Sri Lanka: Stalling The Sequel

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June 17, 2010: Thirteen months after the Tamil LTTE rebel army was defeated, Sri Lankan police still seek rebel activists living among the Tamil population. So far this year, over a hundred known LTTE activists have been found and arrested in Sri Lanka. Many of those arrested were found tending to the many caches of weapons and ammunition still being discovered. Military equipment and documents are also found, indicating that the LTTE hid all this gear with the intention of recovering it later and resuming the fight. The extent of these hidden supply dumps indicates that the LTTE had a lot more cash than the government believed. The government fears a revived rebellion so much that the defense budget has stayed at its wartime peak of $1.8 billion a year. The LTTE is apparently determined to make a comeback, but the government is making a big deal out of preventing that from happening.

The LTTE is definitely still active outside Sri Lanka. In the last few months, European police have arrested dozens of LTTE members, caught raising funds for a renewed war in Sri Lanka. Even before the LTTE defeat last year, the overseas LTTE fund raisers were operating like gangsters, using intimidation and violence to coerce contributions. Now, in a common pattern, more and more of the fund raising crews are turning into common criminals, diverting more and more of the collected money for their "expenses." The only thing that keeps these fund raisers from going entirely gangster is the need to maintain some support in the expatriate Tamil community, as a form of protection from the local police.

June 15, 2010: Malaysia, partly in response to complaints from other governments, revealed that it had found evidence of foreign rebel and terror groups establishing bases in Malaysia. The LTTE was mentioned as one of the terrorist groups known to be operating in Malaysia. This has actually been going on for a long time, since Malaysia has become headquarters for arms smuggling in the region. The government has pledged to clean up this nasty business, but the smugglers are generous and well connected, and difficult to get to.

June 10, 2010: In southern India, pro-LTTE terrorists destroyed part of a rail line, but the damage was detected in time to halt rail traffic. There is still a lot of support for the LTTE in southern India's Tamil Nadu state (the ancient homeland of all Tamils).

 

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