According to a report published in the 10 June 2015 issue of The Island, the Hon. C. V. Wigneswaran, Chief Minister (CM) of the Northern Province, has asserted that the presence of Sri Lanka’s army in Jaffna (peninsula) has contributed to a rapid spread of narcotics in the area, and that narcotics was never a problem during the war when the LTTE was around.
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The involvement of the LTTE in narcotic transactions is believed to take several forms – (a) the bulk delivery of heroin and cannabis from producing areas in Asia via transit points to destinations in consuming countries, (b) conveying (as travellers) relatively small consignments of heroin (concealed in personal baggage) from suppliers in Asian countries to intermediary contact persons in the Middle East, North Africa, South Africa and western countries (c) the operation of drug distribution networks dealing in consuming regions or countries, and (d) working as couriers between dealers and distributors (i.e. “muleing”). There does not appear to be any extensive involvement of persons with LTTE associations in drug “peddling” in the retail market. Nor has there been an indication of LTTE participation in opium growing and refining of heroin.
Contraband trade between India and Sri Lanka has, for long, been a lucrative commercial enterprise, controlled, for the most part, by gangs operating from both sides of Palk Strait. While Velvettiturai (‘Vvt’ – a township located along the northern coast of Sri Lanka) is considered to have served as the foremost centre of the smugglers from Sri Lanka, on the Indian side, Madras (Chennai), Tuticorin, Pattukotai, Rameshwaram, Tiruchendur, Ramnad, Nagapatnam, Cochin and a host of smaller localities inhabited by fishing communities have figured prominently among the smuggler bases and hideouts.
Up to about the mid-1970s, Indo-Sri Lanka contraband consisted mainly of raw opium (abin), fabrics, light consumer goods, coconut oil, spices, and processed foods. Thereafter (over several years) certain transformations in Sri Lanka’s wider economic milieu had the effect of expanding the scope of clandestine trade between India and Sri Lanka, generating windfall profits especially to those already in the well-established smuggling cartels. The ready availability in Sri Lanka of light manufactures from Japan and the Newly Industrialised Countries following trade liberalisation in the late 1970s, for instance, increased the range of goods which the smugglers could convey to the protected Indian market. Again, the increasing demand for heroin in Sri Lanka in the wake of expanding tourism induced the smugglers to establish contact with suppliers as far a-field as Pakistan and metropolitan Mumbai (Bombay), and with delivery destinations as far south as Colombo. At this time, moreover, it became possible for the smuggler gangs to add to their paraphernalia speedboats and other naval equipment, and thus increase their turnover, resistance to coastal surveillance, and their geographical reach.
In 1970, the Sri Lanka police detected among the commodities smuggled into the country publications espousing an extreme form of pan-Tamilian chauvinism. This, though brought to the notice of the government by a senior police officer (a Sri Lanka Tamil, it so happened), was ignored. Then, by the end of the decade, there was evidence of consignments of arms and explosives trickling into the country. This was also ignored, though, by this time, there were several groups of militants making their presence felt in the Jaffna peninsula.
The Vvt township which could, in many ways, be regarded as the cradle of the LTTE, also remained the main centre of smuggling in the north. Among its special attractions was its cohesive community, held together by ties of kinship and caste. There were links between its smugglers, fisher folk, and ordinary tradesmen. It is said that there has usually been a spirit of mutual tolerance between its law enforcement officers and its criminals. Persons familiar with the Vvt ethos also recall that there were parts of the town into which outsiders were decidedly not welcome. Its socio-economic milieu portrayed by Hellmann-Rajanayagam (1994)[1] highlights that:
Velvettiturai has since time immemorial been a fishing centre and a harbour famous for smuggling and the audacity of the Karaiyar fishing caste, and as an area where the Karaiyars were particularly well able to hold their own against the high caste Vellalas. This gives one some clues to the caste base of the militant groups, and it can be said that the LTTE is not only one of the few militant groups with a mixed-caste Karaiyar dominated rank-and-file base, but also the only one where Karaiyars are the leaders of the movement.
