Sri Lanka bombings Easter 2019 (catch all)
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At least 207 people were killed and hundreds more injured as several churches and hotels were rocked by simultaneous explosions on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.
Eight explosions took place, including in three Christian churches and three hotels, some commonly used by foreign visitors. In addition to those who were killed at least 450 were wounded, according to officials with police, the Colombo Hospital and St. Sebastian Church.
There were at least nine foreigners among the dead in Colombo, according to the officials. Two dual citizens of the U.S. and U.K. were among the dead, as well as one Portuguese citizen and two U.K. citizens, according to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One American was also among the missing. All of the foreigners died in attacks on hotels.
https://abcnews.go.com/International...mqiLzx2Em0P4d4
Updates including ISIS claim it was their attack
Reading through reporting mainly via Twitter it appears most have accepted the claim of responsibility made by ISIS. Oddly IMHO this BBC News report is less convinced:
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In the past, IS has sometimes claimed attacks that it was not involved in or which it simply inspired. But the details from IS would seem to back up the government's assessment.The choice of targets is much more in line with IS ideology than with the traditional types of communal violence seen in Sri Lanka.
A comment with far wider significance, with my emphasis in bold:
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There are still questions - did the local men affiliate themselves to IS or receive direct support? Did they travel to Syria or to other countries? The Sri Lankan government has said it believes some of them had spent time abroad, but how significant was that to the plot?
Answering questions like these will be important not just for Sri Lanka but other countries as they try and understand whether other relatively small, locally focused groups could be capable of transforming a threat into violence on such a massive scale.
Link:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48028045
Then there are two US-based SME commentaries. From CFR a short Q&A 'Sri Lanka Bombings: What We Know?':https://www.cfr.org/article/sri-lank...s-what-we-know
A more comprehensive 'Lawfare' article by Daniel Byman:https://www.lawfareblog.com/attacks-...reign-fighters
Intelligence error this time and before
An Indian intelligence SME has commented on the known fact that a warning was passed by India to Sri Lanka, which apparently was not acted upon. Sadly Sri Lanka intelligence agencies have done this before:
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In September 1994, we successfully intercepted an LTTE-coded message which clearly indicated that it was organising another assassination on the same lines as Rajiv Gandhi. The word ‘Gamini’ had appeared several times, the size of the waistcoat to be worn by the human bomb was specified, and even the venue, which was an election meeting. We assessed that it was meant against Gamini Dissenayaka (UNP) who was a presidential candidate in the October 1994 presidential elections after President Ranasinghe Premadasa was assassinated by the LTTE in 1993. We immediately conveyed the details to the Sri Lankan intelligence through approved channels.
But we were shocked when he was killed along with 50 others during an election meeting on October 24, 1994, in Colombo, on the same lines as Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Ordinarily, a terrorist organisation changes the methods of operations after a major event to cover their tracks. But the LTTE was so brazen that it did not do so. It used the same method of operation to convey their HQ decision to assassinate Dissenayaka. We received no convincing reply from Colombo why our alert was not acted upon.
Link:https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/co...ng/762831.html
I know another SME has commented on Twitter that the named local group would - in his opinion - not locally be assessed as bomb attack capable.
(Added later). More details on the information discovered by India and provided. Plus the reaction in Sri Lanka.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...lasts-sources?
The wider context of this being an ISIS attack
Professor Paul Rogers's latest column looks globally at:
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Attacks in Sri Lanka and elsewhere suggest that the al-Qaida/ISIS phenomenon is still very much with us, despite military interventions by the West.
From the global to the local (Sri Lanka):
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The precise details of the movement that caused the carnage in Sri Lanka are not easy to decipher, not least because of the political divisions within the Sri Lankan government and an intense blame game now under way, but it appears to have been a detailed, sophisticated and long-planned operation which goes well beyond being “inspired” by ISIS. Indeed the indications that some of the bombers were highly educated and had worked and studied abroad, are uncomfortably close to the make-up Frankfurt Cell that was at the root of 9/11.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/sri...ar-on-terror/?
32 'elite' Sri Lankan Muslims have joined Islamic State
From NOV 2016
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKBN13D1EE
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Thirty-two Sri Lankan Muslims from “well-educated and elite” families have joined Islamic State in Syria, the justice minister told parliament on Friday, promising that the government would clamp down on extremists.
