We should not read too much into Islamic State claim for responsibility: Bulk of the work of Easter Sunday carnage was done locally by the locals

27 April 2019

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the bloody Easter Sunday attacks against churches and luxury hotels. However, one should be careful in reading too much into these claims. That is not just because the Islamic State has a history of owning up responsibility for sake of glory. But more specifically, the local involvement in the multiple suicide attacks on Easter Sunday is extensive; networks of Islamist cells, some non-violent and others, as it was proved, beastly, and Wahhabi ideology that is the fountainhead of Islamic Jihadist terrorism were proliferating in the island for over a decade. Ideological affiliation to Islamic State notwithstanding, bulk of the work for Easter Sunday carnage was done locally and by locals themselves.   

On April 23, in a video released by AMAQ news agency, the official IS channel that is used to flaunt the exploits of previous terrorist attacks, eight men standing under the banner of the Islamic State claimed allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group’s illusive leader. Of the eight, only one was revealing his face, and was identified as Mohammed Hashim Mohammed Zahran, the alleged ringleader of the attack that killed over 350 and wounded another 500 worshippers, tourists, locals and children.   

The video was a follow- up to a previous claim made a day after the attack by the group, claiming responsibility, but without offering any evidence.   

Later on the day, a much detailed statement issued over the same telegram channel claimed responsibility for the attack and provided a description of the multiple attacks and attackers. It provided names of eight attackers, revealed in their nom de guerre and seven locations of attacks: St. Sebastian’s Church in Negambo, St Anthony’s Church in Kochchchikade , Zion’s Church in Batticaloa and three luxury hotels in Colombo.   

The statement also claimed a seventh attacker was killed while confronting the police in Dematagoda.   

However, there was no mention of the suicide blast in the Tropical-Inn hotel in Dehiwala. Investigators believe that the attacker missed the target, a popular church in Dehiwala as the security there had been stepped up due to a previous incident of robbery. The attacker had arrived in the Tropical Inn hotel in a three wheeler, checked into a room and later visited the church. However, the security at the entrance is believed to have discouraged the attacker from going in. He had returned to the hotel and later blew himself up, when hotel employees became alerted of his suspicious behaviour. The blast killed a couple in an adjacent room.   

Also, the Islamic State statement did not refer to the woman, who blew herself up when the police raided the luxury residence of Ibrahim brothers in Dematagoda. She is the wife of one of the brothers and blew herself up killing her two children and three policemen. Two brothers themselves carried out suicide attacks in Cinnamon Grand and Shangri- La hotels .   
The Islamic State’s claim would give credence to the earlier suspicion over a foreign Jihadist involvement in the Easter Sunday attacks. There is, of course, a link. Global Islamic terrorism is tied together by a shared ideology of Wahabbism/ Salafism and their Arabized traditions. Wahabbism is an alien ideology in this part of the world- South Asia and South East Asia- where a moderate mystical Sufi Islam was and (to a great extent, still is) the dominant school. Yet this traditional Islam is currently under attack from the intolerant narrative of an imported Islam.   

Al Qaeda and Islamic State are the torch bearers of the Salafi Jihad. (Also, though many apologists of political Islam describe it as a non -violent political conscious from of Islamic activism, the Muslim Brotherhood itself is a subdued form of the same ideological school. Ayman Al Zawahiri, the leader of Al Qaeda was an early member of the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood)   

Therefore, it is natural, and also fashionable for the local Islamic fanatics to be inspired by violence and violent theology of Wahhabism and vouch allegiance to one of these groups. ( Few exceptions would be the terrorists of al-Nusra front in Syria which publicly disassociated itself from the parent organisation Al Qaeda, while still carrying all the ugliness of its ideology. It was done in order to continue to receive Turkish assistance to wage war against the Assad regime)   

However, the question the local investigators should ask is other than inspiration and in person or online radicalization, what connection does Islamic State have with the local Islamist terrorists.   

