Foreign Involvement of Terrorism in Sri Lanka during Conflict Era - An Appraisal

Abstract

This paper discusses more than 25 years long period of terrorism in Sri Lanka and influence of foreign elements. It further elaborates how an organization formed by handful of youths became one of the most ruthless terrorist organizations which was able to assassinate a Sri Lankan President, an Indian Prime Minister and acquired aircraft and submarine building technology. The purpose of this paper was to research whether it was merely foreign influence which fueled this whole drama or were there any other factors. Research found that migrants in Europe and politicians narrowly aiming the votes of migrated Tamils in UK and Canada have played a major role in this aspect. Due to limited space the research was also limited to terrorism created by Tamil militants in Sri Lanka. There were two insurgent activities raised by a communist movement in 1971 and 1989 but those incidents were purposely avoided from the paper as there was no foreign involvement revealed during the subsequent trials and investigations. It was found during the research that Indian state support through Research and Analysis Wing during 1980 – 1989, Tamil migrants to countries including Canada, UK, USA, Norway, Switzerland and Australia, supports received from South Africa due to their own Tamil community and inherent lacunas in Canadian constitution have assisted a lot as effective foreign elements for Sri Lankan terrorism. Contribution received from USA, UK, Norway and Japan after the clues on availability of oil and gas reserves in Western and North Western part of Sri Lanka also cannot be ruled out. The research recommends that bi-lateral relationships with major players in South Asia, especially India and effective diplomacy play a major role to counter foreign possible involvement of terrorism in Sri Lanka.