Sri Lanka bombings Easter 2019 (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

This thread was originally entitled: Sri Lanka bombings: 207 dead, hundreds injured in church, hotel explosions on Easter. It has now been renamed 'Sri Lanka bombings Easter 2019'. It was also in 'The Whole News' arena and has now been moved to the regional arena for South Asia.

There is an old thread on Sri Lanka where the focus was on defeating the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) in a war that ended ten years ago.

[davidbfpo]

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:

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:

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

[davidbfpo]

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:

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?

[Kevin23]

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:
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?

Brookings recently a piece today in their morning Briefing echoing your opinion.

Sri Lanka, however, shows how a failure to prepare can be deadly. The country’s security services had considerable advance warning of a potential attack, including names, addresses and phone numbers of members of the suspected group involved in the attack. India reportedly provided considerable information based on its own Islamic State investigation. The Sri Lankan government even had warning that Catholic churches were among the possible targets. In case they were tempted to dismiss all this, weeks before the Easter attack, they found detonators, explosives and other clear indicators that attacks were being planned. What explains this remarkable intelligence and security failure is not yet clear. The Sri Lankan government itself was highly divided and information may not have been properly shared as a result. In addition, Sri Lanka’s historical focus was on Tamil terrorism rather than on Muslim-Christian violence. An investigation into the government’s handling of the attack is necessary to determine why the security services failed to act on what initial reports suggest was clear warning of an imminent attack.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order...ntent=72061007

[davidbfpo]

Professor Paul Rogers's latest column looks globally at:

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):

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/?

[Bill Moore]

https://lk.usembassy.gov/travel-advi...nsider-travel/

Travel Advisory: Sri Lanka – Level 3 – Reconsider Travel

On April 26, 2019, the Department of State ordered the departure of all school-age family members of U.S. government employees in Kindergarten through 12th grade. The Department also authorized the voluntary departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and family members.

Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets, shopping malls, government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, major sporting and cultural events, educational institutions, airports, hospitals, and other public areas.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.adaderana.lk/news/54693/1...sainthamaruthu

15 bodies including children found at blast site in Sainthamaruthu

The 3-minute video is worth viewing. A slain police officer previously owned one of the rifles recovered. The explosives and denotators looked to me like the type used by construction companies. It is probably that the Sri Lankan security forces may be right, and may not have involved external assistance.

However, the following certainly indicates ISIS-inspired.

Meanwhile, during another search operation carried out last evening (26) in Samanthurai area, Army troops recovered ISIS flags, literature and some other objects from a place, said to be the terrorist organization’s place for oath-taking.

According to the Military Spokesman, Brigadier Sumith Atapattu, combined troops recovered explosives, detonators, gelignite sticks, acid bottles, det cords, ISIS flags and backdrop, suicide kits, military uniforms, etc from a safe house in Samanthurai area.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/a...ntl/index.html

Sri Lanka bombers' mentor is dead, but his memory still stokes fear

Zahran Hashim had preached hate and violence for years. On Easter Sunday, at the Shangri-La hotel in Colombo, he put those words into action.

As guests took breakfast in a cafe overlooking the sea, Zahran blew himself up, Sri Lankan officials say. If a later video released by an ISIS-affiliated news agency is to be believed, Zahran was the leading figure in a band of suicide bombers which tore apart hotels and churches across the country that morning.

Not surprisingly, reporters have a better understanding of the situation than so-called U.S. security and intelligence experts. I asked some recently if there were different sects of Islam in Sri Lanka and received a simpleton answer that was basically no. Zahran not only defaced Buddhist sites, but he also harassed and threatened Sufis before the attack. The Sri Lankan government dropped the ball but arguably so did Western intelligence services.

Extremists consider Sufis to be kafir, or unbelievers, and in one video on YouTube, Zahran said that if someone "is a kafir he is to be killed according to Sharia law." In Kattankudy, local Sufis ticked off a litany of harassment and violence in recent years, including bullets fired at the mosque offices and a 2017 attack by Zahran and a mob of followers wielding swords.

[Bill Moore]

From NOV 2016

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...-idUSKBN13D1EE

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.

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.