armed groups to deploy terrorism effectively and with mass effects. It sustained a campaign for over 25 years, attacking by air, train, land, and sea. It is one of the few non-Islamist organizations to use suicide bombings consistently and effectively, even against high-value targets. The Tamils innovated in the use of suicide vests, promoted a cult of martyrdom, and deployed female human bombs. The organization had its own navy (Sea Tigers), air force (Sky Tigers), and uniformed guerrilla army with separate units for suicide missions (Black Tigers). The LTTE was a highly centralized, hierarchical organization around the cult-like figure of Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Participants and Objectives
Dr. Chris Smith, Chatham House, and Mr. Shanaka Jayasekara, Macquarie University, discussed the critical drivers behind LTTE’s innovations over two and a half decades. The LTTE was a separatist organization that engaged in spectacular terrorist attacks that were as creative as they were effective. Dr. Orla Lynch, University of St. Andrews, chaired this panel.
Discussion and Findings
Dr. Smith began his analysis by pointing out that the LTTE was one of the most successful insurgent groups since the Second World War. In its heyday, the LTTE controlled a third of Sri Lanka, mainly in the north. Therefore, it took a particularly brutal campaign in 2009 to destroy the organization, with perhaps as many as 40,000 civilian fatalities. Mr. Jayasekara pointed out that bringing about the defeat of the LTTE required a very determined government which continued to pour military resources into the offensive, in spite of the fact that as many as 6,000 Sri Lankan troops lost their lives in the last 18 months of the campaign.
Preconditions and Causes of Innovation
Dr. Smith and Mr. Jayasekara highlighted several factors that contributed to LTTE’s innovations, the most important of which was LTTE’s desire to create a state within a state.
• LTTE ran a proto-state over the vast territory under its control in the north of Sri Lanka, organizing its own police force, judiciary, education, and satellite television.
• The desire to be seen as a viable state for the Tamils contributed directly to the formation of state-like military institutions such as a navy, army, and air force. These military structures were symbolic of a state in the making. Success of military innovations advanced the profile of the LTTE, both internally and abroad.
Both Dr. Smith and Mr. Jayasekara agreed that the LTTE’s safe haven in the north was a necessary precondition to innovation. This haven gave them the time and space to innovate, learn from their errors, and improve their capabilities as well as their operations. In addition, both
presenters pointed to the ability of the LTTE to draw upon the vast human resources and financing available in the Tamil diaspora. The money, arms, and technical skills from abroad gave the LTTE the requisite material basis for innovating, especially since the LTTE did not have a state sponsor to provide it with financing and arms.
• Dr. Smith explained that the 1983 pogroms against Tamils led to the flight overseas, “setting in motion a diaspora who would fund the Tigers in the future.”
• Many of the Tamils came from the “fishing caste,” which meant that they knew how to use the seas to transport goods and people to the south coast of India.
• The LTTE created an anti-caste culture that promoted the ethos of meritocracy, thus drawing into its organization many educated, English-speaking Tamils who were being pushed away by Sri Lanka’s discriminatory practices in education and government. Dr. Smith pointed out that there is little evidence to suggest that the LTTE was innovative because it was competing with others. Prabhakaran, LTTE’s leader from the group’s inception until he was killed in 2009, eliminated all domestic competitors by the mid-1980s. So innovation was not driven by a desire to outcompete rivals.
LTTE’s Sky Tigers as an Illustrative Case Study
Mr. Jayasekara used the Sky Tigers as an illustrative case study of LTTE’s innovation process, highlighting three factors necessary for LTTE innovations:
• the existence of maritime smuggling networks
• the expertise and financing provided by the Tamil diaspora, and • the LTTE’s ambition to be viewed as a state in the making.
The Sky Tigers were started by Vythilingam Sornalingam (Col. Shankar), an aeronautics engineer working for Air Canada before he joined the LTTE (he was killed in 2001). In the initial stages, the Sky Tigers experimented with micro-lights purchased from Australia. Thereafter, they purchased Czech-built fixed wing light aircraft and modified them to carry 30-50 kilo bombs with a release mechanism controlled by the pilot. The purchase was financed from Canada, but the planes were shipped to a flying school in South Africa. Next, they were transferred to Eritrea and
disassembled for shipment to the LTTE via vessels that transported the planes in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka. “As with all LTTE weapons supplies, the equipment was smuggled into Sri Lanka using fishing trawlers.”
As for training pilots, the role of the diaspora community is also clear:
• In 2005, two Tamils living abroad—one employed by an American airline company, and the other resident in Switzerland and working for a Swiss airline—conducted several training programs for LTTE pilots.
• One LTTE pilot was trained in France and the Czech Republic with the help of activists from the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC) in Paris.
• Some pilots were sent to Malaysia and Thailand for training.
According to Mr. Jayasekara, LTTE developed the Sky Tigers to meet three major objectives: to develop offensive capabilities; to facilitate logistics operations; and to emulate state structures and exhibit the “trappings of a separate state.”
The Sky Tigers were used in a number of attacks with varying degrees of success. Some sorties aimed at fuel storage facilities; others aimed to knock out radar installations and power stations in Colombo. At least one attack targeted Colombo’s International Airport, and several went after Sri Lankan airbases and military and naval facilities. The final mission was an airborne collision
impact attack on the Sri Lankan Tax Office building in Colombo. Mr. Jayasekara described how the LTTE built several runways to avoid detection and retaliation by Sri Lanka’s air force. Sky Tigers would take off from one runway and land in another, the latter usually covered in sand until a plane was ready for landing.