INDIA : Cross Border Criminal Networks

Maritime Piracy:

India and Sri Lanka face no major problem of maritime piracy in their coastal areas. The main threat to Indian shipping from pirates is off the Somali coast from the pirates operating in those areas. There is piracy along the Bangladesh coast, but this largely consists of cases of theft from ships anchored in the Bangladeshi ports. It is alleged that the captains of ships often project such thefts in ports as acts of piracy in the high seas.


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Illegal Trade in Small Arms

There used to be considerable smuggling of small arms and ammunition by individual and group smugglers across the Indo-Pakistan border in the Punjab and Rajasthan areas during the Afghan jihad against the Soviet troops and during the height of the Khalistani terrorism in Indian Punjab in the1980s and the 1990s. Practically all the smuggling was from Pakistan to India. The problem posed by such smuggling has come down after the erection of a barbed wire fencing along the Indo-Pakistan border in the Indian Punjab and parts of Rajasthan by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF). Smuggling on a smaller scale continues to take place across the desert in the Rajasthan sector and across the Line of Control (LOC) in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan’s ISI uses smugglers for having explosives and other items reached to the jihadi terrorist groups operating in J&K and other parts of India. Smuggling through coastal ships and fishing boats is also not uncommon. The mafia gang headed by Pakistan-based Dawood Ibrahim, which orchestrated the serial blasts in Mumbai in March 1993, had large quantities of explosives, detonators and chemical timers and some small arms and ammunition such as AK-47 rifles with ammunition and hand-grenades smuggled into the coastal areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat in boats. These were landed at clandestine landing points with the complicity of some Customs staff and then secretly transported by road to Mumbai.

Trans-border smuggling is a major problem even now across the Indo-Bangladesh border. Active opposition from Bangladeshi para-military forces and Army in the form of firing has frustrated the efforts of the BSF to erect a border fencing in the Indian territory across Bangladesh.

There is considerable smuggling of narcotics across the land borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. The narcotics smuggled into India across the Myanmar and Bangladesh borders come from the Golden Triangle. The narcotics smuggled from Pakistan originate from the Golden Crescent. The intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh close their eyes to the narcotics smuggling in return for their agreeing to smuggle explosives and small arms for the jihadis in India. Americans have been complaining for some years that the chemicals required for refining opium into heroin are smuggled from India into Pakistan across the borders. Alleged complicity by law-enforcing elements in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh has thus come in the way of a 100 per cent effective action to stop the smuggling. There have been instances of smuggling of material required for IEDs by boats from India into the LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka. The recently stepped-up efforts of the Tamil Nadu Police and the Indian Coast Guard to stop this has succeeded to some extent, but not completely as seen from sporadic acts of attempted smuggling.

(b) Smuggling by the LTTE: Next to the Palestinian terrorist groups, the LTTE has the most developed capability for the clandestine procurement of not only small arms and ammunition and explosives, but also more substantial items such as anti-aircraft guns and shells, artillery, surface-to-air missiles and even small aircraft from different parts of the world.

Initially, it used to smuggle these items from the Thai-Cambodian border and other sources in S.E.Asia. Subsequently, in 1993, it managed to get a consignment of arms and ammunition from Pakistan’s ISI, but the ship on which they were loaded at Karachi was tracked by the Indian Navy and sunk with the arms and ammunition in the Bay of Bengal. After the collapse of the communist regimes in East Europe in 1991, it started smuggling from Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

It was running a fleet of commercial ships flying the flags of other countries such as Panama. These were ostensibly used for legitimate commercial shipping, but when needed also for smuggling arms and ammunition.

In 1995, the LTTE agreed to transport a consignment of arms and ammunition given by the HUM (then known as the HUA) to the terrorist elements in Southern Philippines. In return, the HUM donated some anti-aircraft guns to the LTTE. In 2006, the US arrested some supporters of the LTTE for planning to procure some surface-to-air missiles.

The LTTE’s arms smuggling activities by sea have been affected by the post-2001 stationing of a multi-national naval task force in the Gulf area to prevent any smuggling and other activities by Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organizations. Despite the increased vigilance by Western countries, the LTTE managed to procure from the Czech Republic and smuggle into the Wanni area of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka two to five small aircraft for its so-called air force. The suspicion is that it got them ordered in the name of a flying club in South Africa and then had them transported in a dismantled condition to the Wanni region. There is also reason to suspect that the LTTE got its pilots trained in ground strike operations in South Africa with the help of some ex-White pilots of the South African Air Force. It manages to smuggle in fuel required for these aircraft. During the days of the anti-apartheid struggle of the African National Congress (ANC), the LTTE had developed a good networking with it. This continues to come in handy for the LTTE in its arms smuggling activities. Chandrika Kumaratunge, former Sri Lankan President, and the late Laxman Kadirgamar, former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, had visited South Africa to request the South African authorities to act effectively against its activities through South Africa. The response has been poor.

In recent months, the Sri Lankan Navy has claimed to have considerably disrupted the sea smuggling activities of the LTTE and destroyed many of its ships----either by acting on their own intelligence or with the help of the intelligence collected by the Indian agencies. Despite this, arms and aviation fuel smuggling by the LTTE continues, but on a reduced scale.