Terrorism - Articles

LTTE and Security Implications for India

'India is our friend' said the LTTE leader Parbhakaran in his Heroes' Day address in November 2008. 'At no stage did we ever consider India as an enemy force. Our people always consider India as our friend. They have great expectations that the Indian superpower will take a positive stand on our national question'. The cornered Tiger chief probably thinks we have a short memory.

The LTTE had a significant organizational set up in Tamilnadu even when they were engaged in war with the IPKF! This set up looked after their injured cadres who were treated in Indian hospitals in Tamilnadu and Karnataka, had a massive public relations exercise attacking the Indian Government of the day, and which ensured supply of a large number of banned items to Jaffna from the Tamilnadu coast through their mechanized boats. These supplies included explosives which were used against the Indian army. Even grenade shells were manufactured in factories in Coimbatore, and supplied to their cadres.

When the IPKF was withdrawn in March, 1990, the LTTE were virtually in full control of the north and east of Sri Lanka. In an operation mounted by the LTTE in the heart of Chennai on 19 June 1990, Padmanabha and twelve other EPRLF (Eelam People's Revolutionary Front) leaders were massacred in Kodambakkam. This case was solved during the investigation of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

Around the time the LTTE planned to kill Rajiv Gandhi, they embarked on a dangerous mission to train Indian Tamil boys in armed warfare to wage war against India, the object being secession of Tamilnadu from the Indian Union. An Indian Tamil boy, Ravichandran, was the leader of the Tamil National Retrieval Troops set up under Pottu Omman, the intelligence chief of the LTTE. He took a number of youngsters to Jaffna for training. Instructions given to him by Pottu Omman were to target senior Indian leaders based in Tamilnadu and to assist Sivarasan in a big operation in Chennai. From this it is very clear that the LTTE is no friend of India, and would not hesitate to use any stratagem to achieve their objective of getting Eelam, including destabilization of India. Ravichandran is serving life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi case.

There is evidence of the LTTE's links with the PWG (People's War Group) and the ULFA. The PWG were reported to have been trained by the Tigers in the use of improvised explosive devices in which they were past masters. In fact, it was after this that the PWG started inflicting heavy casualties, through improvised explosive devices on the Indian security forces from 1989 onwards. It is also possible that the LTTE were assisted by the PWG in obtaining explosives from Andhra Pradesh, where they themselves had no contacts. Even after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, there are reasons to believe that the LTTE used Tamilnadu to store their arms and other supplies, before taking them by boats to Jaffna. Their chief arms procurer, Kumaran Padmananthan, is known to have several Indian contacts and passports.

The decline of the LTTE started with the split in their ranks, when 'Col' Karuna, their eastern commander began working with the Sri Lankan security forces. In the latest war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan State, which was indeed provoked by the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Army has achieved notable successes. While the issue of the misery that the civilians undergo needs to be squarely addressed, it has to be remembered that the LTTE have never bothered about the Tamils while executing their project. The LTTE is known to have fired on IPKF patrols from the Jaffna hospital to draw their fire on the hospital, in order to project the deaths of civilians as human rights violations in the return fire.

Several of their ships which used to ensure constant supply of arms and other equipment to the LTTE were targeted and destroyed by the Sri Lankan Navy and Air Force. In these circumstances, the LTTE would become more and more desperate to get their supply lines in India restored. They will need petrol, diesel, batteries; they will require medicines to tend to their injured cadres, they will have to transport their more severely injured cadres to better hospitals for treatment; they will need explosives and other war materials to fight the Sri Lankan's in a guerilla war, if they lose the current war. For all this, they have to have access to Tamilnadu. They do have groups in Tamilnadu to support them in this, as is evident from news of LTTE cadres being arrested in different parts of Tamilnadu by the 'Q' Branch of the police. Moreover, their past attempts to train Indian youth from Tamilnadu to fight for their cause at the expense of India's unity, makes it imperative for us to remain vigilant.