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Dr Peter Chalk (Dr Peter Chalk is a Policy Analyst working in the Project Airforce and National Security divisions of the RAND Corporation, Washington DC. During the past year he has worked on projects examining unconventional security threats in South East Asia, new strategic challenges for the US Airforce (USAF) in Latin America and evolving trends in national and international terrorism. He was also a major contributor to the First Annual Report of the Gillmore Commision, a Congressionally mandated advisory panel established to assess US domestic response capabilities for terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. Prior to joining RAND, Dr Chalk was an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University, Canberra. In addition to his academic posts, Dr Chalk has acted as a research consultant in the UK, Canada and Australia and has experience with the UK Armed Forces. He is author of Non-Military Security and Global Disorde, The Impact of Extremism, Violence and Chaos on National and International Securiry (McMillan, 2000) and West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, The Evolving Dynamic (McMillan, 1996), in addition to numerous journal articles and other scholarly publications in the security studies field. Dr Chalk has lectured widely on terrorism, piracy and "grey area phenomena" before government, intelligence, police and military audiances in North America, Europe, Sri Lanka and Australia. He is currently a member of the Standing Committee of the Washington based International Research Group on Political Violence (IRGPV) and serves as Associate Editor of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, one of the foremost international journals in the area of low intensity conflict). |
DR PETER CHALK : Good afternoon to you all. Thank you, SPUR (Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka Inc), for giving me the opportunity to talk with you today and thank you for coming in on such a lovely afternoon at the apex of the Melbourne Grand Prix. I hope I don't bore you too much this afternoon with what I'm about to give.
My brief this afternoon was to give a breakdown of the LTTE international support infrastructure as it currently exists and the implications that this might have for Australia. Now, before I get going on that, I do have to stress that although I work with the Rand Corporation in Washington all the views that I express today are not indicative of Rand policy, they are certainly not indicative of US government policy, so this is a product of my own research and should in no way be taken as a reflection of what Rand itself is espousing.
The first thing I think I would like to stress is that if you were to look at a league table today of insurgent groups - and I'm going to keep with the term insurgency for the time being - the LTTE would without doubt be at the top of that league table. It is the most efficient, one of the most proficient and effective groups currently in existence, and that is widely recognised throughout the world and certainly is recognised within the United States.
The group has the ability to operate across the entire spectrum of insurgent actions from selected assassinations to terrorism to large scale conventional attacks. It has repeatedly shown its ability to thwart Sri Lankan government assaults and offensives. It retains the ability to control large tracts of land within Sri Lanka and certainly, at least up until the recapture of the Jaffna Peninsula, it operated an effective de facto government in the north of Sri Lanka. And even today - I was in Jaffna about 18 months ago - that part of Sri Lanka still very much has the feel of an area under siege.
What accounts for the effectiveness of the LTTE? Well, obviously we can't ignore first, the dedication of the fighters. These people are willing to sacrifice their lives for their cause and what they believe in. That is an extremely potent force with respect to any insurgent movement. Secondly, it is the very highly trained nature of the (indistinct) with whom we're talking about.
LTTE members undergo a very rigorous and excruciating training program. I've talked with ex-LTTE members who have told me about the conditions under which they live and the expectations that are made of them in terms of training and then later guerilla actions. We're not talking about a rag tag bunch of rebels here, we're talking about a highly disciplined and highly dedicated organisation.
Now, those two factors are obviously incredibly important for trying to explain some of the effectiveness of the group. But an equally as important factor as far as I'm concerned is the international infrastructure that the group has established to support its actions back in Sri Lanka. No other group in existence today has established the integrated and global nature of the type of support infrastructure with which we're talking about. The nearest would be the PKK before its ultimate collapse after the capture of Oshlan and possibly the provisional IRA. But they pale into insignificance when we talk about the global expanse reach of the network that the LTTE has been able to bring to bear, and it’s important, because about 95 per cent of the operational revenue of the group is now thought to come from overseas, and certainly has been the case since the group lost effective control of Jaffna in the mid 1990s.
So I want to talk a little bit about what makes up this infrastructure, the dynamics that underscore it and then, as I said, I'll finish up with a couple of words about the relevance that this all has for Australia. Now, when we're talking about the infrastructure, we can subdivide it into three main areas. Crucially, at the base is publicity and propaganda, which feeds into finance generation which in turn feeds into weapons procurement.
