Jane's intelligence review says LTTE controls a portion of Montreal's
USD 1b drug trade

(By: Walter Jayawardhana)

Citing Royal Canadian Mounted Police sources the Jane's Intelligence
Review said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controls portion
of US Dollar one billion drug market in the Canadian city of Montreal.
The Jane's Intelligence Review said that one of the main ways of earning
money out of its USD 200-300 million annual income of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is narcotics smuggling using its merchant
ships, which also transports illicit arms and explosives which they
procure all over the world for a separatist insurgency in the Indian
Ocean island of Sri Lanka.

"The LTTE's chief trade in Asia is reportedly heroin trafficking,
although no verifiable evidence has been produced. According to Prof. G
H Peiris, the LTTE secures the Golden Crescent-Europe route and possibly
routes out of the Golden Triangle", the report said.

The 'Golden Crescent' is the name given to Asia's principal opium
producing area encompassing three nations, Afghanistan, Iran and
Pakistan whose mountainous areas define the Crescent. In 1991
Afghanistan became the world's primary opium producer with a yield of
1782 metric tons surpassing Burma which produced 800 metric tons in 2002.

The 'Golden Triangle' is one of Asia's two main illicit opium producing
areas of 350,000 square kilometres that envelops the mountains of three
countries of mainland South East Asia, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Opium
is a narcotic drug yielded from the latex from the seed pods of the
plant, Papaver Somniferum.

Quoting a US Congressional report the Jane's intelligence Report said,
"The US Library of Congress stated in its October 2003 report, Nations
hospitable to organised crime and terrorism, that the LTTE then
alternate their routes involving transportation back to coastal areas of
Sri Lanka or Tamil Nadu, where its naval forces can secure smuggling
operations."

The Jane's report further said, "Although the LTTE is unlikely to be
involved in street-level distribution of heroin, it is possible that
LTTE-affiliated street gangs may be involved in lower-level
distribution. The RCMP claims that a portion of the USD1 billion drug
markets in Montreal is controlled by Sri Lankans connected to the LTTE."

During the recent taking over of the Thoppigala mountainous area from
the LTTE, the last complex of military camps they held , the Sri Lanka
Security Forces discovered tons of sacks , nicely packed with dried
leaves of Marijuana or Ganja (Cannabis Sativa) indicating their
importance for the existence of the separatist group as a money earner.

Prof. G.H.Peiris, who has been quoted by the Jane's Review in its report
says in a separate report that the involvement of the LTTE in narcotics
transactions take place mainly in two forms: (a) "the bulk delivery of
heroin and cannabis from producing areas in Asia via transit points to
destinations in consuming countries" and (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; the
operation of drug distribution networks dealing in consuming regions or
countries; and, working as couriers between dealers and distributors
(i.e. "muleing")."

But he says 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.

The following are some of his other observations: "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 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 the 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 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)
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. 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 Yogaratnam Yogi,
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."

Prof. Peiris in his paper also examined LTTE's narcotics market 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. This information may be synthesised
as follows.

"According to authoritative Western analysts, 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. This 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 believed 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. 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 organised involvement of Tamil militant groups in the
distribution of narcotics in the European market. In fact, the general
belief in 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
LTTE 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 on 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 over narco-terrorism. It is
likely, moreover, that as a result 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.

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 (RCMP), according to which a part of the billion dollar
drug market of Montreal city was controlled by Sri Lankans, who were
sending some of the profits to the LTTE. Again, a report prepared in
1995 for the Mackenzie Institute of Toronto estimated (speculatively)
that the 134 kilograms of heroin seized globally by various law
enforcement agencies from Tamil drug runners the previous year
represented only about 7-10 per cent 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 per cent purity) in the West, according to price levels of
that time, would have been about US$ 290 million.
--
For genuine Situation Report visit:
http://www.nationalsecurity.lk
http://www.defence.lk/
http://www.army.lk/index1.php
http://www.nmatnet.com/

http://www.sinhalaya.info/index-EN.php

Worth to look following to see how brutal Tamil Tiger Terrorists are

Child Soldiers of LTTE Tamil Tiger Terrorists in Sri Lanka
http://www.spur.asn.au/childwar.htm

Ethnic Cleansing in Sri Lanka
http://www.spur.asn.au/ethnic_cleansing_in_sri_lanka.htm

LTTE TAMIL TIGER ATROCITIES
http://www.spur.asn.au/ltteatrp.htm