Sri Lanka bombings Easter 2019 (catch all)

[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.

[Bill Moore]

August 2018, the signs were all there.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/...31-p5012l.html

Sri Lankan student charged with terror offences in Sydney

"At this stage it appears that this is an individual operating on his own. There is certainly some further investigation that is required but again it is a matter that is before the courts," said Acting Superintendent Sheehy.

He has returned to his native Sri Lanka and has travelled to a number of other overseas destinations, which police on Friday refused to detail.

From 2015

https://jamestown.org/program/islami...nkan-outreach/

Islamic State’s Sri Lankan Outreach

The government’s and ACJU’s stands against the Islamic State’s outreach activities notwithstanding, grassroots radicalization of some Muslim youths in Sri Lanka is potentially directly connected with many violent skirmishes between Sri Lankan Muslims and vigilante groups associated with the majority Buddhist population in recent years.

Not only are anti-Buddhist sentiments high among a section of Muslim populations in Sri Lanka, but alarmingly, the minority population is more vulnerable to increasing attempts by Salafist sectarian groups, such as Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaat (SLTJ), which not only promotes sectarian discord within Islam, but also attempts to preach a rabid strain of Islam that largely despises the practices and existence of other Islamic sects like Shi’as and Ahmadiyas (New Indian Express, November 8). [7]

To add fuel to the fire, a skip and a hop over a few hundred miles west to the Maldives, a European tourist mecca, a number of locals have supported Al-Qadea and ISIS for years.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

https://www.satp.org/terrorism-updat...reign-ministry

Six Maldivians under Sri Lankan Police custody, says Foreign Ministry
Maldives' Ministry of Foreign Affairs on April 26 confirmed that there are six Maldivian individuals currently in the custody of Sri Lankan police, reports The Edition. According to local media Mihaaru, the Maldivians were detained over two different cases. While Mihaaru reported that some were taken in over possession of unlicensed air gun, the others were arrested after the police found a book related to the Islamic State (IS) inside their residence.

This may turn out to be nothing, but I went to the source and found this interesting.

http://www.adaderana.lk/news/54695/s...i-lanka-report

According to reports, one of the men was arrested after a library book on terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) was discovered in his home during a home search. Four out of the remaining men were arrested in the Negombo city area, and are all flight engineering students. It has been reported that a type of gun used for hunting was discovered in their home upon searching.

This could play out either way, but I'll focus on the paranoid potential. An air gun won't kill anyone, but it is a good way to train in marksmenship skills quietly and in the basement of a safehouse without attracting any attention. As for the flight engineer piece, it would potentially present some scary targeting opportunities. My more rational side suspects they'll be released.

https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/285260.pdf

Foreign terrorist groups continue to draw radicalized Maldivians as foreign terrorist fighters; Maldives has sent the highest per capita number of foreign terrorist fighters to Syria and Iraq in prior years, according to some measures. Some of these fighters are now returning to the islands, where there are few laws or structures to deal with the threat they may pose.

[davidbfpo]

Catching up I found this article by Scott Atran, sub-titled:

The atrocities in Sri Lanka are part of a spiral of violence that poses profound questions for liberal societies

Later:

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:

Are there lessons we can learn from last week’s atrocities in Sri Lanka?

He has this key passage on being radicalised:

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.

[davidbfpo]

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.

[davidbfpo]

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