Now although each of those areas operate nominally independent of the other, their activities inevitably overlap and they are coordinated under the auspices of the group's international secretariat, and the main job is to ensure that each of these various components are effectively brought to bear on the LTTE struggle back in Sri Lanka.
So I’ll start with a few words about publicity and propaganda. Anton Balasinghum is essentially the chief architect of the LTTE propaganda, although he doesn't act alone. The main objective of publicity and propaganda is essentially to mobilise and governise international support for the LTTE cause, and Balasinghum does this by emphasising a consistent threefold message.
Firstly, the Tamils are the innocent victims of Singhalese repression and military instigated oppression. Secondly, that the LTTE represents the only viable means for protecting the Tamil interests within Sri Lanka, and thirdly, that there can be no peace within Sri Lanka until the Tamils are granted their own homeland logically under the governments of the LTTE.
Now, Balasinghum is essentially responsible for what is effectively a quasi diplomatic structure that consists of NGOs, benevolent donor organisations, aid groups, development agencies and various other front organisations. As of 1998, politically if you like, the LTTE was represented in countries as far-flung as Burma and Botswana. However, the bulk of their activities has been concentrated in those western states that have large ex-patriot Tamil communities for obvious reasons.
The types of countries that we're talking about here would be especially Canada, especially the UK, especially Australia and, to a lesser extent, states such as France and Switzerland. Now, in each of these countries, particularly Canada, the UK and Australia, front organisations - unified over-arching front organisations have been established to harness, integrate and thereby inflate the individual lobbying efforts of each of these respective entities. In the UK we have the United Tamil organisation and in Canada we have the Federation of Association of Canadian Tamils and in Australia we have the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations. As I say, they effectively coordinate and integrate the various individual or disparate efforts of lobbying bodies in favour of the LTTE.
Now, in addition to front groups, the LTTE has also managed to effectively use the liberal democratic ethos that underscores many western states, particularly in terms of the freedom to disseminate, use freedom to organise and so forth. And it has used that to establish offices that are openly supportive of the Ilam cause, and the most important one, would be Ilam House which is located in London, which acts as the essential external representative base of the LTTE. It is the operational headquarters, if you like, of Balasinghum, and it's also the location out of which most LTTE statements, memoranda and proclamations are made.
Propaganda and publicity targets both the Diaspra and the host government Now, this aspect of the LTTE's war effort, if you like, or non-military war effort is conducted at a very, very sophisticated level and I would say at a far more sophisticated level than any counter-propaganda activities that the Sri Lankan government has so far been able to bring to bear on the ground. Propaganda itself is disseminated in a variety of ways, it's disseminated through hotlines, community libraries, Tamil television and radio programs, or via social, cultural and political gatherings.
Those gatherings are often deliberately organised to coincide with venerated dates in the LTTE calendar, such as Martyrs Day, which is celebrated on 27 November each year. And the aim here is to further solidify, if you like, the support of diehards and committed adherence to the LTTE cause, but just as importantly to try and sway potential backers over to the LTTE's side.
In addition to those types of mediums, the LTTE has also made very good use of electronic mediums with which to decimate propaganda. Here we're talking like the worldwide web, email groups and news groups. The organisation has established a particularly strong presence on the internet. Many of its web pages are fully documented and researched and linked to popular search engines. A number also contain jump-off points and other hotlinks that are networked under the banner of peace to internationally recognised development agencies and charities such as the International World Council of Churches and the Robert Kennedy Centre for Human Rights.
In general, in conversations that I've had both in the west and with Sri Lankan officials back in Colombo, it is conceded that the LTTE propaganda war is probably about 15 years ahead of that, of the Sri Lankan government. That has allowed the group to continually embarrass Colombo and gain political capital at its expense. Now, the Sri Lankan government is recognising the importance of positive publicity and propaganda in terms of prosecuting its struggle against the LTTE, and that has been reflected by the dispatch of councillors to many of the Sri Lankan governments most important overseas missions, and we certainly have councils now in Australia, Canada and the UK, whose main aim there is to put the other side forward, is to present the Sri Lankan side's argument and also to try and counteract what the LTTE is saying.