The puzzle is yet to be resolved and investigations are still at the preliminary level. Nonetheless, it appears that the bulk of the work of Easter Sunday carnage was undertaken by the locals.   

The initial suspicion on the foreign connection was partly fueled by the supposed sophistication and coordination of the multiple attack. Yet the question remain as to how sophisticated this attack in comparison to the ultra-secretive planning, coordination and execution of suicide attacks of the LTTE.   

Each Easter Sunday attacker carried large explosive filled backpacks, as CCTV footage and eye witnesses reveal. A CCTV footage shows one man, leaned forward by the weight of the backpack as he walked into a church. The attackers did not wear concealed suicide vests, generally worn by the suicide bombers to avoid detection. The LTTE for instance went to an extra mile to develop explosive-laden female braziers as security searches became increasingly intrusive. Whereas making crude explosive device to be carried in backpacks require limited technical know-how.   

On Easter Sunday, a bunch of terrorists carrying crude IEDs in their backpacks, walked into unguarded hotels and churches and blew themselves up. That says little about the sophistication of attacks. Instead the attack succeeded due to lax security that provided room and space for terrorists. Similarly, basic reconnaissance, organisation and coordination of the attack was made easier by the lax security.   

We had put our guard down gradually and turned complacent over the past 10 years. We were a sitting duck for any attacker.   

Technical know-how to build crude IED’s of the kind that were used in the attacks are available online in various terrorist manuals.   

Explosives are available locally or can be smuggled in. A large cache of explosives and war like material, including 100 kg of plastic explosives (C4) was found in a coconut plantation in Wanathawilluwa, Puttalam in January. The raid uncovered what was believed to be an extremist training camp. Four suspects were arrested. Investigators should have identified the source of these materials had they dug deep enough. The metal factory in Wellampitiya owned by the Ibrah

im brothers could also have provided a pretext to import or smuggle in ingredients for IEDs. Whether the factory was used for bomb making is currently being investigated.   
State Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene said the intelligence services believed that the Easter Sunday attack was in response to the massacre of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch last month. Also, SITE intelligence group that track terrorist chatter earlier reported that the IS supporters were celebrating the Easter Sunday attacks as avenging the murder of Muslims in the Christchurch mosque.   

However, the discovery of explosives in Wanathavilluwa in January this year, i.e. two months before the Christchurch massacre raise doubt about these claims. Christchurch attack could have provided, if any, a trigger for a major Islamist terrorist plot that had been in the making for months, if not years.   

Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka has said an attack of this magnitude would have taken seven to eight years of planning and organisation. The primary ingredient for extremist attacks is the extremism itself. Wahhabi extremism has freely been propagated for over a decade in Sri Lanka. Initially, when this alien ideology made inroads there was a pushback from local moderates. There were clashes in Aluthgama and Kattankudi in 2011 -2012.   

Yet, Wahabism gradually took hold and local Muslim organisations, including Jamayathul Ulama have actively facilitated the proliferation of Wahhabi ideology within Muslim community and in institutions, both states and private, that are catering to Muslims.   

Overwhelming majority of mosques that have been opened during the last two decades, and financed by funds from Gulf states are preaching Wahabism/Salafism or a similar strain of ideology. Unregulated Madrassas that teach purely an Arabized religious syllabus have mushroomed. As the recent history of Islamic extremism- such as the rise of Taliban from Inter Services Intelligence Service run Madrasas in Peshawar, and the Jemaah Islamiyah ( JI ) in Indonesia- has revealed Madrasas could easily become a breading ground for radicalization. Sri Lanka has exposed itself to an incoming carnage by turning a blind eye to radicalization of local Muslims.   

Radicalization did not happen in a political vacuum. As documentary evidence reveal a number of prominent Muslim politicians, such as Eastern province governor M. L. A. M. Hizbullah, Minister Rishard Bathurdeen associated with Thawheed Jamaath. Those meetings might have been innocuous. But they reveal a level of political patronage accorded to extremism. All factions of Thawheed Jamaath, which has now splintered into several groups, shares a similar ideological line. They all follow an extremely doctrinaire and intrusive form of Islam, but differ in the rationalization of the use of violence to achieve their religious ends.   

