By Sarosh Bana, APSM Correspondent, Mumbai
The horrific terror onslaught against Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday evidently had Christians as the primary target, the tragedy an abominable failure of a divided government to act on actionable intelligence.
After conducting Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said the attacks – the biggest against South Asian Christians in recent memory – had “brought mourning and sorrow” on the most important Christian holiday.
The series of eight coordinated bomb blasts was clearly aimed at the country’s flourishing tourism industry – patronised overwhelmingly by Westerners – as also at provoking a communal divide, the nine suicide bombers, all of whom perished in the attacks, believed to be radical Islamists.
Curiously, the Sri Lankan Health Ministry on Thursday downgraded the death toll to 253 from 359 reported by the media. Over 500 others were injured or grievously maimed. In a statement, the ministry claimed that while its own previous tally had officially been 290, the discrepancy lay in accounting for severed body parts, complicating the identification of full bodies. However, most scenes of mass terrorism have dismembered bodies.
The dead include 39 foreign tourists from at least 12 different countries, among them 11 Indians and the wife and 10-year-old daughter of an Australian-Sri Lankan.
The targeted churches were St. Anthony’s in the capital city, St. Sebastian’s in the Christian town of Negombo, 31 km to the north, and Zion in Batticaloa, 221 km to the east, as were the three Colombo hotels, Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury. The toll break-up is yet unclear, but the bombing of St Sebastian’s church was reportedly the deadliest, slaying some 110 worshippers.
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe feared more militants armed with explosives still on the loose, with search operations on to track them down. He also referred to the controlled detonation by the police of an explosive-laden van that had helped foiled a possible attack against a fourth hotel. He added that the Indian High Commission had also been a possible target.
Sri Lanka’s Deputy Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene told Parliament that a preliminary investigation had cited the attacks to be a reprisal for the deadly shootings by an Australian white supremacist in two New Zealand mosques on 15 March that had killed 50 people, mostly Muslims. The government, however, rebutted that assessment on the ground that the Sri Lankan attack was too elaborate and coordinated to have been planned so soon.
Wading into the controversy, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern indicated that her government had no intelligence suggesting such a retaliation. But the grisly similarity was not lost, both her country and Sri Lanka being idyllic island countries that have been shattered by acts of terrorism that have been unprecedented in scope and intensity.
The Sri Lankan government has instead identified the little-known Islamic extremist group, the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), and was investigating whether this local outfit had overseas support.
Some quarters have surmised the assaults to be the handiwork of the Islamic State, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, maintaining that IS very likely inspired the attack, though it was undetermined to what extent. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in turn, said on Friday that the assailants were confirmed to have been supported by IS, which has tried to validate this by hosting a video of NTJ leader Mohammed Zahran and his associates pledging allegiance to it. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena mentioned that around 140 people in his country had been identified as having links to IS.
The Salafi jihadist militant group did subsequently claim responsibility for the bombings, which would make these attacks the most lethal it has conducted. A statement released on Tuesday by its propaganda agency Amaq stressed, “Those that carried out the attack that targeted members of the US-led coalition and Christians in Sri Lanka the day before yesterday are Islamic State group fighters.” If true, it would be a pointer to the IS’s regrouping in another part of the world in the face of its collapse in Iraq and Syria where it had sought to establish itself as a caliphate. But there are those who debunk its claim as it provided no proof and also because its assertion came two days after the attacks, when it is usually quick to declare responsibility even when it is not involved.
Sri Lankan police have determined, however, that one of the dead suicide bombers had been NTJ leader Zahran, who had been notorious for his hate speeches on social media. They also claimed to have arrested Zahran’s deputy and affirmed that weapons training had been provided to the assailants in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province as well as overseas. A copper factory operator has been arrested on charges of training the extremists in making improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Wickremesinghe revealed, however, that the perpetrators were upper and middle class individuals, some educated abroad. Among the 76 suspects detained by the police so far for questioning was the wealthy and politically-connected Colombo-based spice merchant, Mohamed Ibrahim, whose two sons, Imsath Ahmed Ibrahim and Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, as part of the suicide squad, had struck at two of the three hotels attacked in Colombo.
Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, one of the terrorists educated abroad, was referred to by Wijewardene to have studied in the UK from 2006 to 2007 and then going on to do his post-graduate studies in Australia before returning in 2013 to settle in Sri Lanka. His presence in Australia was confirmed by Prime Minister Morrison who said: “I can confirm the suicide bomber had been in Australia. They departed in early 2013. That individual had been here on a student and graduate skilled visa.”