It was in Vvt of the mid-1970s that the pioneers of Sri Lanka Tamil militancy met frequently to organise their cadres, plan their crimes and chart their political course. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the daredevil “kid brother” (thambi) among the pioneers, already with a few murders and bank robberies to his credit, was a native Karaiyar of Vvt. So was Selvaduarai Yogachandran (alias Kuttimani) who, as far back as 1973, had been apprehended by the Sri Lanka navy while conveying a boatload of explosives.[2] Gopalasamy Mahendrarajah (alias Mahattaya), liquidated by Prabhakaran in 1994 in the course of a power struggle within the LTTE, was also a Karaiyar from Vvt. Many others like Balakumar, Thangadurai, Sathasivam Krishnakumar (alias Kittu) and ‘KP’ Kumaran Padmanathan (alias Tharmalingam Shanmugam, best known for his highly successful international arms procurement operations), were all of the same caste, and all, from Vadamaratchi, the area within which Vvt is located. Quite clearly there was at this stage a confluence of the firepower and the will-o’-the-wisp skills of the Vvt smugglers, and the ruthlessness and fanatical commitment of the militants. It is also easy to understand in retrospect the haughty defiance shown in later times by the Tiger leaders to other prominent Tamil militants and, indeed, towards the entire Vellala elite.
The advent of the LTTE to drug trafficking on an intercontinental scale following the convulsions of July 1983 was thus an easy step in its progress as a terrorist organisation. It already possessed the means to obtain heroin from sub-continental sources of supply. It now acquired the capacity to mobilise large numbers of obedient conveyers and couriers who, as political refugees, were treated with considerable benevolence in western countries. It had an abundance of paternal goodwill and support of the mainstream political parties of the Sri Lankan Tamils. It had the reassurance of Indian protection. What it now needed was the money and the weaponry for a vastly enhanced insurrectionary effort.
LTTE Narcotics Operations in the West
Among the different forms of LTTE involvement in drug transactions during the 1980s referred to above, it is mainly in respect of “dealing” and “muleing” that there is concrete information extractable from published sources.[3] This information may be synthesised as follows.
According to authoritative Western analysts[4] it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Islamic revolution in Iran (1979), and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-90) which disrupted the main ‘traditional’ drug routes between the ‘Golden Crescent’ and Europe, and thus made the Pakistan-based drug cartels turn to alternative routes of delivery via South Asia. The west coast of India along which surveillance was weak is believed to have provided many safe transit points, with the Indian workforce in West Asia providing a reservoir of couriers. It was evidently in this wider context that the ‘proto-LTTE’ (and smuggler gangs operating in northern Sri Lanka), with the experience they already possessed in contraband operations in South Asia, were drawn into the matrix of transcontinental drug trafficking.
The heyday of LTTE’s association with drug “dealing” (operation of distribution networks) and “muleing” (providing courier services) in western countries was in the aftermath of the anti-Tamil mob violence in Sri Lanka in July 1983 which initiated a massive exodus of Tamil refugees from the country. While a fairly large proportion of this refugee outflow was formally admitted into Europe and North America as asylum-seekers, there was, concurrently, a large-scale illegal infiltration of Tamil youth from Sri Lanka to the West via the Soviet block and Africa – a process sponsored by several organisations among which the LTTE played a major role. The LTTE and certain other Tamil militant outfits internationally active at this time were thus able to mobilise the services of a large number of Tamil youth to carry consignments of drugs from Sri Lanka and South India to various destinations, and, in the case of some among them, also serve as couriers after their entry into their intended countries of domicile. It is said that the performance of such conveyer and courier services was often a repayment for being smuggled out of Sri Lanka. It seems likely that in the initial stages of this refugee flow, lax surveillance procedures and liberal attitude of the authorities in the host countries towards political refugees facilitated the participation of fairly large numbers of Tamil youth in the drug trade. To some extent, this has persisted in the Nordic countries.
The first major detection of LTTE-linked drug rings in Europe took place in Italy in September 1984, following the arrest of a Tamil courier on his way to Rome. Well co-ordinated police search operations resulted in the arrest of about 200 Tamils most of whom were believed to have constituted a Rome-based narcotic distribution network spread over several Italian cities such as Milan, Naples, Acilia, Cetania and Syracuse, and extending into Sicily. The Italian breakthrough activated the drug enforcement agencies elsewhere, leading to the arrest and incarceration of many Sri Lankans associated with the drug trade, and the confiscation of surprisingly large amounts of high-grade heroin. The Swiss police, for example, broke up a drug ring — one that was believed to have links with the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) rather than the LTTE — engaged in cross-border heroin transactions in Switzerland and France. Numerous arrests of Sri Lankan Tamils on drug charges were also reported at this time in Germany, France and the Nordic countries (Table 1).[5] These law enforcement operations resulted in imprisonment and/or deportation, the personal intervention on behalf of the convicts by the then leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) – assassinated by the LTTE a few years later – with the Italian government notwithstanding.
