On January 10, the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) posted a report on its official website (htpp:// www.fbi.gov/) under the title “Taming the Tigers – From here in the U.S.” What caught global attention was the agency’s description of the LTTE as one of the “most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world”, which has inspired worldwide networks, including Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the U.S. government’s determination “to stop them, using the full range of our investigative and intelligence capabilities”.

The introduction reads:

“As terrorist groups go, it has quite a resume: Perfected the use of suicide bombers; Invented the suicide belt; Pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks; Murdered some 4,000 people in the past two years alone; and Assassinated two world leaders – the only terrorist organisation to do so.

“No, it’s not Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or even HAMAS. The group is called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or the Tamil Tigers for short. Needless to say, the Tamil Tigers are among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world. For more than three decades, the group has launched a campaign of violence and bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the island republic off the southern coast of India.”

Under the sub-head “Its ultimate goal”, the FBI says the Tigers want to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority and create an independent Tamil state. “Along the way, it has launched suicide attacks, assassinated politicians (including a government Minister this week and even the Sri Lankan President), taken hostages, and committed all of kinds of crimes to finance its operations. The resulting civil war has taken the lives of nearly 70,000 Sri Lankans on both sides of the conflict since 1983 alone,” it says.

Posing a question, “Why should you care?”, the report goes on to say that it is because of the “suffering and bloodshed” that the Tamil Tigers have caused. “And because its ruthless tactics have inspired terrorist networks worldwide, including Al Qaeda in Iraq. But also because the group has placed operatives right here in our own backyard, discreetly raising money to fund its bloody terrorist campaign overseas, including purchases of weapons and explosives.”

It adds that the U.S. government has designated the Tigers a foreign terrorist organisation and is determined to stop them, using the full range of its investigative and intelligence capabilities. In April, the report says, the U.S. government struck an important blow when its Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York arrested the alleged U.S. director of the Tigers. The man supposedly had held several fundraising events at a church and various public schools in Queens and in northern New Jersey in 2004. He is accused of arranging high-level meetings between the group’s leaders and U.S. supporters.

“We’ve also arrested another 11 Tamil Tiger-related suspects in the New York City region. And in Baltimore, following a multi-agency investigation, a pair of Indonesian men pleaded guilty and were sentenced recently for working with others to export surface to air missiles, state-of-the-art firearms, machine guns, and night vision goggles to the Tigers in Sri Lanka,” it says.