Up to this point, the sophistication of this effort is still being developed and is still yet to match the sophistication of the pro Tiger lobby. And I think I can give – you can measure this by the high degree of legitimacy that the LTTE has been accorded within the international system in general, and certainly for most of the 1990s the group was viewed as a perfectly legitimate national liberation movement engaged in a justified struggle for independence against the largely repressive (indistinct) state.
Now, without making any qualitative judgments over the nature of the conflict in Sri Lanka, I would say that that judgement was given despite the LTTE's association and implication in human rights violations, in terrorist atrocities as well as the use of children as frontline combaters. The group was implicated in the assassination of Ghandi in 91, Premadaser in 1993, had been implicated in several suicide strikes throughout the 1990s, including I might say, the devastating assault against the Colombo Central Bank building which remains one of the most deadliest attacks in terrorist history.
All of that - the group was not ever designated or prescribed in many western states. The first move that came to this in this direction was when the United States included the LTTE on its newly promulgated list of foreign terrorist organisations in 1997 and that designation made it illegal to belong to the LTTE or to openly support its aims, and the State Department has since declared the World Tamil movement and the World Tamil Association as Tiger fronts that are subject to the same provisions.
Another example of a state that is beginning to come around I guess would be Canada following the recommendations of the special Senate Committee in 1999. Ottawa, which had already affirmed that the LTTE was a terrorist organisation, stated that it would review legislative requirements and provisions that could be put into force within Canada which would be aimed at restricting the group's activities on Canadian soil.
And as with Washington, several other organisations have since been designated as Tiger fronts including the Federation of Association of Canadian Tamils, in fact, the Tamil coordinating committee and the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation. And then as we've heard most recently, the UK announced, or has brought into bear an expansion of the provisions of the 1989 Anti Terrorism Act, the main aim of which is to ensure that foreign groups are not allowed to exploit and use British territory as a state employed from which to plan or carry out terrorist operations in third countries, and just this week the LTTE was included as a proscribed list that will be subject to those sorts of provisions that fall under this expanded anti-terrorist legislation.
Now, the practical effect. What is the practical effect of these? Well, we certainly shouldn't overemphasise what the US, Canada or the UK has done. Canada has yet actually to enact any legislative prohibitions against the LTTE all front organisations, and in conversations with our Canadian officials, such provisions will probably not come into place for at least the next five to ten years. It doesn't seem that we are going to get any specific legislative requirements within Canada.
In the United States statutory provisions are in place, however that doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented the LTTE from operating through other organisations that are not prescribed, and that same loophole will also almost certainly apply to the legislation that has been brought to bear within the United Kingdom.
The other factor that should be borne in mind is that it is extremely difficult to actually prove – and this really gets onto my next point, but I wanted to bring it up here in terms of fundraising – that money raised in one country is actually deliberately or directly flowing to support militant activities elsewhere. Now, neither in the UK nor the US unless - it can be definitively proven that every cent or every dollar, every pound is actually going to support terrorist activities - there will be no interception of that money. And it's an incredibly difficult paper trail to establish in terms of showing that money raised for what could be ostensibly humanitarian purposes, are actually being used to support terrorism or militant activity.
I should also say that the attitudes of the UK, the US and Canada are very much the exception rather than the rule. There are many states where the LTTE is able to carry on largely open-ended and unrestricted fundraising and political propaganda activities, and that again, despite its continued record of involvement in both terrorist actions and large scale human rights abuses back in Sri Lanka.
The purpose of political propaganda is to mobilise support for fundraising, and that brings me on to the second component of this infrastructure. Now, fundraising for the LTTE doesn't just consist of Diaspra contributions, it also consists of funds that are syphoned off to donations that are given to non-governmental organisations. It also includes profits that are gleaned from illicit criminal activities.
There is some controversy here, and I'll get on to that in a minute, and also profits that are earned as a result of investments that are made in legitimate business commercial enterprises, and I'll talk a little bit about
each of those various sources. Now, a good deal of the money that goes to support the LTTE cause is raised from contributions that are given by the Diaspra community. And as I said, most of the effort is concentrated on western states that have large ex-patriot Tamil communities, because it is here that mobilisation activities can be most effectively brought to bear.
