COLOMBO: By successfully carrying out air raids on military and economic targets in and around the capital, separatist rebels have demonstrated a new capacity to wage ‘all-out’ war in their fight to carve out a separate state for the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka.

But questions are being asked as to how the fledgling Tamileelam Air Force (TAF), the air wing of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has been able to acquire planes and train pilots despite the relatively small size of the land mass available in the Tamil-dominated north and east of the strife-torn island.

By all estimates the TAF is puny and may consist of no more than five propeller-driven Zlin Z-142, Czech-made planes that seem to have been smuggled in as completely knocked down (CKD) kits and assembled locally. But given the anti-terrorist atmosphere of the post 9/11 world, putting the TAF together and actually carrying out bombing raids is a feat that has startled intelligence specialists. This development is particularly worrying for security experts in Sri Lanka and neighbouring India and is the closest that a banned group has come to using aircraft to strike against the establishment after 9/11.

After the latest TAF raid on April 28, the third since the first strike on March 26, Sri Lankan authorities were forced to suspend night operations at Colombo international airport. TAF raids have also caused damage and deaths at an air force base that shares a runway with the international airport and destroyed an engineering complex and ammunition dump at the Palaly military base in Jaffna.

For their part, the LTTE – which has for more than two decades been fighting on behalf of minority ethnic Tamils seeking a separate state in the north and east of the island – warned of more TAF air raids in the future.

Retired Sri Lankan air force wing commander C.A.O Direckze said that to maintain a handful of light aircraft, the LTTE must possess an efficient engineering facility, a limited training facility and an improvised explosive devices producing facility. “Utilising light aircraft brings is a new and very dangerous dimension to the current hostilities,” he argues. “(But, it) does not constitute an air force, rather an air threat,” he said.

There is an emerging consensus among defence and foreign affairs experts in the region that the formation of the TAF could not have been possible without support from the large Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. Ethnic Tamils, who since the mid-1980s have been steadily emigrating to Western countries claiming repression at home, are known to contribute generously to the LTTE’s war chest.

“There was elation among the Sri Lankan Tamils all over the world,” observed B. Raman, an independent security specialist and retired high-ranking Indian bureaucrat, commenting on the air strikes carried out by TAF in Colombo in the ‘International Terrorism Monitor dated March 27. “An added reason for this elation is stated to be the fact that all the TAF pilots are from the diaspora.” Raman says there are several worrisome questions for the intelligence community in both Sri Lanka and India. “Even professional pilots of a state air force need regular flying practice,” he pointed out in his commentary. “You can’t just assemble or take out an aircraft from a hide-out and fly out on a bombing mission.”

Other questions posed by Raman are: “Where were the pilots doing their flying practice?” and “How come the Air Force intelligence set-ups of Sri Lanka as well as India missed detecting these training flights of the TAF?”

In reply to Raman in the same publication, Prasun Sengupta, a South-east Asia security analyst, said the LTTE might have obtained the aircraft from a South African flying club and paid for them through proxy bank accounts in Europe and South Africa. “All aspects of flying, training and attainment of pilot proficiency levels were obtained from the same South Africa-based flying club that ordered the aircrafts from the Czech Republic,” he claimed.

Sengupta agrees with the view that this type of aircraft is always delivered by its manufacturer as CKD kits and could be transported easily, disguised as car parts. “By all accounts, the aircraft were ferried by sea-freight using forged bills of laden and false declarations were made to the Colombo port-based customs authorities to deliberately disguise the nature of the consignment,” he noted.

There are also questions as to how the Tigers obtained aircraft fuel since fuel supplies to rebel-held areas are restricted by the Sri Lankan government. While some analysts here fear that these fuel supplies may be ferried across the Palk Straits from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the state government there is known to be sympathetic to the LTTE, others argue that the aircraft engines may have been converted to run on diesel fuel which is cheap and freely available in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, Singapore-based international terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna has slammed the Australian government for allowing LTTE sympathisers resident there to raise funds which, he claims, is used to procure aircraft, arms, explosives and other equipment from Australia itself.

Sri Lanka-born Gunaratna, who heads the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore, that monitors terrorism groups and their funding sources in the region, argues that Australia may have been blind to LTTE fundraising in Australia “because they have been more focused on stopping Muslim extremists”. —Dawn/The IPS News Service