Posted on 09/12/2006 3:35:27 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
HYDERABAD: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels were frequent visitors to Andhra Pradesh prior to 1996 and they even trained the Maoists on guerrilla warfare, highly-placed sources in the police department have revealed to TOI.
Expert fighters from the LTTE reportedly visited a camp held in the Nallamala forests in November 1996 to train Maoists.
Though it was their last visit to the state, the sources said that since then the LTTE and CPI (Maoist) have developed a friendship that continues even today.
They continue to share ideas, tactics and even literature. However, they have stopped exchanging weapons in the past ten years.
In 1996, a three-member LTTE team had been invited to train Maoists during the 45-day central military training camp organised by the party. Nearly 36 Maoists from nine states — four members from each state — attended the camp.
The four members comprised of three men and a woman cadre, and they were given training in handling arms and field warfare.
At that time, Santosh Reddy was the A P state committee secretary and the camp in-charge was Basavaraju, according to sources.
In return, the Maoists gave weapons to the LTTE. Those days the Maoists had more weapons than they required. "At that time, the erstwhile People's War (PW) strategy was to procure 70 per cent arms by attacking police stations and rest from the open market. But they usually procured more than they needed," a source said.
In 1997, the Tamil Tigers also trained Maoists in Jharkhand and Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu.
Till 2000 the Maoist party used to send its representatives above the rank of a state committee member to Jaffna to interact with the LTTE leadership, according to sources. Maoists are also reported to have developed contacts with Naga insurgents.
As police stations have been fortified now and heavy surveillance along the border makes smuggling of arms from other states difficult, the Maoists have now begun to rely on rocket launchers.
And the recent discovery of a huge cache of rockets and launchers points towards this.
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