The most important states here would be Canada, Australia and the UK, and in terms of Diaspra contributions, at a minimum it is thought that about one and a half million dollars is raised within these states combined every month to support the LTTE cause. Now, these contributions are mostly made, or procured via a standard baseline war tax that is imposed as a moral obligation on all members living in the respect of host state. The figure in the UK at the end of last year was roughly equivalent to one pound a day or 365 pounds a year, Canada $1 a day, $365 dollars a year.
Now, as far as possible, the LTTE aims to secure this money through voluntary contributions relying on the effectiveness of its positive publicity campaign. The reason is fairly self evident, because if it gets in to illicit cohesion and intimidation it's going to attract the attention of the law enforcement authorities which will serve to curtail its fundraising activities. Having said that, if there is reluctance to pay, the LTTE is certainly known to have engaged in the coercion and back in Sri Lanka and that’s not the case against the recalcitrants or the non-contributors themselves.
The scale of contributions that are given are directly related to the success of the group on the battlefield, and this is as true for the LTTE as it is true for any insurgent activity. Typically, when the group suffers setbacks or defeats, the scale of donations will fall because the group isn’t seen as a viable entity or such a viable entity - victory isn’t seen as just around the corner. And in such instances the group may well be more forced to rely on cohesion and intimidation in order to get the money. However, following victories, the scale of contributions will dramatically increase. There will be a windfall of donations, including instances of mass spontaneous contributions following the LTTE'S capture of elephant parts last year. There was a major increase in donations, reported not only in Australia, but Canada and the UK and elsewhere. Canada alone - $10 000 was raised during one meeting allegedly in Toronto.
In addition to those contributions we have funds that are given to NGOs ostensibly to support rehabilitation or social development projects back into Sri Lanka, and a percentage of these funds are thought to be syphoned off to support the LTTE war effort. Now, most of these funds as I say, would be given to benevolent donor organisations, charities, aid agencies, development groups, to fund these types of rehabilitation programs back in Sri Lanka.
A great advantage of this type of financial procurement, as I‘ve already hinted, is that it is very difficult to prove that funds that are raised for these types of purposes are being redirected to support militant activities. That's particularly true in states such as Norway where there is not even a legal requirement for an individual to register as an organisation before actually engaging in fundraising efforts, and I think that this will continue to be a major problem with respect to any legislation that is used or is brought to bear against the LTTE in the US and in the UK.
Thirdly, we come to illicit criminal activities and there've been repeated allegations that the group raises money through transnational organised crime. Two areas in particular have generally been emphasised, people smuggling and drug running. Now, people smuggling is thought to constitute a mainstay of LTTE financial procurement allowing the group to benefit from a consistent long-term source of income. Officials in the west as well as in Sri Lanka believe the group is playing a fairly important role now in facilitating and transporting illegal migrants out of both India and Sri Lanka to the West earning on average anywhere between $18,000 or $32,000 per transaction. Now, that's not a net profit, that's the overall cost. One thing that human trafficking does involve are very high overhead costs. But even when you take those into account, the net profits that can be earned on a single transaction are still fairly significant.
Considerable use is thought to be made of Thailand as a base from which to facilitate the trafficking of migrants, both as a forgery identification hub and as a staging point for onward journeys. Thailand/Bangkok now is the Mecca, if you like, of forgery, particularly Cow Sun Road, you can go down Cow Sun Road, you can pick up a passport and depending on how much you want to part with and how quickly you want it, it can be fairly rudimentary or it can be almost in perfect condition, to the extent that immigration authorities in Europe and in North America have conceded that on a number of occasions, they have been unable to tell the difference between a forged document and the real thing.
Within Bangkok, the LTTE has established a small but very compartmentalised (indistinct) of functionaries to actually facilitate both the onward movement of migrants as well as to facilitate the temporary housing, if you like, of the migrants. Now this (indistinct) is very small. It’s deliberately kept small, both to limit the chances of penetration by law enforcement authorities as well as to insulate other members of the group in the event that a smuggling ring is actually penetrated or intercepted.
