Tigers Go House-Hunting

According to intelligence officials investigating the LTTE's presence in South Africa, the separatist guerrilla outfit has, over the last three years, laboriously built up a well-oiled propaganda and fund-raising network, weaving its web through a number of front organisations. Prominent among these are the People Against Sri Lankan Oppression (PASLO) with branches throughout South Africa; the Movement Against Sri Lankan Oppression (MASLO) in Cape Town and Durban; Dravidians for Peace and Justice (DPJ) in Gauteng and the Tamil Eelam Support Movement (TESM) in Durban.

Exploiting the cultural and religious affinity that exists between Sri Lankan and South African Tamils—numbering over 600,000—the LTTE had managed to set up training camps in Tamil neighbourhoods in Lenasia near Johannesburg, Laudium near Pretoria and New Castle near Kwa-Zulu-Natal for fresh recruits in guerrilla warfare. Intelligence officials are investigating reports of a few of these recruits being sent to Sri Lanka in LTTE ships frequenting South African ports.

The outfit has also been successful in penetrating South African government circles. Interestingly, the South African Parliament has 11 South African Indians. A group of South African parliamentarians earlier this month took a week-long tour of the island nation to study the ethnic problem. They met a cross-section of Lankans, including Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims and had even gone to Jaffna. Back in South Africa, they plan to meet pro-LTTE groups. President Nelson Mandela had personally received a 14-member LTTE delegation in his office after the ANC government assumed office in '94. The group came from Sri Lanka via India on airline tickets which came through the South African government. "The LTTE's links with the Mandela government were consolidated in late '94 when some of its activists won over a few ANC hardliners," says an intelligence official. "Some of them have promoted the interests of the LTTE, either for financial or ideological reasons."

This support has stood the LTTE in good stead. When Mandela ordered raids on its training camps following a personal request by the Sri Lankan president last year, the LTTE got wind of the operation and disbanded its camps a day earlier. "They were tipped off by a high-ranking official," says an intelligence official. Early this year, Mandela turned down the Sri Lankan government's request to be chief guest at their 50th anniversary independence celebrations—a fair indication that he was under pressure from Tamil groups. One such group had written to him, saying: "Mrs Kumaratunga is scheming to use the upcoming 50th anniversary of the British departure from Ceylon to invite world leaders and proclaim it as a tacit acceptance of ethnic decimation. For you, who has passed through the baptism of fire in the fight for racial justice, to take part in a charade to celebrate 50 years of ethnic inequity is sacrilegious."

THE LTTE's propaganda machine also draws strong parallels between its leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and Mandela and their respective organisations. "Just as the ANC and many other liberation movements in Africa were labelled terrorist organisations by some Western powers that had interests in South Africa, the LTTE has been spreading the tale that it has been labelled a terrorist outfit by the US, which has significant military and economic interests in Sri Lanka," says Rohan Gunaratna, author of Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis and National Security. The Tigers also bask in the resonance generated in South Africa by any movement claiming to fight for 'liberation'. The country also has a strong 'culture of human rights'—a card every side in every murderous civil strife ruthlessly exploits.

 On its part, Sri Lanka has been able to convince most governments of the world that they shouldn't let the LTTE operate from their soil. Colombo scored a diplomatic coup against the organisation in October 1997 when it persuaded Washington to place the Tigers on a list of terrorist groups barred from organising or fund-raising in the US. Similar pressure on Britain was proving unfruitful, till the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland precipitated the Labour government's decision to usher in anti-terrorist laws this September.

This seems to have made the LTTE realise that it may no longer be able to operate and direct operations from London. "They knew it was coming and some of its leaders have been on scouting missions to South Africa in the last few months," says a Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) official in India. Lawrence Thilagar, who headed the LTTE International Secretariat from Paris, is believed to be on one such mission. He later went to Wani in north Lanka to consult Prabhakaran and work out details for the eventual shifting of its international campaign. But the LTTE office in London denies any move to shift their international operations. "All this is being fuelled by the press and the Sri Lankan government. There's no truth in it," said an LTTE spokesman from Eelam House.

But the Sri Lankan government's taking no chances. Apprehensive that the LTTE, already having penetrated the highest tiers of ANC government, would replicate the situation that existed in India between '83 and '87, the country's working overtime to strengthen relations with Pretoria. A difficult task given that Sri Lanka had since '85 done business with the South African apartheid regime in buying arms to quell the growing rebellion by the LTTE and other militant groups in the north and east. During the recent Operation Jayasikuru, intelligence agencies had reason to believe that South African firms, reportedly dealing in arms, were replenishing the Tigers' armoury.

 "If South Africa were to accord some status, formal or informal, to the Tamil rebels, the foreign policy success of the Peoples' Alliance government in Colombo would dissipate," admits a foreign ministry official. To pre-empt this, Colombo's put up a doubled diplomatic effort, which climaxed with the visit of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar to Pretoria in October when he met his counterpart Alfred Nzo. Prior to this, President Chandrika Kumaratunga met South Africa's high commissioner to India, Jerry Matsila, and inter alia sought an urgent probe into the supply of arms to the LTTE.

The South African deputy high commissioner in New Delhi, D.K. Pillay, confirmed that Kumaratunga had raised these issues, including reports of fresh plans by the rebels to set up base in South Africa. Says an official in South Africa's National Intelligence Agency (NIA): "We're looking at their activities. The training camps don't exist any more but we're trying to ascertain if they've been moved elsewhere." Pillay told Outlook: "The South African government is probing reports that arms are being secretly supplied to Sri Lankan guerrillas by local Tamil supporters." The probe will also determine if Tamil rebels were involved in extortion of funds, says an investigating officer in Durban. Ways were also being discussed on how South African Tamils could urge their 'contacts' in Sri Lanka to opt for a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

While these parleys have affected the LTTE's operations to an extent, they haven't made a major dent in its functioning. Unless South Africa designates it an illegal organisation and passes legislation to proscribe its front companies from operating there, the Tigers can roam wild. Following Kadirgamar's visit, the South African government announced it was planning to draw up anti-terrorism laws to prevent foreign rebel groups from using it as a base. But the criminal justice system has just finalised legislation to deal with gangsterism, and anti-terrorism legislation may take some time. The ANC is unlikely to resort to such a drastic step immediately, knowing the LTTE's influence has grown since 1995 and that the Indian Tamil lobby is today formidable.