HomeA Tamil Tiger Primer on International Arms Bazaar
These are some of the weapons in the arsenal of the Tamil Tigers, the guerrilla army waging a war for an independent state on the island nation of Sri Lanka: surface-to-air missiles from Cambodia, assault rifles from Afghanistan, mortar shells from the former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, and 60 tons of explosives from Ukraine.
The Tigers are considered some of the more advanced and ruthless terrorists in the world. The Tigers' suicide bombers, wearing specially sewn body vests, are among the deadliest in the business. The cadre, including young boys and women, are so disciplined that if they are captured, they have pledged to kill themselves by taking cyanide capsules that they wear around their necks.
The Tigers describe themselves as a liberation army, and for 15 years they have been fighting for the rights of the minority Tamils against the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. The U.S. State Department officially labels the Tigers terrorists, and their ability to carry our suicide bombings like the one that killed 36 people Thursday in Colombo, the capital, reflects their remarkable success at acquiring explosives and weapons.
A recent visit to Sri Lanka provided graphic insight into the Tigers' military procurement, and more broadly into the world's light arms trade: It revealed how easy it is to find weapons, pay for them with funds moved through major banks and move them across borders. It also underlined how ill prepared governments are at dealing with the traffic.
Unlike the trade in heavy weapons like tanks, artillery and combat aircraft, the movement of small arms in neither monitored nor reported by governments. Nor are there treaties governing their proliferation and use, as there are for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Nor in most countries is it a crime to buy weapons to fight a battle in a foreign land. And yet, today's regional wars - from the Balkans to Central Africa - are waged primarily with small arms: assault rifles, mortars, grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles.
"The Tigers are on the cutting edge of arms trafficking," said Rohan Gunaratna, an authority on the Tigers who is at the Center for the Study of International Terrorism at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
Mr. Gunaratna, who has good access to Sri Lanka's intelligence services, said the Tamil Tigers have bought arms from dealers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Lebanon and Cyprus; from corrupt military officers in Thailand and Burma, and directly from governments, including Ukraine, Bulgaria and North Korea.
These are the same venues where other insurgencies and terrorist groups shop. Favorite arms bazaars are the states of the former Soviet bloc, like Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Kazakhstan, countries that are long on weapons and poorly paid officials, and short on cash and law enforcement. War zones gone quite, like the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Mozambique, are other places where arms traders look for wares.
Most of these countries do not have the intelligence expertise, training or resources to monitor the illicit trafficking, nor does Sri Lanka. "We are dependent on others," said Kalynanda Godage, a retired Sri Lankan ambassador.
The head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is Vellupillai Prabhakaran, 43, a fisherman's son who has become one of the most effective guerrilla leaders of his time. The chief arms trader is Kumaran Padmanathan, a 43-year old university graduate.
"That's the man they should start the manhunt for," said Mr. Godage, the retired diplomat. "He's the man who has made it possible for Prabhakaran to pursue this war."
With several forged passports, and aliases, Mr. Padmanathan travels widely but his main bases of operation have been Singapore, Rangoon, Bangkok and more recently Johannesburg, according to Sri Lankan intelligence officials and diplomats from countries where he has surfaced.
"He can pass off as any middle class Tamil," said a Tamil militant who knows Mr. Padmanathan from their university days. A picture taken a couple of years ago shows Mr. Padmanathan, who is about five feet, seven inches tall (1.7 meters), with black, curly hair, a thick mustache and glasses.
Mr. Padmanathan has recently had bank accounts in London, Singapore, and Frankfurt, according to Sri Lanka and Western intelligence officials. Accounts belonging to other Tiger cadre have been found in Denmark, Sweden, Canada and Australia, they said.
And the accounts are bulging. By some estimates the Tigers collect $ 1 million a month mostly from the Tamil diaspora in Canada, Britain, Switzerland and Australia. (Having been designated a terrorist organization, the Tamil Tigers are not allowed to raise money in the United States). The Tigers also operate gasoline stations, restaurants and small shops around the world.
The Sri Lankan government has also repeatedly charged that the Tigers' ships have hauled opium from Burma, but Western diplomats said there is no concrete evidence of this. More credible, Western officials say, are allegations that the Tigers have links with organized criminal groups in Russia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria.
Flush with funds, the Tigers have picked up weapons from anywhere and everywhere. Assault rifles, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and Russian-made surface-to-air missiles have, for example, been purchased in Cambodia. One batch of missiles was bought from corrupt Cambodian generals, the other, more recently, from the outlawed Khmer Rouge, Sri Lankan officials said.
Early this decade, according to former member of the organization, the Tigers acquired at least two American-made Stinger missiles, one of the most deadly and accurate of hand-fired anti-aircraft missiles. They were from the consignment of Stingers that the Americans gave the Afghan mujahidin during their war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
International Herald Tribune - Tuesday March 10, 1998