The bulk of these migrants end up in Canada. That's largely because of two factors: one, the large overseas Tamil community there which facilitates easy integration, but secondly, because of the weak immigration laws that Canada has currently has brought to bear, many of the migrants take on menial low paying jobs that have been prearranged by the LTTE, and that's important because it allows these migrants – it means that the new arrivals will remain semi-indentured to the group after they have arrived at their country of origin, and that in the current Sri Lankan context means acting as local Tiger henchmen or debt collectors.
Apart from human smuggling, there have been repeated allegations that the group has raised money through drug trafficking, particularly facilitating the movement of heroin out of the golden crescent through India and Sri Lanka to the West. The Toronto based McKenzie Institute has argued that this constitutes one of the principal sources of income for the group, and has represented a major source of income ever since Afghan and Pakistani traffickers started to emphasise the southern Asian route to the West. Officials in Colombo have also agreed, and they’ve tended to argue that revenue from drug trafficking is far more important than say, contributions from the Diaspra.
Now, having said all this, definitive proof actually linking the LTTE to an official policy of drug trafficking has yet to emerge. There have been repeated and concerted investigations that have been carried out in both North America and Europe into the trade, and yet there has been no definitive proof that has been established that actually conclusively links the LTTE to this type of activity.
Certainly Sri Lankan Government officials have argued that that merely reflects the tightly compartmentalised nature of LTTE trafficking networks in general which have served to effectively insulate the group from legal prohibitions and legal complicity in the trade. Organised crime specialists tend to agree, and they’ve also pointed out that at least on a circumstantial level, certain indicators do exist which suggest links between the LTTE and drug trafficking. There have, for instance, been numerous arrests of Tamils on drug-related charges who have subsequently been linked back to militant actions and activities and organisations in Sri Lanka. (indistinct) is alleged to have – and is known to have - met the legal costs of certain Tamils that have been up for drug-related offences in the west, at times authorising sustenance payments to family members if they actually end up in prison, and now within Canada itself – I'm emphasising Canada because this often emphasises a principal area of the group's heroin related activities – several organisations exist within the greater Toronto metropolitan area that are known to import and distribute heroin and also which retain important symbolic links to the LTTE such as VVT, the Golden Girl, there's a Mrs (indistinct) gang and the Jane Finch gang.
A final source of income would come from investments that are made in legitimate commercial enterprises and in many cases, these schemes operate on a system of ownership by proxy. Essentially the LTTE covers the initial capital costs of setting up the business and then shares the subsequent profits with the company's ostensible owner. A lot of attention or particular focus has been given to companies that run or deal in golden jewellery, that deal with wholesale freight and distribution or that are responsible for running local Tamil bus services, computer services and the like.
Now, it's not possible due to a lack of reliable data to actually get a definitive breakdown of how much money the LTTE is thought to derive from legitimate businesses, but one study has emphasised, again with respect to Canada, that between '98 and 1999 the group raised about $10m purely as a result of profits gleaned from its investments and legitimate enterprises.
What are we talking about overall in terms of fundraising? A very, very conservative figure is about $50m a year, and that's a very conservative figure and I'm saying conservative because the problems associated with actually trying to definitively link Diaspra contributions to the LTTE definitively link funds that have been syphoned off to war, to militant activities - quite apart from this whole problem of trying to ascertain the extent to which the group relies on illicit organised criminal activities. But a good conservative ballpark figure would be roughly about $50m a year.
Now, that money has been used for a number of purposes; it’s been used to mount protracted legal defences of the group and it's members. A good example would be the legal defences that have been brought to bear in Canada in support of Suresh who acts as the – or acted as the LTTE's chief Canadian representative. He was declared a threat to national security in 1995 and issued with a deportation order in 1997. However, he still remains essentially under quasi house arrest in Toronto and at this point it doesn't look like there are going to be any moves to actually deport Suresh, at least for the short term.
The LTTE has also used its funds to contest the US's designation of the group as a foreign terrorist organisation - and I'll put money on the fact that they will also similarly contest the UK's designation of the group as an FTO. Funds however have also been used obviously to support the group's war effort and form a crucial component of arms procurement and the supplies of battle-related material, and that's the third component that I'll touch on.
