Earlier this month the Malaysian news agency Bernama reported that LTTE front organisations in Canada had used overseas bank accounts for money transfers that eventually found their way to Sri Lanka or to LTTE accounts elsewhere.
According to Bernama which cited Canadian police documents, these organisations had used a Malaysian-incorporated bank in Kuala Lumpur as a conduit to forward money from Canada to the LTTE.
Malaysia was not the only country in Southeast Asia that was used -- and is still being used -- by the LTTE and its operatives for activities that are prejudicial to nations in that region and to Sri Lanka.
It is not just the banking system in Southeast Asia that was so craftily used to cover the tracks of money transfers. Besides the more recent credit card scams in ASEAN countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia which led to the arrest of several persons of Sri Lankan origin, this region has been the happy hunting ground of arms procurers such as the notorious "KP", the LTTE's principal arms buyer, and for human smugglers.
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For reasons of space one cannot go into detail here. But one incident is worth recounting. Somewhere in the second half of the nineties if I remember correctly, three persons turned up at a branch of a prominent international bank in Hong Kong. It was in Nathan Road, in Hong Kong's busy Tsim Sha Tsui district. When one of those persons who held a Canadian passport opened his bank safety deposit box a pile of passports fell out of it. An alert security guard called the police who arrived quickly and arrested the Canadian of Sri Lankan origin while the other two ran a hundred metres and disappeared into the maze of the notorious Chungking Mansions but were arrested.
What is significant is that the 21 passports that fell to the floor were genuine Malaysian passports, a fact confirmed to me by the then Malaysian Consul-general to Hong Kong.
The question is how did this man come by so many genuine Malaysian passports? In the same way that others had acquired passports from that region, had negotiated and purchased arms, had established small operational bases in several of those countries and were even experimenting on underwater craft while authorities turned, to use a cliché, a Nelsonian eye.
In an area with plenty of arms left over from regional conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia and East Timor and weapons available from Myanmar , it is not surprising that arms found their way to the Tigers who had enough money to pay for them and ship them out.
In a region in which some countries were relatively poor and corruption was not unknown among the officer class or influential sections, money spoke loud.
That however was not the only reason. Certainly in countries such as Malaysia and to a less extent in Singapore that have a sizeable Tamil community including Indian Tamils, there is some sympathy for Sri Lanka's Tamils.
In fact, during the protests by sections of Malaysia's Indian community earlier this year, Malaysian officials claimed they had links with the LTTE which was denied by community leaders.
A major reason for the LTTE spreading its wings in the region is Sri Lanka's own fault. Its diplomatic neglect of, or at best its desultory approach to, countries of the region, have caused displeasure (if not anger) in foreign ministries of some ASEAN countries. They have chafed at Sri Lanka's casual approach to bilateral diplomacy over the years, sending persons to our missions as a payoff for services rendered or other reasons which had little or nothing to do with competence and the ability to engage the political, diplomatic and academic establishments of those countries.
I have written previously of the criticisms I have heard from senior diplomats from some of these countries while working in Colombo and in Hong Kong.
If we treat these countries as a dumping ground for political has-beens and others who are owed some gratitude for services rendered, Sri Lanka will not be treated with the seriousness it expects since Colombo would be seen to have devalued that relationship.
Had Sri Lanka built up a steady relationship based on mutual respect and an understanding of each other's needs it might have earned much greater cooperation from regional states in the efforts to curb the operations of groups inimical to Sri Lanka's interests.
In most of the ASEAN countries there might not be front organisations but there are people who are willing to help for a fist full of dollars.
That is not all. While successive governments cultivated the West and the more powerful nations of Asia, they did not seem to have had the foresight to see the value of the emerging nations of Southeast Asia and the economic and political clout they would wield in later years.
For many years we underrated the value of the Indo-China states which were later to become a part of ASEAN irrespective of their ideological complexions. Stationing a political discards as head of mission for eight years in one capital or sending socialites with no sense of geopolitics to the most populous state in Southeast Asia is hardly the way to win respect and cooperation for Sri Lanka's diplomatic effort to cut off the tentacles of terrorism.
Decades ago Sri Lanka paid close attention to the activities of multilateral organisations as such the ESCAP and the Asian Development Bank, two of the organisation based in ASEAN capitals and did much to win assistance from them for the country. One wonders how much attention is being paid to them now.
Equally how much attention do our missions in Southeast Asian capitals pay to the media and academic institutions and to explain to them why the support and cooperation of their governments and nations are needed to curb the activities of terrorist groups in the region.
Diplomacy is not static. We live in an ever changing world where today's realities could be history next week. If we do not understand the dynamics of change and the new geopolitics of our region we are likely to make the same mistakes again. |
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