There has been no published evidence since the late 1980s of large-scale organized involvement of Tamil militant groups in the distribution of narcotics in the European market. In fact, the general belief among the officialdom appears to be that drug rings associated with the LTTE no longer exist in Europe. Hence, evidently, their exasperation with the Sri Lanka government’s persistence with the charge of drug trafficking against the LTTE. If the Tiger involvement in the European drug market has, indeed, declined, it could be attributed to several reasons. For instance, some of the major police offensives staged in Italy, Switzerland and France in the mid-1980s against Tamil drug dealers and couriers are said to have been based on information supplied by rival drug rings, especially those of the Lebanese, Italians and Nigerians who had been in the European drug scene from earlier times, and for whom the competition from the new Asian intruders had become a source of irritation if not a serious threat. It is also possible that the law enforcement agencies began to exercise greater vigilance over Tamil refugee groups following the initial discovery of links between them and the narcotics trade, and in the context of an increasing global concern on narco-terrorism. Moreover, it is likely that, in the face of an increasingly tarnished political image (a fallout, notably, of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination), on the one hand, and the success of its legitimate enterprises, on the other, the LTTE found it prudent to dissociate itself from the distribution aspects of the drug trade at least in Europe, where, in any event, it had formidable rivals. In addition, it seems reasonable to speculate that, over the past few years, the LTTE has shifted emphasis from “dealing” and “muleing” in consuming countries to intercontinental bulk transfers of narcotics. More on this presently.
Sri Lanka Tamils still occasionally figure among those associated with the drug trade in Canada. A statement released in 1991 by the Sri Lanka High Commission in Canada referred to a report of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMC) according to which a part of the 1 billion dollar drug market of Montreal city is controlled by Sri Lankans who send some of the profits to the LTTE. Again, a report prepared in 1995 for the Mackenzie Institute of Toronto[6] estimated (speculatively) that the 134 kg of heroin seized globally by various law enforcement agencies from Tamil drug runners the previous year represented only about 7-10% of the probable total volume of such traffic, and that “… Tamil drug runners could be selling around 1,000 kg of heroin a year”. The retail market value of such a volume of heroin (at 40% purity) in the West, according to price levels of that time [7](cited in Rasul Bakhsh Rais, 1999), would have been about US$ 290 million.
Asian Connections
At the height of the out-migration of Tamils from Sri Lanka in the mid-1980s, it may be recalled, even a passing reference to a connection between the refugees and the trade in narcotics usually evoked an angry response from those sympathetic to the “liberation struggle” in Sri Lanka. However, in the face of mounting evidence relating to the arrest and conviction of large numbers of Sri Lanka Tamils on charges of drug transactions in European countries, this show of indignation gave place to a stance of mildly embarrassed silence on the drug issue. One could suggest, however, that the extreme sensitivity of the subject of an LTTE-narcotics link has lingered, with the result that the subject seldom receives even brief mention in scholarly writings on the Sri Lankan crisis.
Moreover, following the disintegration of the Sri Lanka Tamil drug rings in Europe during the late 1980s, there came into being an impression that, although there could be the occasional Tamil refugee among the couriers of the European drug market, the LTTE itself has withdrawn from the drug scene to reorient its focus on legitimate methods of fundraising. Even well informed western analysts treated the charge of continuing narco-terrorism levelled against the LTTE with scepticism, and demanded from the Sri Lanka government hard evidence as a precondition for such charges to have a serious impact on the policy of their governments towards the LTTE.[8] A general impression of expert perceptions on this issue in western countries during the mid-1990s could be gained from Davis’s thoroughly researched paper on clandestine operations of the LTTE extracts from which are cited below.