Now, this is my secretive obviously of the group's activities, but the one that I think really does best demonstrate its global reach. Up to 1987 or 1986 the group essentially relied mostly on arms being given to it from India - arms and training that were supplied the research and analysis wing which is India's principal external intelligence agency. Why did India support the group? Well, it was essentially a product of wider geo-strategic policies.
Essentially India was concerned about Colombo's growing association with the west, it was also concerned that Colombo was increasingly exhibiting an unwillingness to remain under its non aligned orbit. And it supported not only the LTTE, but a number of other Tamil militant organisations in an attempt to indirectly coerce Colombo away from that stance.
There was a change in Indian policy by the mid 1980s. By 1987 India was part of the Indo Sri Lankan peace accords, terminated all support to the LTTE and dispatched a peace keeping force to Jaffna. Why did India change was essentially a product of the growing violence that was occurring in Sri Lanka. India was concerned because it was generating refugees in Southern India as well as possibly they were concerned that if the LTTE were ultimately successful, it could spark secessionist demands within Tamil Nardoo itself in southern India.
So, we have a containment of Indian support in 87. That necessarily forced the LTTE to compensate, it had to look for other ways of getting weapons. For the past 15 years it has essentially focused on accessing the arms bazaars and markets of Eastern Europe, north east, south east, south west Asia and most recently South Africa.
The Arms network itself is run by (indistinct) who's colloquially known as KP, he's probably the second – well, he is the second most wanted man in Colombo behind (indistinct), a non-nondescript sort of person, known to travel widely, but his main operating bases have been Rangoon, Bangkok, Paris, most recently Johannesburg. Most members of his team that is known as the KP Department, have received no military training per se, and have generally not been involved in militant activities back in Sri Lanka. And that emphasis on non combatant is a deliberate tactic because it is thought that it will minimise the risk that these people that are involved in the highly critical task of weapons procurement will be known either to Sri Lankan agencies or to the intelligence agencies of overseas states. While they may not be trained in militant activities, they are well adept at other types of activities including forgery document running, communications and freight shipping.
At the heart of the KP Department is an act of international ocean going fleet of deep sea vessels, informally known as the Sea Pigeons. It's thought that there are about eleven ocean going vessels currently within the Sea Pigeons. most of which sail under either Panamanian, Honduran or Liberian flags. Now, the LTTE is effectively exploited and used the very lax registration requirements of the Honduran, Panamanian and Liberian flag states to continually confound international monitoring and surveillance of its vessels, because it has essentially allowed the group to change the names of vessels under their charge, the duty statements and manifests of those groups, which obviously compounds the difficulty of actually tracking them.
Ninety five per cent of the time these vessels would be involved in the legitimate transport of commercial goods such as tea, rice paddies, cement, fertiliser and so forth the sources for the weapons are global. Considerable use has been made of the booming arms bazaars that have sprung up in the post Cold War era in south east and south west Asia, particularly Cambodia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Burma, where the group is thought to have accessed everything from automatic pistols to assault rifles to rocket propelled grenades to allegedly surfaced missiles of the stinger variety.
Ammunition requirements generally come from purchases from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic while explosives are generally procured from Ukraine and Croatia.
Most recently the LTTE is thought to have been trying to expand its weapons procurement network to South Africa. Why South Africa? A number of factors account for the group's interest in this particular country. South Africa itself lies contiguous to two of the most prolific arms sources on the African continent – Angola and Mozambique – and thanks to sanctions imposed during the apartheid era, has developed a strong tradition of covert arms smuggling.
In addition, there is a relatively sophisticated transportation and communication infrastructure placed within South Africa, as well as the existence of several Tamil organisations that are openly supportive of the Ilam cause. Now, those factors, combined with the deteriorating security and political conditions within South Africa have made the country as a whole a very good prospect, or has encouraged the thriving underground arms trade within the country, something that the LTTE has been both quick to recognise and keen to exploit.
Thailand again figures prominently in terms of weapons procurement. This is the main logistical interface between the various overseas sources and the LTTE's primary theatre of conflict back in Sri Lanka. Why Thailand? Well, a number of factors again account for this. Thailand is a popular destination resort, which means that there's a high volume of people entering and leaving the country, which makes blending in easy. Thailand has notoriously lax immigration requirements and visa requirements. It lies close to Cambodia which is a major source of weapons, it's relatively close to Sri Lanka itself, which makes the actual transportation of weapons that much easier, and most importantly, there's a pervasive culture of corruption within Thailand. It is a country where money buys anything and just as importantly, can also buy silence in high places.
