Terrorism, Inc

by Colin P Clarke

  15. Samantha Bricknell, “Misuse of the Nonprofit Sector for Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing,” Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No. 424, September 2011.

  16. A. Abocar, “Canada Police Say Tamil Gangs Funding Rebels,” Reuters, March 28, 2000.

  17. Phil Williams, “Crime, Illicit Markets, and Money Laundering,” in P. J. Simmons and Chantel Ouderen, Challenges in International Governance, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001, p. 115.

  18. Gunaratna, “International and Regional Implications.”

  19. Rohan Gunaratna, “Sri Lanka: Feeding the Tamil Tigers,” in Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, eds., The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003, p. 192.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid., p. 209.

  22. Ravinatha Aryasinha, “Terrorism, the LTTE and the Conflict in Sri Lanka,” Conflict, Security, & Development, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2001, p. 35.

  23. Aurel Croissant and Daniel Barlow, “Following the Money Trail: Terrorist Financing and Government Responses in Southeast Asia,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007, pp. 134–135.

  24. Chalk, “LTTE in Sri Lanka,” p. 144.

  25. Manoj Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1996, p. 37.

  26. Louise I. Shelley, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 186.

  27. James J. F. Forest, “Kidnapping by Terrorist Groups, 1070–2010: Is Ideological Orientation Relevant?,” Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 58, No. 5, September 2012, p. 770.

  28. Janine Lilja, “Trapping Constituents or Winning Hearts and Minds? Rebel Strategies to Attain Constituent Support in Sri Lanka,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2009, p. 313.

  29. Phil Williams, “Transnational Criminal Enterprises, Conflict and Instability,” in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aal, Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001, pp. 97–112.

  30. Steven Hutchinson and Pat O’Malley, “A Crime-Terror Nexus? Thinking Some on the Links Between Terrorism and Criminality,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 30, No. 12, p. 1104.

  31. Gordon Weiss, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, London: Bodley Head, 2011, p. 89.

  32. Williams, “Insurgencies and Organized Crime,” in Williams and Felbab-Brown, Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability, p. 46.

  33. The mid-1980s were probably the apex of Tamil drug trafficking arrests. In 1984, 317 drug traffickers were arrested. The next year, that number increased to 374, only to drop by 1986 to 218 arrests and flatline in 1990 at around 37. G. H. Peires, “Clandestine Transactions of the LTTE and the Secessionist Campaign in Sri Lanka,” Ethnic Studies Report, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2001.

  34. Phil Williams, “Terrorist Financing and Organized Crime: Nexus, Appropriation, or Transformation?” in Thomas J. Biersteker and Sue E. Eckert eds., Countering the Financing of Terrorism, London: Routledge, 2008, p. 139.

  35. “Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka’s Rebels Involved in Trafficking Human Cargo,” Xinhua News Agency, April 7, 2000.

  36. Louise I. Shelley and John T. Picarelli, “Methods Not Motives: Implications of the Convergence of International Organized Crime and Terrorism,” Police Practice and Research, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2002, p. 313.

  37. John Rollins and Liana Sun-Wyler, “Terrorism and Transnational Crime: Foreign Policy Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service (CRS), October 19, 2012, p. 14.

  38. Williams, “Insurgencies and Organized Crime,” in Williams and Felbab-Brown, Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability, p. 50.

  39. Weiss, The Cage, p. 89

  40. Williams, “Insurgencies and Organized Crime,” in Williams and Felbab-Brown, Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability, p. 56.

  41. Shelley and Picarelli, “Methods Not Motives,” p. 314.

  42. Rotberg, Creating Peace, p. 32.

  43. Cecile Van de Voorde, “Sri Lankan Terrorism: Assessing and Responding to the Threat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” Police Practice and Research, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2005.

  44. Both Mozambique and Angola experienced serial insurgencies during this period. In Mozambique, separate insurgencies occurred in 1962–1974 and 1976–1995. In Angola, serial insurgencies wracked that country from 1962–1974 and from 1975–2002.