“In the hard-fought propaganda war waged between Colombo and the Tigers, Sri Lanka officials have consistently branded the LTTE as a ‘terrorist organization’ that derives a substantial proportion of its income from drug trafficking. However, they have been less successful in adducing any real evidence to support the allegation. Undisputed is the fact that, in the mid-late 1980s, Sri Lanka Tamils – often asylum seekers – did emerge as important movers of Afghan and Pakistani heroin via North Africa and the Middle East to the main Western European distribution centres of Berne, Paris and Rome. From September 1984 onwards, many involved in the so-called ‘Tamil Connection’ were arrested and imprisoned, notably in Italy; some were revealed to have had contacts with a range of militant organizations, including the LTTE. Beyond that, there is little doubt that the LTTE is well placed to profit from the heroin trade should it wish to. The nexus between international arms and narcotics trafficking is well established; the party (sic.) runs a clandestine shipping network, and it may well have contacts with senior elements in the Burmese military themselves known to be close to key players in the Golden Triangle heroin trade. None of that, however, constitutes hard evidence indicating the LTTE as a player in today’s Asian heroin trade (emphasis added)”.[9]
In the shadowy world of drug trafficking, hard evidence is hard to come by. It is not merely the difficulty of detecting drug transactions which, as everyone knows, is difficult enough. Even where those apprehended by the drug law enforcement authorities are suspected of having links with the LTTE, given the existence of its highly ramified network of front organizations, there could hardly ever be any hard evidence to substantiate the suspicion.[10] Even more elusive would be the evidence to establish that proceeds of such transactions are transferred either direct to the LTTE war chest or to the equally impenetrable clandestine markets of military hardware.
However, there are several sets of information, not all of them of uniform reliability, which point to the likelihood that, while the LTTE ‘dealer-courier’ outfits in Europe were disintegrating in the face of the law enforcement onslaught in the late 1980s, there was a parallel process of expansion and consolidation of the LTTE drug connections in Asia. This was probably accompanied by a shift of the LTTE’s involvement in market-related transactions in consuming areas (especially those of Europe) to activities of supply from the producing areas and conveyance through transit points in Asia. That the related information does not constitute conclusive and irrefutable proof of large-scale LTTE involvement in drug transactions is, of course, too obvious for specific mention. As evidence, this information is admittedly disparate and circumstantial. Yet it is persuasive enough to form the basis of the proposition – one that requires further verification – that the Asian connections of the LTTE entail activities concerned with the bulk haulage of narcotics from the sources of supply in continental South-East Asia.
The first and, perhaps, the most significant step in the entry of the LTTE into the field of bulk haulage of narcotics from their principal source areas and delivery to points of transit in Asia is represented by its purchase in 1984 of a second-hand cargo vessel named ‘Cholan‘ from a Mumbai-based shipping magnate, and the permission it obtained from the Burmese government to establish a modest shipping base in the island of Twante located off the Irrawady delta. The ‘Cholan‘, though intended mainly for smuggling arms and other military requirements from distant sources to their war zone in Sri Lanka (for which chartered ships had become somewhat risky), was also used for the legitimate haulage of goods.
With the experience in cargo shipping so gained, the LTTE soon increased its fleet to five or six small freighters which were registered under the ownership of several dummy companies having their offices in Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.[11] These, ostensibly, were intended to carry timber (for which the source areas were much the same as that of opium/heroin) and grain from Burma to the main markets of maritime Southeast Asia; and fertilizer, cement and other bulky goods as return cargo to Burma. By the early 1990s, LTTE vessels also had an additional niche at Pukhet in southern Thailand. Despite occasional setbacks, these shipping operations appear to have prospered. Thus, according to a recent investigation conducted for the London-based maritime insurance firm Lloyds, by March 2000, the LTTE fleet had increased to 11 vessels, most of which are said to be well equipped and capable of trans-oceanic long distance sailing.[12] The investigation also confirmed that these vessels, while being routinely engaged in the transport of legitimate cargo, are also used for the smuggling of drugs, arms and other types of contraband.
