I was only 17 years old when I was kidnapped from high school and forcibly deployed as a child soldier by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers. I rose quickly in the ranks to become an intelligence officer collaborating closely with the Tiger leadership.
Over more than four years, I was subjected to constant mental and physical anguish, manipulation, threats, and blackmail. In June 1995, I defected from the Tamil Tigers to the Directorate of Military Intelligence of Sri Lanka. Subsequently, I played a significant role in obliterating the Tamil Tigers in May 2009 by providing valuable tactical and actionable intelligence to the Sri Lankan armed forces. I am proud of my role in this process but also sickened by the force with which the Sri Lankan government retaliated against the innocent Tamil civilians. There is more to be done. I feel increasingly tempted to tell this story and lay my life on the line to prevent more bloodshed under the pretext of the “war on terror” in the global arena.
The preceding events during the civil war in Sri Lanka demonstrate the underground and dangerous deals of the world’s military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies. These shadow wars exacerbated my country’s civil war on both sides because the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE relied on the international arms market to purchase weapons.
The USA, Russia, China, India and Pakistan are the significant powers playing their crucial role in the “New Great Game” in the Central Asian landmass and the strategic sea lanes of the world in the Indian Ocean, where 90% of the world trade is being transported every day including oil. While Lutz Kleveman (2003) argues that Central Asia is increasingly becoming the most critical geostrategic region for future commodities, Michael Richardson (2004), on the other hand, explains that the global economy depends on the free flow of shipping through the strategic international straits, waterways, and canals in the Indian Ocean.
In the early 1990s, when I was the naval intelligence officer of the LTTE, I underwent a training course by a Norwegian mercenary known as Thariya. Since Thariya was training Sea Tiger combat divers in underwater demolition techniques, my role in interacting with Thariya was to explain to him the strength of the Sri Lankan naval vessels, such as the gunboats, fast attack crafts, and commanding vessels. Because I oversaw intelligence collection operations for Sea Tigers and Air Tigers – the rudimentary naval and air wings of the Tamil Tigers, respectively – I had to gather intelligence about Sri Lankan naval vessels and fast attack crafts. I provided Thariya with the technical intelligence of the Sri Lankan naval vessels, such as the shape of the hull of the boats, what the hull was made up of, the range of the guns on the stem and stern, the type of radar and sonar the navy had on its vessels and so on. Thariya was a former member of the Norwegian special forces. He traveled via Katunayake International Airport to Vanni mainland as a tourist.
The Norwegian mercenary effectively trained an underwater demolition team of Sea Tigers for a month-long stay at Chaalai Sea Tiger Base in Mullaitivu. It is unknown whether the Norwegian government knew about their citizen’s involvement in training a designated terrorist organization in Sri Lanka; however, since the early 1990s, the successive Sri Lankan governments have long suspected a Scandinavian country was training Sea Tigers’ combat divers. This came under more scrutiny in 2014, when the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration claimed that, while Norway engaged in negotiation with LTTE between 2002-2006, the Norwegian government aided and funded the terrorist organization. On the other hand, according to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence, LTTE stole Norwegian passports and sold them to Islamic terrorist organizations to fund their campaign in Sri Lanka.
Between 1992-1995, when I was gathering intelligence to build the models of the Sri Lankan gunboats and fast attack crafts, the LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s military advisor Thinesh Master gave me some blueprints of the Sri Lankan naval gunboats and fast attack crafts, among which a detailed plan and the blueprints of the Israeli-built Super Dvora fast attack craft and its Oerlikon 20 mm cannon. Thinesh Master told me that these blueprints were acquired from Israel. Interestingly, according to the book “By Way of Deception – The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer” by a former katsa in the Mossad, Victor Ostrovsky, and Canadian journalist and author Claire Hoy the Israeli Secret Service Mossad simultaneously provided training to the Sri Lankan soldiers and a team of Tamil rebels in the late 1980s.
Moreover, former British special forces were hired as mercenaries during the civil war in Sri Lanka. According to BBC World News, a London-based Private security company, namely “Keenie Meenie Services” (KMS,) trained an elite unit of the Sri Lankan police called the Special Task Force (STF) in the 1980s to fight Tamil separatists. David Walker, a former SAS officer, founded KMS. At the same time, LTTE borrowed London, England-based Jane’s defense catalogs and military balance books for its military office. Furthermore, the Sri Lankan Air Force pilots could not effectively operate or fly such fighter jets purchased from foreign countries as 130 Hercules and Beechcraft (America), Kfir (Israel), Pucara (Argentina), Bell helicopters (Canada), MiGs and Mi24 (Russia), Chengdu Jian-7 and Y12 (China) Antonov An-32 (Ukraine), SIAI-Marchetti SF 260 (Italy) and various other fighter aircraft. Hence, the Sri Lankan government hired fighter pilots to fly the aircraft from countries such as Britain, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel. It is worth noting that the killing of the LTTE political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan was conducted by a Ukrainian fighter pilot flying the Kfir fighter jet purchased from Israel.
During the peak of the Sri Lankan civil war, the Sea Tigers and the Air Tigers had become a strategic threat to the global energy security of the Indian Ocean region because two third of the international maritime trade passes through a handful of relatively narrow shipping lanes, among which five geographic “chokepoints” or narrow channels that are the gateway to and from the Indian Ocean: (1) Strait of Hormuz (2) Bab el-Mandab Passage (3) Palk Strait (4) Malacca and Singapore Straits and (5) Sunda Strait.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) report published in 2014, “world chokepoints for maritime transit of oil are a critical part of global energy security. About 63% of the world’s oil production moves on maritime routes. The Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca are the world’s most important strategic chokepoints by volume of oil transit” (p.1). These channels are critically important to world trade because so many pass through them. For instance, half of the world’s oil production is moved by tankers through these maritime routes. Hence, the blockage of a chokepoint, even for a day, can substantially increase total energy costs. Thus, these chokepoints are a critical part of global energy security.