  45. Chalk, “The LTTE in Sri Lanka,” p. 143.

  46. Byman, Outside Support, “Appendix B: The LTTE’s Military-Related Procurement,” p. 121.

  47. Ibid., p. 120.

  48. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  49. Ibid.

  50. These groups include The Tamil National Retrieval Force, People’s War Group, Liberation Cuckoos, Peasants and People Party, MGF Anna Dravida Munethra Kalaham of Thirunavakarasu, Tamil National Movement of Nedumaran, Indian People’s Party, Center for the Campaign of Tamil Education, Thaliai Nagar Tamil Society, Movement of the Educated Front, Tamil Nadu People’s Movement, Thileepan Society, People’s Education Center, Tamil Nadu Socialist Party, Republic Party of India, People’s Democratic Youth Front, Liberation Organization of the Oppressed People, World People’s Progressive Front, Human Rights Organization, Organization for Social History, and the Marxist Periyar Socialist Party. Van de Voorde, “Sri Lankan Terrorism,” p. 192.

  51. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  52. Gunaratna, International and Regional Implications.”

  53. Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge,” p. 33.

  54. Weiss, The Cage, p. 88.

  55. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  56. Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge,” p. 33.

  57. Rotberg, Creating Peace, p. 33.

  58. Ibid., p. 18

  59. Byman, Outside Support, “Appendix B: The LTTE’s Military-Related Procurement,” p. 117.

  60. Rotberg, Creating Peace, p. 32.

  61. Byman, Outside Support, “Appendix B: The LTTE’s Military-Related Procurement,” p. 117.

  62. Ibid., p. 119.

  63. Chalk, “LTTE in Sri Lanka,” p. 144.

  64. Rotberg, Creating Peace, p. 33.

  65. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  66. Lionel Beecher, “What Sri Lanka Can Teach Us about COIN,” Small Wars Journal, August 27, 2010, p. 3.

  67. Brendan O’Duffy, “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE): Majoritarianism, Self-Determination and Military-to-Political Transitions in Sri Lanka,” in M. Heiburg, B. O’Leary and J. Tirman (eds.), Terror, Insurgency and States, Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2007, p. 266.

  68. Ibid.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Gunaratna, “International and Regional Implications.”

  71. Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge,” p. 27

  72. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  73. Rotberg, Creating Peace, p. 18.

  74. Ibid.

  75. According to Chalk, the most specialized training was conducted at Chakrata, India’s elite military academy. Here, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) trainers worked with a range of insurgent groups, including Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Tibetan dissidents. Chalk, “LTTE in Sri Lanka,” p. 131.

  76. Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge,” p. 23.

  77. Tamil militant groups trained in the Middle East in the 1980s and beginning in the 1990s, small numbers of insurgents were trained in underwater sabotage techniques in camps located in Thailand by former Norwegian naval instructors. Other insurgents received training in Sudan to learn how to use global positioning systems (GPS) while member of South Africa’s African National Congress imparted lessons to L
TTE cadres on the political element of insurgency. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  78. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  79. Kevin A. O’Brien, “Assessing Hostile Reconnaissance and Terrorist Intelligence Activities: The Case for a Counter Strategy,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 153, October 2008, p. 53.

  80. Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge,” p. 26. For details on the activities conducted by Indian intelligence services during this period, see Anirudhya Mitra, “Rajiv Assassination: Conspiracy Surfaces” India Today, December 15, 1992, pp. 57–60.

  81. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  82. Interview with Peter Chalk, October 2014.

  83. Weiss, The Cage, p. 8.

  84. Kristian Stokke, “Building the Tamil Eelam State: Emerging State Institutions and Forms of Governance in LTTE-controlled Areas in Sri Lanka,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 6, 2006, p. 1022.

  85. Ibid.

  86. Weiss, The Cage, pp. 74–75.

  87. Jerrold M. Post, The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaida, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 92.

  88. Andrew Perrin, “Tiger Country: Whatever the outcome of peace talks between Colombo and the separatist Tigers, a Tamil nation in all but law already exists in Sri Lanka’s battle-scarred northeast,” Time, September 16, 2002.

