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JANE’S INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
SAYS TAMIL TIGERS CONTROL A PORTION OF MONTREAL’S USD ONE BILLION
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 G H
Peiris at the University of Peradeniya , 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, Afganistan, Iran and
Pakistan whose mountainous areas define the Crescent. In 1991 Afganistan
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 kilometers 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 market 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.
G.H.Peiris of the Peradeniya University, 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 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 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 (incidentally, a Sri Lanka Tamil), 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.”
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 (Table 1). 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 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
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. 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 (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.
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