayasekara said the flight of the two brothers likely has not
halted the group's activities, which are now being run by a man
who officials know little about.
Officials say more needs to be done to rein in the Tamil Tigers,
who have invented devices—including the suicide vest—and
innovated techniques that reach Islamic terrorists.
"The LTTE has growing links with other terrorist organizations
like the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah," said Dr. Palitha Kohona,
the Sri Lankan Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Colombo and an
expert on the Tamil Tigers.
The innovative Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting for a
separate Tamil state since 1975, has its own navy, merchant
vessels and a small air force. The insurgency has led to the
deaths of more than 60,000 people.
Countries like Cambodia and Sri Lanka need help in pursuing the
group, Kohona said. "We need expertise," he said.
"We need intelligence gathering assistance."
The US, meanwhile, has listed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist
organization.
Earlier this year, US agencies disrupted a Tamil Tiger plot to
smuggle high-tech weapons, missiles, ammunition and night-vision
goggles out of the US.
Undercover officers acting as State Department officials also
caught operatives attempting to bribe them to have the Tamil
Tigers taken off the US terrorist list.
The problems Sri Lanka is facing with the Tamil Tigers will
become the problems of wealthier countries if more isn't done to
stop the group, in undeveloped countries like Cambodia and in
developed nations of the West," Kohona said.
"Terrorism is not an issue for one country. It is an issue for
the entire sea of humanity," he said. "Terrorism is a scourge
that has to be eliminated wherever it might be found."
Courtesy : voa.com
(Courtesy :
Department of Government Information )
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