"Al Qaeda concluded that its attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 was a failure, even though 17 American sailors were killed. As a result, Al Qaeda sent a team to the LTTE to gain expertise in maritime combat operations. The LTTE, as part of its longstanding battle against the Sri Lankangovernment, has developed a relatively sophisticated maritime wing. The interaction was brief and inconclusive, and Al Qaeda subsequently rejected the idea of maritime combat, deciding instead to fight the United States on land. Nevertheless, the links established between the two groups were to prove useful in another way. Pakistani intelligence sources say that Al Qaeda now works with the LTTE to get weapons, including automatic arms and ground-to-air missiles. The weapons are paid for in cash, as well as in drugs originating from Afghanistan, according to the sources. The drugs primarily are sent to Scandinavian countries and Thailand, the latter being a traditional base from which the LTTE has smuggled weapons......The smuggling channels are the same that the Tamil Tigers have adopted for years [with international arms cartels]. The latest weapons originate through arm dealers, as well as those stolen from arms depots and shipped from South America and Lebanon. They are transferred from ship to ship and sometimes offloaded at small ports, and from there, using various channels, they reach the final destination."
There is so far no corroboration of this information. In the 1990s, the LTTE had contacts with the Harkat-ul-Ansar (subsequently re-named Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and then Jamiat-ul-Ansar), which is a founding member of the IIF. The arms and ammunition in an LTTE ship with Kittu on board, which was sunk by the Indian Navy in 1993, had been given to the LTTE by the HUM, then known as the HUA, with the knowledge and approval of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI had facilitated their loading into the LTTE ship at the Karachi port. In 1995, the LTTE had transported a shipload of arms and ammunition supplied by the HUA to the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in southern Philippines. In return for its assistance, the HUA had gifted to the LTTE some anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles.
Since then, there have been no confirmed reports of any contacts between the LTTE and any of the jihdi terrorist organisations operating from the Pakistan/Afghanistan region. Since 9/11, the LTTE, which was declared by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organisatiion in October, 1997, has been careful not to attract the adverse notice of the US by hobnobbing with Al Qaeda or any other jihadi terroristorganisation.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
