The LTTE terrorists who have the dubious honour of having many diabolical inventions to their credit, are being aped increasingly and with alacrity, by their con-fraternities in Asia,in whatever new approaches adopted by the former in perpetuating their murderous mayhem.The West ,with their myopic, ostrich like approach to the LTTE, are smug in their self- deceit that these new terror tactics will never succeed in their own countries!

In this regard one has only to go back to the 9/11 cataclysm which virtually petrified the US,if only momentarily,by the outrageous audacity of the attack which was perceived as an insult to their super- power hegemony which they imagined insulated and protected them from all the ‘little’ conflicts which were in their reckoning localized and geographically far removed from the epi - centre of power and command! The US reaction to this abominable deed was typically a knee-jerk one —carpet bombing Afghanistan,killing tens of thousands of civilians whose only crime was to live in the same country that gave birth to the Teleban insurgents and the Al Qaeda terrorists.One thing the US conveniently brushed aside was their nurturing of the nascent Teleban to a combative fighting force in their proxy war with Russia!

Modern terrorism is a new credo, relying heavily on mutually reinforcing, sophisticated terror networks,dispersed globally and pursuing specific agendas but constantly learning from each other’s successes and failures.

The LTTE in particular, have provided a role model to other terrorist organizations in how to adapt quickly to changing situations and circumstances. Its transformation from a rag –tag guerilla band in the early nineteen seventies, to a conventional military fighting force in the mid- eighties is indeed a fascinating study of close networking with a geographically dispersed Tamil Diaspora, which supplied the necessary funds and weaponry to amass the huge arsenal of military hardware that has been captured in the past few months by the advancing Sri Lankan Security Forces.The funds for the procurement of weaponry and sophisticated equipment were made available through collections by LTTE front organizations masquerading as charities working for the upliftment of poor Tamil civilians and through extortion ,drugs and human smuggling,credit card scams and innumerable other illegal activities which the Diaspora in the US,Canada, the UK and the EU countries profitably engaged in. It does not need an expert on terrorism like Rohan Guneratna to tell the world that all these illegal activities will be copied and replicated by existing terrorist groups and aspiring terrorists the world over in obtaining funds to fill their war chests.

The PLA terrorists of Manipur have openly said that they are modeling their strategies on those adopted by the LTTE. The Teleban in Swat valley are meticulously following the shameful ploy of using the local inhabitants as a defence cover. If the West fondly imagines that these new despicable strategies which they wink at when it comes to the LTTE in Sri Lanka, on the grounds of protecting civilians (while they rain down bombs killing hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan), will remain confined to Sri Lanka,Afganistan ,Pakistan and India, they are living in cuckoo land and are in for a massive shock in the not too distant future! Realisation of course ,will dawn on them too late!