Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

LIBERATION TIGERS OF TAMIL EELAM • 3891975 when it claimed responsibility for killing the mayor of Jaffna.The separatist terror campaign began in earnest in 1977 with attacksdirected against Tamil politicians who did not endorse the separatistcause. The LTTE’s attacks on Sinhalese security forces in July 1983sparked ethnic violence between Tamils and Sinhalese throughout theisland that killed at least 387 people. The expulsion of the moderateTamil United Liberation Front (TULF) from Sri Lanka’s parliamentin 1983 for its refusal to dissociate itself from separatist goals left theLTTE as the foremost group championing the Tamil minority.While the TULF was founded on 14 May 1972, its youth leagueattracted the core of younger, more militant Tamils, including the 18-year-old Velupillai Prabhakaran, who founded the Tamil New Tigersas a more activist clique within the youth league. On 5 May 1976 theTamil New Tigers reconstituted themselves separately from the TULFas the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE set up trainingcamps in the jungles south of the Jaffna peninsula, recruiting youngTamil refugees forced from their homes by Sinhalese rioters. The SriLankan government unwittingly boosted recruitment into the variousTiger organizations by its practice of inflicting indiscriminate punishmenton the Tamil community for specific acts of terrorism committedby Tiger groups. As a result, the LTTE was able to raise a force ofmore than 10,000 armed insurgents. Training camps were later establishedin India’s Tamil Nadu State, whose government provided activesupport to the LTTE; the Indian government passively acquiescedin this quasi–state sponsorship until 1987, when India entered into apeacekeeping role in Sri Lanka that it later abandoned in 1990.Up until the early 1980s, the LTTE financed itself from bank robberiesin Sri Lanka. Since around 1982 the LTTE has tapped into anetwork of expatriate Tamil supporters, not only in India but also inEurope and North America. To better finance its arms acquisitionsand smuggling operations, it became active in the smuggling anddistribution of Afghan heroin. By 1985 the LTTE was responsiblefor the smuggling of 500 kilograms of heroin each year into WesternEurope alone, fielding around 1,000 couriers at any given time. Thearms- and drug-smuggling operations of the LTTE brought it intocontact and cooperation with the rightist Gray Wolves organizationin Turkey as well as with Palestinian terrorist groups in Lebanon.Following the December 2004 tsunami, the LTTE embarked onfund-raising scams in Western nations, purportedly raising funds to