Tamil Tigers: defeated at home, defiant abroad

Tamil Tigers: defeated at home, defiant abroad

The war in Sri Lanka has been lost. But London's Tamils are still committed to the dream of their own state. Jerome Taylor investigates the campaigners with the zeal – and resources – to carry on the fight

When Sri Lankan soldiers found the bloated corpse of Vellupillai Prabhakaran on the shores of Nandikadal Lagoon days ago, it was clear that one of the world's most notorious terrorist networks had been dealt a crushing military blow.

For more than 30 years, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had terrorised Sri Lanka with their brutal, suicidally brave and increasingly desperate armed struggle to carve out a homeland for the island's persecuted Tamil minority.

Now with the death of their vicious but revered leader and the near-total annihilation of its top brass, the Tamil Tiger dream of a separate state lay smashed in the bomb craters of north-eastern Sri Lanka.

As western governments called on Colombo to help the estimated 250,000 desperate Tamil civilians crammed into internment camps, they quietly celebrated the supposed destruction of a terror network that pioneered the dreaded suicide bomber long before the jihadis realised the potential of martyrdom attacks.

But an Independent investigation has revealed that despite suffering a catastrophic defeat on the battlefield, the Tamil Tigers' vast international funding and smuggling network remains largely intact and – with the help of Tamil sympathisers, including those in Britain – the terror group is more than capable of rebuilding itself with potentially devastating consequences for the future of peace in Sri Lanka.

As one British-based Tamil Tiger sympathiser told The Independent this week: "The original Tamil Tigers were like the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. What will come next is a Tamil Tiger Hamas."

In the areas of London with large Tamil populations – such as Tooting, Mitcham and Harrow – donating to the Eelam cause is still as easy as going down the shops. The LTTE were proscribed as a terrorist organisation in March 2001 so those business and charities that once operated openly for the Tigers have since closed. But insiders say Tamils will continue to donate through the undiyal system, a shadowy money transfer network where LTTE-friendly businesses send money to Tiger-run businesses in Sri Lanka much like a backdoor Western Union system. Shortly before the war in Sri Lanka intensified, the Centre for Social Cohesion, a London-based think-tank, estimated that the undiyal system netted the LTTE £250,000 every month from Britain alone

Rajasingham Jayadevan, a prominent London-based Tamil who used to be close to senior LTTE leaders but has since fallen out with them, believes that the Tigers will continue to be powerful unless their international sources of funding are cut off. "In the short term, the donations will stop because people are shocked, angry and recovering from the fact that the Tigers have been defeated," he said. "But it will resume again unless some sort of peaceful settlement is reached. The senior military leaders may have been destroyed but the fundraisers in the UK or Canada are still alive and well."

Many prominent LTTE critics believe that the destruction of the terror group's military capabilities in Sri Lanka offers Britain the perfect opportunity to dismantle the Tigers' presence in the UK. But they fear their calls will be ignored.

"Just the other night I was asking myself how the western world could help the democratic Tamil opposition and cutting off the LTTE's international funds would be top of my list," says Mrs Rajasingham. "The sheer size of their criminal network warrants investigation. The LTTE may have been crippled militarily but they do not lack money. Unless that is taken from them they will never be fully defeated."