The second set of relevant information relates to the Tiger connections with Burma (Myanmar). By the mid-1990s, this country had become the world’s largest source of opium/heroin. Burma, in some ways, remained over several decades an enigma in the community of nations. In the production and export of opium/heroin, it paid scant regard to world opinion. According to estimates by Ford[13] Burma continued to account for over 90% of the entire Golden Triangle opium production. The progress achieved by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) notwithstanding, extensive areas of the interior of Burma have remained under the control of powerful ethnic organizations such as the United Wa State Army, the Eastern Shan State Army, and the Kachin Defence Army.[14] Moreover, while the most powerful among the Burmese drug rings – the Ka Kwe Ye — was, in fact, a creation of the Ne Win regime during its early days, members of the military elite are known to have had continuing contact with other key operators in the opium trade as well. The general belief is that drug trafficking and money laundering still receive, as they did in the past, at least unofficial support from the government, and have thus continued to figure prominently in the country’s economy.[15] We could also speculate here that, since some of the tribal armies named above have been fiercely hostile towards the Rangoon regime, it has been in the regime’s interest to bring into the Burmese opium matrix outside groups over which it could exercise some control.
The maritime transactions referred to above are likely to have brought the LTTE operatives into direct contact with bulk suppliers of opium/heroin from the Southeast Asian interior, and bulk dealers of narcotics in the ‘transit’ points located in and along the sea lanes that link Rangoon, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Some of these cities, it must be remembered, also figure prominently among the major arms markets of the Pacific Rim of Asia. Moreover, the type of freight legitimately carried by the LTTE-owned ships, and the flexibility afforded by their ‘tramp’ system of operation (which involves, inter alia, the capacity for surreptitious contact with numerous creeks and inlets such as those of Ranong, Krabi, Haadyai, Songkhala and Sattahip along the periphery of the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand) are believed to provide ideal cover for large-scale smuggling. According to a report published in Asiaweek [16] there is definite evidence, in the forms of reports of occasional encounters between the smugglers and the Thai law enforcement authorities, on the outward movement of arms and ammunition to the LTTE through these trading posts.
Yet another factor which is believed to have facilitated the involvement of the LTTE (along with a more general transformation in the composition of participants) in the outward movement of narcotics from the Golden Triangle is the decline in the importance of the traditional overland drug routes — mainly those through China, Thailand and Malaysia. The latter has been attributed to the concerted offensive against smuggling of narcotics launched in the early 1990s by the government of China (in Yunnan province alone, over 400 are reported to have been executed in 1994 for drug offences), and in Malaysia and Singapore (where drug offences carry a non-commutable death penalty). According to expert opinion, such deterrent action against drug trafficking, while not having the effect of making these countries totally impervious to the flow of drugs, has nevertheless contributed to a perceptible increase in the preference for haulage of drugs across the Bay of Bengal and through the overland routes of the Indian sub-continent where the law enforcement has remained far less restrictive. The data presented in Table 2 on the amounts of heroin seized along the different routes radiating from the Golden Triangle provide a very rough impression on the nature and scale of this change.
The increasing importance of trans-Indian routes in the outflow of narcotics from the Golden Triangle [17] should be looked at alongside the concurrent growth of links between the LTTE and certain insurgent groups of the sub-continent. On account of the phenomenal success of the LTTE in its campaign of war and terrorism, the vast resources which it came to command, and the experience it acquired in overseas dealings, by the end of the 1980s, it had established contact with many other insurgent groups of South and Southeast Asia. These connections are believed to extend through the Deccan where there is a scatter of ‘People’s War Groups’, through the ‘Ananda Marg’ localities of West Bengal, into the Indian ‘North-East’ — the venue of several fiercely belligerent secessionist and autonomy movements — and from there, into the politically chaotic Karen, Kachin and Shan tribal homelands of upper Burma, Laos and Cambodia, which encompass much of the ‘Golden Triangle’.