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Muslim leaders warned the government in 2014 of possible Islamic radicalization and Muslims turning to foreign Islamic groups for support, attributing this to attacks by Buddhist hardliners.
I spent a fair amount of time in Sri Lanka in mid 1990s and occasionally visited Muslim fishing villages. The Muslims in these villages lived separately from the Buddhists, but I didn't sense any tensions between the Buddhists and Muslims at that time. The Sri Lankan soldiers I worked with confirmed there we no problems with the Muslims. Of course, the civil war at that time was between the Tamils and Singhalese. The hatred between these two groups was so thick you could cut through it with a knife. Frankly, I'm both surprised and happy they have come so far since the civil war ended in 2009. Prior to that ethnic conflict, there was a bloody communist insurgency, so Sri Lanka is no stranger to violence.
I suspect that post 9/11/2001 horrific attacks and the subsequent depiction of all Muslims as evil murderers changed the perception of Muslims by the hard right in Sri Lanka, leading to anti-Muslim riots. We see the same in Burma, with one of the more radical Buddhist leaders stating they do not want Islamic terrorists in their country. None of this justifies the Easter attacks on innocent civilians, but I think it worth a study by real regional experts, not Western intelligence services, how pockets of this Muslim population became radicalized. It may present lessons that are transferable to other countries that will offer some credible pre-emptive action, or as Bob's World calls it, preventative COIN.
What may come next and hwo to respond
Catching up I found this article by Scott Atran, sub-titled:
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The atrocities in Sri Lanka are part of a spiral of violence that poses profound questions for liberal societies
Later:
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The spread of this transnational terrorism, whether Islamist revivalism or resurgent ethno-nationalism, is fragmenting the social and political consensus globally. That is precisely its aim: to create the void that will usher in a new world, with no room for innocents on the other side, and no “
grey zone” in between.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ight-sri-lanka
Then today Jason Burke asks:
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Are there lessons we can learn from last week’s atrocities in Sri Lanka?
He has this key passage on being radicalised:
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Crucially, someone vulnerable to radicalisation at one moment in their life may be much less so just months later. A key element in the explanations of former terrorists for their own actions – as well as in accounts given by Nazi mass killers and others – is that their acts are necessary to head off a catastrophic outcome for their community, that they are an obligation for any rational individual. Combine this with the total dehumanisation of the victims – another product of groupthink, separation and propaganda – and you are already a long way to mass murder, whether in a death camp, through an artificial famine, by a mob armed with knives and axes, or a multiple suicide bombing.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ombings-terror
Both have a global outlook, so will be copied to the general CT thread.
Terrorism on the Teardrop Island: Understanding the Easter 2019 Attacks in Sri Lanka
Pointer to this article in West Point's latest edition of The Sentinel by Amarnath Amarasingam, who is a senior research fellow at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Link:https://ctc.usma.edu/terrorism-teard...acks-sri-lanka
He asks some awkward questions and tries to give some answers.
The man who might have stopped Sri Lanka's Easter bombings.
No, not an official, just an ordinary Muslim Sri Lankan. Stories like this give me hope we can stand together against evil.
Link:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48435902
Sri Lanka Reconsiders the Nature of Its Relationship With Saudi Arabia
I have reopened this thread to accommodate this Soufan Group commentary and here is one passage:
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The investigations into the attacks are still ongoing, and hundreds of people have been detained for alleged involvement. At the center of the inquiry are concerns over Saudi-funded institutions and possible connections to Salafi jihadist ideology. In May, police arrested the founder of the Saudi-supported Centre for Islamic Guidance, Mohamed Aliyar, on charges related to the financing of terrorism. Aliyar had links to Zahran Hashim, a radical preacher who mentored many of the Easter-attack bombers. Locals have claimed that they relayed concerns to security officials about Hashim’s extremism, although these leads were never acted upon. Other prominent Sri Lankan Muslim leaders have also come under scrutiny as authorities review financial transactions between Saudi Arabia and religious leaders in the South Asian island nation. Several of these leaders have been forced to step down due to pressure from politically influential Buddhist monks.
Link:https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbri...-saudi-arabia/
Copied from a Saudi Arabia thread.