  89. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 71.

  90. According to Brendan O’Duffy, the LTTE always rejected the notion that the conflict was simply about ethnicity at its core. According to this line of thinking, if full civil and political rights were to be restored to the Tamils and other minority communities, then the conflict would cease. However, the LTTE regarded the conflict as ethno-national in scope, which included the indispensable element of national self-determination to be recognized. O’Duffy, p. 264.

  91. Marks, “Ideology of Insurgency,” p. 112.

  92. Ibid. On p. 114, Marks notes that of the main Marxist groups, the PLOTE were the most sophisticated politically.

  93. Ibid., p. 114.

  94. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, p. 188.

  95. A. S. Balasingham, Liberation Tigers and Tamil Eelam Freedom Struggle, Madras: Political Committee, LTTE, 1983, p. 42.

  96. Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, p. 192.

  97. Marks, “Ideology of Insurgency,” p. 114.

  98. Ibid., p. 54.

  99. Ibid., p. 53.

  100. Ibid., p. 71.

  101. Lilja, “Trapping Constituents,” pp. 314–318.

  102. Ibid., p. 266.

  103. C. Christine Fair, Urban Battlefields of South Asia: Lessons Learned from Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corp., 2004, p. 25.

  104. Jane’s World Insurgency and Terrorism, Vol. 15 (2002), available at www.janes.com

  105. Fair, Urban Battlefields, p. 29.

  106. Chalk, “LTTE International Organization and Operations—A Preliminary Analysis.” In addition to these Western nations, the LTTE also had representatives working in Cambodia, Myanmar, South Africa, and Botswana.

  107. John C. Thompson and Jon Turlej, Other People’s Wars: A Review of Overseas Terrorism in Canada, Toronto: The Mackenzie Institute, 2003, p. 21.

  108. According to Gunaratna, the LTTE has established, absorbed, or infiltrated a number of LTTE front or pro-LTTE organizations in the United Kingdom, including the Tamil Information Center at Tamil House in Romford Road in London, The Tamil Rehabilitation Organization in Walthamstow in London, and the International Federation of Tamils (IFT) in Birchiew Close in Surrey.

  109. Chalk, “LTTE International Organization and Operations—A Preliminary Analysis.”

  110. C. Van de Voorde, “Sri Lankan Terrorism,” p. 192.

  111. Gunaratna, “International and Regional Implications.”

  112. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  113. For more on this, see Shyam Tekwani, “The LTTE’s Online Network and its Implications for Regional Security,” Singapore: Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, January 2006.

  114. Stewart Bell, “Canada a Key Source of Tamil Tiger Funding,” National Post, July 20, 2009.

  115. Somini Sengupta, “Take Aid From China and Take a Pass on Human Rights,” The New York Times, March 9, 2008; see also, Robert Kaplan, “To Catch a Tiger,” The Atlantic, July 2009.

  116. Niel A. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” Joint Forces Quarterly, No. 59, 4th quarter, 2010, pp. 40–44.

  117. Paul Staniland, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 56, No. 1, 2012, p. 30.

  118. IHS Jane’s World Terrorism and Insurgency, “Liberation Tigers Tamil Eelam.”

  119. Christian Chung, “The Killer Tiger Roared: A Strategic Analysis of Sri Lankan “Kinetic” Counterinsurgency and its Theoretical Implications,” Small Wars Journal, December 15, 2010, p. 6.

  120. In an interesting paper, Albert Wesley Harris utilized prospect theory to analyze the LTTE’s decision to mount a stand at Kilinochchi. He concludes that the insurgents preferred to accept the risk of losing the battle, incurring significant casualties, and potentially losing the war in return for the chance that they could win the battle and turn the tide of the war. See Albert Wesley Harris, “Insurgency Decision-making under Conditions of Risk,” International Journal of Psychological Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2012, pp. 43–47.