More specific information on these links could be obtained from various Indian publications dealing with militant political movements. Some of these suggest that links which the LTTE had forged over these years with insurgent groups and other communities in the Indo-Burma periphery might have facilitated the consolidation of its emerging drug connections with the Golden Triangle. For instance, Sanjoy Hazarika’s fascinating probe[18] into the turbulent politics of India’s North East has made a passing reference to visits by LTTE agents to Assam in the late 1980s, and to their attempts to establish an LTTE-ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) link. Special mention is made of a brief visit to Assam in 1990, possibly as a gesture of fraternal solidarity, by the LTTE operative Dinesh Kumar. Though Hazarika suggests that there was no further progress in the LTTE-ULFA connections, a report furnished by Sharma (1997) to the Indian Express refers to meetings between the operatives of the two groups in Tamil Nadu, and of training in guerrilla warfare imparted by the Tigers to the Assamese in the early 1990s. Again, Debashis Mitra in his ‘Newsletter from Kohima’ for the Delhi newspaper The Statesman[19] dealt mainly with what he saw as an “LTTE-NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) nexus.” More specific details have been furnished in the highly acclaimed study of India’s Northeast by B G Verghese, according to which: “… the ‘Operation Rhino’ undertaken by the Indian government in September 1991 against the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) resulted, among other things, in the discovery of documentary evidence of links between the Kachin Independent Army (KIA) of Burma, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).”[20] Thuingaleng Muivah, one of the twin leaders of the NSCN, according to Verghese, admitted in a press interview the existence of links between the NSCN and other insurgent groups of Burma and South Asia including the LTTE. (Note that the KIA has been named in several writings as one of the main insurgent groups that control the flow of narcotics from the Golden Triangle). Thus, as The Hindu reported in its issue of 17 May 1998, “(e)vidence has now emerged clearly suggesting an unholy narco-terrorism alliance between drug traffickers and the underground insurgent groups of India and Sri Lanka. The LTTE and the Indian insurgent groups, especially those operating in the Northeast states, have close connections with the trafficking of drugs in the region.”
From the viewpoint of the present study, certain details furnished by Verghese, almost in incidental fashion (note that his monograph has an exclusive focus on India’s Northeast), are of intriguing interest. For instance, in his analysis of the political turbulences of Manipur, Verghese says: “The second factor (contributing to the bewildering complexity of the Manipur political scene) relates to a sudden eruption of Kuki-Tamil violence in Moreh (in 1993), the prosperous little border town where smuggling is a thriving industry.”
He states further: “There are some 17,000 Tamils living in and around Moreh, and some across the (Myanmar) border in Tamu. Some are World War II refugees, others left Burma following nationalisation of trade and business by the Ne Win government in the early 1960s. They are fluent in Manipuri, Burmese, Nagamese, Hindi, Tamil and English. They have relatives and business contacts in Myanmar, India and other parts of Southeast Asia, a valuable network that facilitates commerce. Along with smaller numbers of Punjabis, Marwaris and Nepalese they control the Burma trade, both legitimate and clandestine, the latter being by far the larger. The rest of Moreh is made up of Meiteis and Kukis. But the Tamils dominate.[21]
There is here no concrete evidence of an LTTE presence in Moreh or of commercial connections between its Tamil community and the LTTE. It is just that both groups are known to engage in smuggling, and narcotics are known to be among the goods they smuggle. Further, Moreh, as Verghese mentions,[22] has easy access not only to the Golden Triangle, but also to nearby Ukhrul and Senapati within India which, in the recent past, have assumed importance as producers of exceptionally high quality cannabis (ganja) transported out in large quantities. There has always been a substantial demand for this bulkier narcotic in both India as well as the main population agglomerations of Southeast Asia and beyond.
Verghese’s account makes it seem likely that the Moreh Tamils are of both Indian as well as Sri Lankan origin. A specifically Sri Lankan link of at least some among them, however, is suggested by Davis[23] according to whom there was a fair number of Tamils of Sri Lankan origin engaged in trade in Rangoon (among them, the grandfather of Prabhakaran), who, when expelled from Burma by Ne Win’s military regime, migrated and settled down in Manipur.
Press reports of the past two years furnish further confirmation of the impression that the LTTE has remained active and has probably increased its commercial presence in those parts of the Southeast Asian mainland associated with the opium trade. The Bangkok Post ran a feature in October 1997 according to which (to cite extracts): “A diplomatic source involved in a recent study of the Tamil Tigers said the evidence is overwhelming and clear. ‘The LTTE is directly involved with the Burmese regime in making and distributing heroin,’ said the source”.
“The investigation uncovered direct proof of close collaboration between Burma and the Tamil Tigers. LTTE forces are allowed to train at military bases in southern Burma. In return they supply couriers for the worldwide smuggling of heroin. In recent months, says a confidential report, Tamil drug smugglers with links to the Tamil Tigers have been arrested in Sri Lanka, India, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Canada”.