Sri Lanka, known as the Emerald Isle of Asia and also the land of spices and tea, was to have celebrated a decade of peace on 18 May, with the 26-year civil war by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – which is estimated to have taken a toll of over 100,000 – having ended on that date in 2009.
The Easter Sunday attacks could have been a route to derail this path to peace and to bring ethnic strife back to centre stage. They could simultaneously have been revenge for last year’s anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka when the government imposed a state of emergency for 10 days to quell violence by predominately Buddhist Sinhalese mobs against Muslims. The unrest had flared up on 26 February in Ampara, one of the 25 districts in Sri Lanka, and spread to Kandy district before dying out on 10 March. Hardline Buddhist factions have been accusing Muslims of forcible conversions, as well as vandalising Buddhist shrines and archaeological sites.
Buddhism had found its way to Sri Lanka from India, in the 3rd century BC, and today, Buddhism, specifically Theravada Buddhism, is the state religion of Sri Lanka. Buddhist-Sinhalese are the largest ethnic group, comprising over 70 per cent of the island’s population of 21 million. Hindus make up an additional 12.6 per cent, Muslims (mainly Sunni), 9.7 per cent, and Christians, 7.4 per cent.
Considering the experience and expertise of the Sri Lankan military and constabulary in combating unrest, it is reckoned that they were well placed to have prevented the Easter Sunday carnage.
Afterall, the Sri Lankan authorities had for months been receiving credible intelligence on an active network of Islamic extremists within Sri Lanka who were preparing to strike around Easter. The most pertinent intelligence, followed up with informal warnings, was communicated by India, which has historic ties with this verdant 65,610 sq km island that lies a mere 53 km across the Palk Strait off the south-eastern coast of India. Indeed, Sri Lanka is geologically an extension of peninsular India, having separated from the mainland as recently as the Miocene Epoch 25 to 5 million years ago. The island draws one of its earliest references in the Indian epic of Ramayana that portrays a kingdom called Lanka ruled by the demon king Ravana. Sinhalese or Sinhala, the predominant language of Sri Lanka, hails from the Indo-Aryan group of languages, and the Tamils are the other major ethnic group to have migrated to Sri Lanka from India.
While Wijewardene confessed there had been a lapse in acting on this intelligence, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne alleged that the warnings had not been passed on to the Prime Minister or any other senior ministers. Politician and former army chief Sarath Fonseka, appointed Field Marshal for his decisive leadership in the civil war, bristled in Parliament when he said the attacks had exposed a “monumental lapse in intelligence gathering” as they appeared to have been “seven or eight months in the making”. “In any other country, the entire government would have had to resign for making a mess of things like this, but it won’t happen here,” he said, adding, “Security has become a joke.”
These grievous lapses betray the internecine political divide that plagues the country and its people. Sri Lanka was plunged into turmoil last October when President Sirisena launched a coup against his former political ally and sitting Prime Minister Wickremesinghe “because of his arrogance”, and replaced him with his former rival and ex-President Rajapaksa. The consequent power struggle virtually shut down the government as the incumbent held his ground and Parliament stood by him, calling Rajapaksa’s swearing-in “illegal and unconstitutional”. Sirisena discounted two confidence votes Wickremesinghe won in Parliament, acquiescing only seven weeks later when the Supreme Court rebuked him and sought Wickremesinghe’s reinstatement.
However, in a message fraught with grim forebodings, Sirisena said there was no change in his “personal position” that he would not work with Wickremesinghe even if all 225 members in Parliament backed him.
Thus, a divided government chose to ignore the warnings on the Easter offensive, with both the President and Prime Minister astonishingly separately informing their countrymen that they were not privy to the intelligence inputs.
With its bounteous nature, exotic heritage, clean and safe cities, pristine beaches, excellent roadways and friendly and hospitable people, Sri Lanka was becoming an ever popular travel destination.
In 2017, the 2.12 million tourists visiting the country had generated $2.1 billion of revenues, but the leadership conflict of October brought arrivals to below the targeted 2.5 million for 2018, though the earnings target of $3.5 billion was just about met.
At the same time, security has been heightened across the island state, especially outside churches and even mosques frequented by Muslims of denominations other than the Salafi sect adhered to by the IS and its affiliates.
A sorrowful state for a proud nation whose scars from a protracted discord were just about healing.