  121. Author interview with Peter Chalk, November 2014.

  122. Author interview with Peter Chalk, November 2014.

  123. Sengupta, “Take Aid From China,” July 2009.

  124. Peter Chalk notes that after being designated as a FTO by the United States in 1997, other states began to review their own practices with regard to LTTE activity in their country. The United Kingdom, for example, has struggled with first PIRA terrorism and then Islamist militancy, so has moved to make the incitement of terrorism an illegal activity and connected to this, publicity and fund-raising has become a criminal offense. Chalk, Commentary No. 77.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. This particular transliteration—Hezbollah—will be used throughout this study. Note that there are other common transliterations including: Hezbollah, Hizbullah, Hezballah, Hisbollah, and Hizb Allah.

  2. For a detailed discussion of the Lebanese civil war, see Dilip Hiro, Lebanon Fire and Embers: A History of the Lebanese Civil War, New York: St. Martin Press, 1992; Marwan George Rowayheb, “Political Change and the Outbreak of Civil War: The Case of Lebanon,” Civil Wars, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2011, pp. 414–436; and Walid Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon: Confrontation in the Middle East, Harvard University: Center for International Affairs, 1979.

  3. Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 6.

  4. Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, New York: Random House, 2004, p. 201.

  5. Jeffrey Goldberg, “A Reporter at Large: In the Party of God,” Part II, The New Yorker, October 28, 2002.

  6. Magnus Ranstorp, “The Hezbollah Training Camps of Lebanon,” in James J. F. Forest, ed., The Making of a Terrorist, Volume II: Training, Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2005, p. 247. In 1994, Hezbollah militants were stopped before they could detonate a bomb at the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.

  7. Ibid., pp. 246–247.

  8. Ibid., p. 247.

  9. Matthew Levitt, “Hezbollah Finances: Funding the Party of God,” in Jeanne K. Giraldo and Harold A. Trinkunas, eds., Terrorism Financing and State Responses: A Comparative Perspective, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007, pp. 141–142.

  10. Matthew Levitt, “The Hezbollah Threat in Africa,”
The Washington Institute, Policywatch, No. 283, January 2, 2004.

  11. Angel Rabasa et al., Beyond al-Qaeda, Pat II: The Outer Rings of the Terrorist Universe, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 2006, p. 147.

  12. In addition to financial and operational support, the Martyrs Foundation, an offshoot of an institution created in Iran, provides ideological support. Thanassis Cambanis, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010, p. 195.

  13. Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013, p. 83.

  14. Ibid., p. 154.

  15. Cambanis, Privilege to Die, p. 226.

  16. Levitt, Global Footprint, p. 233.

  17. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It, Chicago: Bonus Books, 2003, p. 141.

  18. Levitt, Global Footprint, p. 320.

  19. Ibid., pp. 318–323.

  20. Ibid., p. 223.

  21. Ibid.

  22. David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 142–144.

  23. Jo Becker, “Beirut Bank Seen as a Hub of Hezbollah’s Financing,” New York Times, December 13, 2011, p. A1.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Jessica Hume, “U.S. Seizes $150 million from Hezbollah-linked Lebanese Canadian Bank,” Toronto Sun, August 21, 2012. As noted in Louise Shelley, Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime, and Terrorism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, fn 181, p. 214.

  26. Levitt, p. 265 (fn 126).

  27. Norton, Hezbollah, pp. 13–14.

  28. Levitt, Global Footprint, pp. 246–247.

  29. Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel, New York: Random House, 2011, pp. 73–76.

  30. Ibid., p. 88.

  31. Ibid., pp. 290–294.

  32. In January 2004, Tannenbaum and the bodies of the three soldiers abducted and killed during the cross-border raid in Sheba Farms in 2000, were exchanged for 23 Lebanese detainees, 400 Palestinian prisoners, and 12 other Arabs. Furthermore, as part of the exchange, Israel agreed to repatriate the bodies of 59 Lebanese fighters, provide information on 24 Lebanese missing since Israel’s 1982 invasion, and provide Hezbollah with the maps of land mines planted throughout southern Lebanon during Israel’s 18 year occupation. Ibid., p. 365.