Wednesday, August 23 2006 12:42 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The arrest of eight Tamil men in the US on charges of attempting to buy sophisticated weapons marks a new low for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, now battling the most serious military and diplomatic challenges in its three-decade history.

The arrests were an outcome of cooperation between law enforcing authorities in three countries (the US, Canada and Britain) and followed similar crippling raids in Australia and Canada on supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). It is debatable if these crackdowns are aimed at crushing the LTTE in the long run or simply forcing it to return to peace talks with Colombo.

It is of course a coincidence that the US action, announced by the Department of Justice, came barely 10 days after a very high-ranking Sri Lankan official told sources that Western countries were not doing enough to strangle the LTTE's well-laid overseas network even after banning the group.

But it is significant that they have occurred barely one and a half years after a State Department official visiting New Delhi indicated that the US did not have the resources and time to spare for LTTE since Islamist groups were a greater priority. It was said that it costs vast amounts of money even to check suspicious banking transactions. Clearly, the mood has changed, and the Tigers should blame themselves for the mess they are in.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, following well-crafted sting operations, arrested the eight men on charges of conspiring to provide surface-to-air missiles, missile launchers, AK-47 assault rifles and dual use technology besides raising funds for the Tigers.

They were also accused of trying to bribe US officialts to get the LTTE off the list of banned organisations. It was said that all eight were closely connected with LTTE leadership and many had met LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran "and other senior leaders of the terrorist group".

Although the US made it clear that these were merely charges and the men would be deemed innocent unless proved otherwise, one strand of the LTTE's covert international networks, so very crucial for its war efforts, has been neutralised.

The Tigers, who have predictably denied links with the men taken into custody, have been supremely confident of their networks around the world.

And while only eight have been charged, in a vast operation of this kind the authorities would have learnt a lot about the networks of the LTTE and the men's other global contacts.

At least some, if not much, of this may be passed on to Sri Lankan authorities or other countries. This happened in India in the wake of the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The arrests are also a severe setback to LTTE's standing in the West, which has come to strongly oppose militant groups acquiring sophisticated weapons that might be directed today against another country but find a new enemy later.

The LTTE has been facing the ire of the West for some time, mainly on charges of persisting with terror tactics as well as recruitment of children to its army.

The 25-nation European Union's ban on the LTTE last year was a watershed for a group desperate to shed the 'terrorist' tag.

Even as the Tigers railed against that ban, Canada followed suit in April 2006. Canadian security agencies had been pressing for a ban for a long time.

Equally significant was the damning Human Rights Watch report this year that detailed the systematic threats and intimidation faced by Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada and Europe at the hands of the LTTE.

Soon afterwards, the police raided the Toronto and Montreal offices of the World Tamil Movement, a LTTE front. Canada does not grant residency to LTTE members due to "crimes committed against humanity".

Similar raids took place in Australia, which has the LTTE on its consolidated list of terrorist groups, thus freezing its assets, but has not banned it completely. India in 1992 became the first country to outlaw the LTTE. The US ban came in 1997 and Britain's in 2002.

The LTTE has met reverses on the global front before, but never anything so sweeping in scale. The US went to the extent of putting out a statement last week that mourned the death of Ketheesh Loganathan, a respected senior Sri Lankan peace secretariat official killed by suspected LTTE men, and the attack on the Pakistani envoy to Colombo but said not a word about the slaughter of over 50 girls in air force bombing in an LTTE area.

To make matters worse for the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government, in response to the LTTE's decision to go on the offensive in December, is waging a no-holds-barred undeclared war. Colombo is determined to take on the LTTE.

The breakaway Karuna group refuses to go away. The LTTE is courting its sympathisers in Tamil Nadu but the popular mood in the state, separated from Sri Lanka by a strip of sea and where Prabhakaran lived for years, is not conducive to the Tigers.