“Last November, Indian authorities seized $71 million (2.7 billion baht) worth of drugs when they broke up a trafficking ring in southern Tamil Nadu state, home of most of India’s Tamil minority. Tamil Tiger militants and sympathizers both find sanctuary in the Indian state despite government efforts to root them out”.
“The Tamil drug smuggling network has become an integral part of Burmese drug trafficking around the world,’ said a Bangkok-based anti-narcotics officer. ‘The Tigers are not just profiting from drugs, they have made narcotics their chief battle -more important than the war in Sri Lanka” (emphasis added).
The US Drug Enforcement Administration Report of 1997 on Sri Lanka provides a list of recent detections of large consignments of smuggled heroin with which Sri Lanka has been associated. The list contains a reference to a seizure by the Phnom Penh police of seven metric tons of marijuana (cannabis) destined to be shipped through Colombo. This, on the one hand, confirms the Sri Lanka-Cambodia drug link and, on the other, raises the interesting question of whether the LTTE, with its capacity of conveying bulky cargo, handles (in addition to heroin) cannabis, for which there is said to be a large demand not only in Malaysia and Singapore, but also in Australia. Our earlier reference to the possible Tiger presence in Moreh, which evidently has easy access to prime cannabis-producing localities in Manipur, is of some relevance here.
A report which appeared in The Hindu (17 May 1998) contains certain details which could well represent new trends (or hitherto obscure facts) concerning the Asian drug trade. It states, for instance: “In recent times a steady rise in the smuggling of narcotics through Tuticorin, Tiruchendur, Ramnad and Chennai (Madras) has been reported. Of late, there has been a spurt in the smuggling of methaqualone in large quantities to Sri Lanka. These are generally shipped from Gujarat. Sri Lanka is also emerging as an important transit point for smuggling narcotics in container cargo to the Far East and the Western countries. There are indications that the smugglers have joined hands with the Sri Lankan militants and trade in arms and explosives. Reports with the Narcotics Control Bureau have indicated that South Africa has emerged as a major market for consumption of methaqualone, popularly known as ‘Mandrax’ tablets.
On 10 February 1997 The Indian Express ran a story according to which the Sri Lanka police had seized 375kg of heroin smuggled from South India to a locality off Negombo for eventual shipment to Europe. The smugglers were suspected to have links with the LTTE. A report by Dhar[24] on the seizure by the Thai navy of an illegal shipment of arms belonging to the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur, provided further confirmation of the existence of close connections between Naga, Manipur, Assam and Sri Lanka Tamil rebel groups. The report also refers to rebel gunrunning through Bangladeshi ports.
According to a report carried in The Hindu of 25 June 1998, Tamil Nadu continues to serve as a transit area for heroin. Drugs are sometimes sent through Tamil Nadu to Colombo to be forwarded to other destinations. About 25kg of heroin have been seized by the NCB South Zone units from June 1996 to May 1997, and 30 persons, including seven Sri Lankan nationals, were arrested during this period. The 31 August 1998 issue of The Hindu reported that a Sri Lankan national who had booked his flights under the name of Raji was arrested at Madurai airport carrying an unusually large consignment of heroin 27kg valued at Rs 27 crores (270 million). He had travelled from Colombo to Mumbai on 27 August, and then to Ahamedabad, and was on his return journey through Mumbai and Madurai. This report points to the continuing importance of narcotics from the Golden Crescent for the smugglers from Sri Lanka.
All these sets of information do not necessarily indicate that the LTTE (or one of its front organisations, or a gang masquerading as an agent of the LTTE) is as yet a major player in the outward movement of narcotics from the principal producing areas of Asia. It is, indeed, probable that such a Sri Lanka Tamil group has always been outranked by those of several other tribes and nationalities, especially those with Mongoloid associations. But what the information does suggest is that the LTTE is likely to figure among those who are involved in it and share in its proceeds. Burmese segments of the Golden Triangle alone had, in 1996/97, an estimated 163,100 hectares under Papaver somniferum, which was believed to have the potential of producing up to 2,560mt of raw opium, or, when refined, the equivalent of almost 500mt of high quality heroin, valued wholesale in Western markets at a staggering $2.5 billion.[25] It should thus be clear that even a microscopic share of the related transactions would represent really big money.