Typically weapons are thought to be purchased either through forged user and certificates or quasi legitimate means and overseas markets. They are transported back into LTTE bases, predominantly off the southern Thai seaboard but also of the southern Burmese seaboard where they are off loaded onto smaller freighters for the final trip to Sri Lanka and then off loaded at LTTE’s strong points on the north eastern coast. And these freighters are often protected by the amphibious unit of the LTTE known as the Sea Tigers that have developed a fearsome reputation for effectiveness at sea, including the use of suicide attacks against the Sri Lankan Navy.
What relevance does all of this have for Australia? And this is what I'll finish off with. Well, as we've heard, the UK has now come online, if you like, in terms of prescribing the LTTE. Canada, at least symbolically and rhetorically, says that it wants to do this. Canada and the UK combined with Australia, are the three most important external sources for the LTTE in terms of Diaspra communities.
Australia, at this point, shows no indication that it is about to implement any sorts of legislative requirements akin to what the UK has done or what Canada aims to do. That means in relative terms, Australia is likely to increase in importance in terms of an overseas external support base, not least because symbolically there is no aspersion against the group within this country.
So I would say that over the next few years Australia will increasingly emerge as a major area both of publicity and fundraising. Should Australia care about this? Well, on a direct level, it's very unlikely that whatever the LTTE does in this country is going to directly impact on Australian national security. The group's not about to carry out bomb attacks in Melbourne, it's not about to carry out attacks in Sydney, Brisbane or Perth, and it's probably nor even going to engage in organised criminal activities. The reason being is because the group and (indistinct) are not stupid. They recognise that Australia will constitute a very important locus of external activity. Therefore, as fast as possible they're going to ensure that the activities of the group here remain above board, because if they don't, they're going to attract the attention of law enforcement authorities which are going to curtail and be counter to the group's wider procurement efforts.
So on a direct level, Australia I guess has nothing to worry about. However, it really depends on how Australia views itself and the international community and what it views its responsibilities in terms of the global community. Over the last ten years, Australia has defined its role in the post Cold-War era as one of a good global international citizen, one that seeks to uphold the norms of civilised behaviour, good governance, human rights, a country that affirms its commitment to work with the global community in terms of countering transnational threats such as organised crime, such as terrorism. And certainly this whole idea of the good international citizen, if you like, has been on the lips of Australian policy makers over the last few years and particularly since the intervention in East Timor which was widely interpreted, particularly internationally, as Australia acting in this sort of good global role.
Now, taking that into account, funds raised within this country - not all funds go to support the LTTE cause, I'm not saying that at all - but certainly a proportion do. Funds are being used to buy weapons that are contributing to a very, very damaging war in Sri Lanka. Funds are also being used to procure explosives that are being used to carry out devastating terrorist assaults, predominantly in Sri Lanka.
Now, after Australia defines its role as a good international citizen, if Australia defines its role as one of wanting to work with the global community in terms of addressing transnational threats such as terrorism, I would suggest that it does have a responsibility to be aware of what is going on within this country in terms of the fundraising activities and their impact on theatres that may exist beyond the country's borders.
Whether Australia will actually do anything is I guess a matter of debate. The one thing about politics or international politics is that really a country will only do something when it's in its national interests to do it. Canada started to undertake actions against the LTTE, I would say not because it was concerned about the terrorist war going on in Sri Lanka, but because it was concerned about certain criminal activities that were seen to be taking place in Canadian cities that were being linked to some of the transnational activities of the LTTE.
The UK - well, the expansion of the anti-terrorism legislation was very much a policy that was associated with Tony Blair who is coming under increasing pressure, particularly from Arab states and particularly Egypt, to actually undertake more concerted actions to prevent the country from being exploited by overseas terrorist organisations. So I would say that until it becomes within the Australian national interests to institute measures against the LTTE - to be blunt I don't think that the country will.
However, having said that, I would also say that by not doing so, it not only undermines the principles of good international citizenship that Australia seeks to define itself by, but I would also say it undermines the principles of the international system that Australia claims to represent. Thank you.