In December 2004, while living amid the Tamil diaspora in Canada, I gathered LTTE’s activities and tactical intelligence from human sources. I was also gathering open-source intelligence, from which I could deduce an enormous amount of strategic intelligence about LTTE accurately. In so doing, I found that LTTE top-notch cadres Soosai, Sornam, Pathuman, and others were gathering near Moothur in the Trincomalee district of Eastern Sri Lanka. Thus, I assessed that they would surround the SLNS Tissa naval base in Trincomalee Harbour. Having found a photograph with a caption that stated the LTTE had decided to walk away from the Norwegian government-mediated peace negotiations in Sri Lanka because they were not being treated as equals, I realized, based on my years of working with the LTTE’s modus operandi, that they were planning an attack and that logically it would be on Trincomalee naval base and eventually taking control of the naval base.
This is the way LTTE operates. These are not people engaged in ethics or rules of engagement. The Sea Tigers, most of whom are from the fisherman caste, are the best divers in the world. On top of that, the Sea Tigers have been trained by Norwegian mercenaries specialized in underwater demolition techniques. In early 2004 there was a report published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in the Asia-Pacific that the Indonesian-based terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah, which has known links to al-Qaeda, was trained in sea-borne guerrilla tactics by Sea Tiger veterans to inflict maritime sabotage around Malacca and Singapore Straits, much like that was done with the USS Cole, when it was bombed at the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000.
The LTTE had also acquired two Czech-built Zlin Z-143 training aircraft, which they had improvised as bombers and would have used in Kamikaze suicide attacks on the naval base. Furthermore, the LTTE hired two marine engineers from the Swan Hunter shipbuilding company in Singapore to provide them with the know-how to build its submarines and underwater vessels. At the same time, Swan Hunter sold the Sri Lankan Navy a Landing Craft Utility class boat for carrying and landing troops during the war. I concluded that they would use these capabilities to attack the Trincomalee naval base since they had these underwater vessels.
Also, other LTTE leaders such as Bhanu, Theepan, Sasikumar, and others were gathering in Jaffna. I believed that they would cut off the supply route for the Jaffna peninsula through Trincomalee, simultaneously capturing both Jaffna and Trincomalee, which were sites for the two most important strategic military bases at the heart of the cultural capital and the political capital of so-called Tamil Eelam, respectively. I met with the Canadian and Sri Lankan officials explaining the plan as I perceived it unfolding. I told them that through this operation, the LTTE would set an example for the international community and other terrorist organizations to conduct the sort of seaborne attack that scholars call a “Maritime Terrorist Threat.”
I felt it was my duty to inform the officials that the LTTE would cut off the supply routes and attack Jaffna and that the Sri Lankan Army would lose the 30,000 troops stationed in Jaffna if the LTTE were successful. The LTTE had captured 152 mm and 155 mm artillery guns from the Sri Lankan army and employed them to support their aims. In addition to seizing an armory belonging to the Sri Lankan army in Elephant Pass, they also smuggled in ammunition for the 155mm artillery guns.
Surprisingly and shockingly, on December 26th, 2004, I learned that giant Tsunamis were in the Indian Ocean. In the last line of their report on the Tsunamis, the BBC World Service stated that the Sri Lankan naval base SLNS Tissa in Trincomalee harbor was underwater. A series of devastating Tsunamis up to 30 meters (100 ft) high were subsequently created by an undersea megathrust earthquake, inundating coastal communities along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and killing an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries, with most victims being killed in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, followed by India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Myanmar.
About 80,000 people lost their lives in Sri Lanka; most of these were Tamils of the North and East. At least 6000 Sea Tigers cadres are estimated to have lost their lives in the Tsunamis. The general attitude of the Sinhalese majority government and population at the time is represented by the following quotation, one of the milder ones taken from a Sinhalese chat room at the time: ‘Nothing like a giant tsunami to ruin a good rebellion.’ I believe that one of the most critical pieces of intelligence I zealously gathered, meticulously analyzed, rapidly disseminated, and efficaciously and “coincidently” acted on was the Trincomalee naval base attack by the LTTE. It did not come to pass because of the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
While global powers’ strategic quest to obtain oil was made evident under the pretext of the “war on terror,” no laypeople thought in such depth that this entire “war on terror” was a hoax. It will take only a matter of months to obliterate the Taliban in Afghanistan if the US and NATO want; (like in the case of Sri Lanka vs. LTTE). However, the West, including the US, seem to use the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Daesh, et al. as a catalyst to speed up balancing their economic equilibrium. They pursue “cost-benefit analysis,” whereby global powers systematically estimate alternatives’ strengths and weaknesses. Cost-benefit analysis is used to determine the best approach to achieve benefits.
Furthermore, according to Investopedia, “Economic equilibrium is a condition or state in which economic forces are balanced. Economic equilibrium may also be defined as the point at which supply equals demand for a product, with the equilibrium price existing where the hypothetical supply and demand curves intersect.”
In other words, the global powers are orchestrating commercial warfare under the guise of international security and countering terrorism at the cost of innocent lives in all corners of the world. A recent case in point is the war between Russia and Ukraine, where global powers are again engaged in the “New Great Game,” as Kleveman puts it.
Featured Image: Wikipedia.
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