There are two other considerations of salience to an assessment of the importance of the LTTE’s involvement in the bulk haulage of narcotics from Asian sources. These, though already referred to, deserve to be highlighted. One is that, among the various syndicates that are believed to be engaged in this component of the global narcotics trade in continental Southeast Asia, the LTTE is one of the very few that has its own fleet of ships. The other is that the LTTE also stands out as an organization that has [had] both the capacity as well as the need to launder the drug money, and/or to channel the earnings from the trade in narcotics to large-scale transactions in the widely dispersed clandestine markets of arms and ammunition.
The “Seishin” sunk by the SL Navy way out in the Indian Ocean on 10 September 2007 as it located itself for the transfer of war material to trawlers from Sri Lanka –the first of six LTTE warehouse ships plying at times without formal designation which were destroyed in the course of 2007 with assistance from US satellite data and careful studies by the SL naval command directed by Vasantha Karannagoda and an operational strike force led by Commander Travis Sinniah. See Roberts, Tamil Person and State. Pictorial, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2014 Figs. 68-69 for details. ISBN 978-955-665-231-4.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANON. (1995) “Funding Terror: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and their Criminal Activities in the Western World”, Mackenzie Institute, Toronto
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**** CITATIONS
[1] . Hellmann-Rajanayagam (1994): 37
[2] Narayan Swamy (1994): 28
[3] . Inspector General of Police, Administration Report, 1984: 18; Steinitz (1985); Ratnatunga (1988): 72-76; Fernando, 1989: 53, 205, 252; Jayewardene & Jayewardene (1987): 227-229; Tullis LaMond, (1991): 23; Davis (1996 a & b): 473; McDowell (1996): 239
[4] . Anon. (1995):9; Davis (1996 b)
[5]. What could be considered the commencement of serious media attention to the LTTE involvement in transcontinental drug trafficking is represented by Crellsamer (1985) and an article carried in the Asian Wall Street Journal of September 1985. This latter publication speculated that Sri Lankans are likely to have brought into Western Europe about 1,500 kg of Heroin.
[6] . Anon. (1995)
[7] . Cited in Rasul Bakhsh Rais, 1999
[8]. United States Drug Enforcement Administration, 1996: 2; Mc Dowell (1996) : 239; Bonner (1998)
[9] . Davis (1996 a): 473
[10] . Many institutions, ostensibly a’political , either operate directly under the LTTE high command or serve to camouflage the clandestine activities of the LTTE. According to authoritative sources such as the US State Department (1996) and Peter Chalk (2000), the World Tamil Association, World Tamil Movement, “Federations of Tamil Associations” (in Canada, Australia, Switzerland and France), Illankai Thamil Sangam in USA, Tamil Coordinating Committee of Norway, and the International Federation of Tamils in the UK are some of the better known umbrella organisations to which these institutions are affiliated. These organisations also act as powerful lobby groups for the Eelam cause.
[11] The information furnished here on the maritime activities of the LTTE has been extracted from Bonner (1998); Davis (1996 a, 1996 b, 2000); McDowell, 1996; Mckenzie Institute (1996); Gunaratna (1997); Chalk (2000); and several reports carried in Indian, Thai and Sri Lankan newspapers.
[12] Report prepared by David Osler of Lloyd’s List cited in ‘Sri Lanka News Update’ of 20 March 2000, Sri Lanka Embassy, Washington DC
[13] . Ford (1996): 6-7
[14] . US Department of State (1997)
[15] . Linter (1989): 71 & 212
[16] Davis (2000)
[17] As noted earlier (p. 5, above) certain points along the west coast of India, including the city of Mumbai, had already (i.e. by the early 1980s) gained in importance for the trans-shipment of drugs from the Golden Creascent.
[18] Hazarika (1994): 204-206
[19] Mitra (1995)
[20] Verghese (1996): 59
[21] Verghese, op. cit. 123
[22] Verghese, op. cit. 133
[23] Davis (1996 a): 471
[24] Dhar (1997)
[25] UN Drug Control Programme (1997): 21 & 126
LTTE and Narcotics: Hanging on to the Tiger’s Tail
