Semiotics Of A Crime: ‘Pivot To Asia’ & A Call To De-Colonize The Indian Ocean
Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
“Because the Indian Ocean is sort of the world’s energy interstate and China will have a maritime presence, perhaps even a naval presence in some distant morrow. So the opening of this port in south Sri Lanka is of real geopolitical significance.” ~ Robert D. Kaplan author of Monsoon[1]
Crime is essentially about meaning and semioticsis the ‘science of interpretation’ ~ Marcel Danesi
Six weeks after the Easter Sunday crime in Sri Lanka, it is an open secret among Colombo’s diplomatic community and intelligentsia that Saudi Arabia funded and had prior notice, while the United States had prime motive to stage the Hollywood-style “shock and awe” suicide attacks, mysteriously claimed by the Islamic State two days later. Sri Lanka is a 70 percent Buddhist county with around ten percent each of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and hence the Euro-American, Christian-Islam “Clash of civilizations” narrative has little traction in the island –a detail that seems to have confounded the masterminds of the attacks on selected churches and luxury hotels in a carefully planned logistics operation.
The US had planned to sign the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) after the attacks that effectively paralyzed and destabilized the country for weeks when acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan would visit the island after the Shangri la Dialogue. SOFA would enable American troops to enter the strategically located Indian Ocean Island in an “emergency” such on Easter Sunday, which would be effectively rendered a servicing and logistics hub (code for military base), centered on the coveted Trincomallee deep sea natural harbor in the Eastern Province, which some ‘terrorism experts’ claim IS wants for its Caliphate. There is no evidence to suggest that IS has blue water ambition.
While many countries have lifted travel warnings seemingly confident that no more attacks are forthcoming six weeks later, in the streets of Colombo heightened anti-American sentiment is apparent: There is a sense that larger global forces are circling, playing and preying on the country. Thus, the English language Island newspaper on quoted award winning Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine: the rise of Disaster capitalism” that describes how CIA tested economic and environmental “shocks” are administered to bend societies to the will of the American Empire and related business and security interests.[2]
As the shock of the Easter carnage ebbs in Sri Lanka questions regarding the motives embedded in the empirical detail and design of the crime have come to the fore. There is a growing divide between international expert narratives that claim IS was responsible and local perception that the US had a hand in the Easter attacks. Some commentators have suggested, following Tony Cartalucchi that: “the US deliberately created ISIS to serve as a pretext for illegally occupying Syria.. and will continue to use ISIS’ convenient expansion worldwide to justify a continued, global US military presence worldwide as well.”[3]
The insular and nationalistic general public of strategically located Ceylon/Sri Lanka, ‘islanded’ for generations by 450 years of European colonialism and post-independence Euro-American occupation of the Indian ocean, suddenly seems to be going through a steep learning curve regarding the country’s geostrategic and geopolitical futures asquestions are being raised as to who funds, owns and operates the shadowy IS network? Shocks and terrorists, economic and environmental Disasters, also provide opportunities for learning and growth– if only local and global political leaders who seem impervious to learning lessons would stand aside.
Trump’s Pivot to Asia and a Pattern of mysterious attacks