Zahran, the Kaththankudi-born extremism preacher turned mastermind of the Easter Sunday attack openly advocated violence against other faiths. Some Muslim groups including Jamayathul Ulama, Ceylon Tawheed Jamath, and Muslim Council of Sri Lanka have claimed they have repeatedly alerted Intelligence officials , and at times, handed intelligence dossiers in person to Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando.  However these same groups - barring Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, which once tried to discourage women wearing black coloured hijabs- have contributed to the proliferation of Wahhabism. Non- violent extremism is only a step away from violent extremism. Many would take that final step. Having turned a blind eye to growing tentacles of Islamic extremism, Sri Lanka has now become its victim.   

However the most important asset in counter terrorism/ extremism operation and initiatives is the Sri Lankan Muslim community, who in union are shocked and traumatized by the tragedy and have shunned violent extremism.   

Combating Islamic terrorism and growing Wahhabi radicalization should be undertaken in cooperation with the community. Muslim community leaders should be asked to take the lead in combating growing Arabization of local Muslims. All new mosques and Madrasas should be subjected to security assessment. Madrasas should be asked to teach a uniformed curriculum vetted by the educationists. All foreign implants of Islam should be subjected to a review by traditional Muslim clergy. More Muslim youth should be hired to the Sri Lankan security forces and intelligence apparatus.   

Extremism should be confronted without forcing more Muslims into the fold of extremism. At the same time, not doing anything and playing a naïve political correctness towards Islamic fanaticism would claim more lives. It would also condemn Muslims to a life in parallel societies insulated from the rest in the East, Puttalam and Aluthgama etc. And bigotry, misogyny and hatred bread there would spill in to the rest of the country.   

Why Do “Educated” Youth Join Extremist Terrorist Movements?

By Chandre Dharmawardana –APRIL 26, 2019

Dr. Chandre Dharmawardana

It is often asked  why educated youth “coming from good homes” join extremist organizations. Simple  references to “brain washing”, or the stupidity of the young are no explanations. There is no scientifically recognized   process called “brain washing”. It is also  naive to assume that  educated youth  join the IS (Islamic state)  to go to heaven and get their 21 virgins! Many youth radicalized in British Universities ended up fighting for the ISIS. At least one of the Sri Lankan Muslim Kamikazi had a British training, had four children, a flourishing business and lived in a million dollar home in Colombo. A British education in a narrow subject like “information technology” not touching any  broad scientific or cultural subjects, given in a British “red Brick” university can have no effect on already acquired belief systems. Don’t our “most educated” ministers go to Tirupathi, India,at the drop of a pin?

These radicals are no different from the young intellectuals of an earlier generation who believed in a simplistic theory of capitalists versus the workers, and how the workers would unite to bring down the capitalists and create a classless society where even state power has disappeared! They believed that “THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS” –  so we had  Stalin, Mao Tse Tung,  Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, countless Left-Terrorist Maoist-Guevarist-Naxalite groups, and Wijeweera’s JVP in Sri Lanka  killing innocents to achieve their “objective”. This objective is given a historical destiny by dialectical materialism formulated as “historical materialism”. Contrary to the predictions of historical materialism, these movements have only produced ghoulish Gulags.  

Similarly, these “brain-washed” young Muslims are educated in the Islamic fundamentalist view of the world consisting of Muslims (good), and infidels (bad).  Many educated Arabs do not believe that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was done by Arab Kamikazes. They think it was a put-up job by Jewish groups and the Bush government to give them an excuse to attack the Oil Rich Middle Eastern countries on the economic front, and to relaunch  the Crusades against Islam. This is the rationale for the  counter-attack on luxury hotels frequented by Westerners, and on Christian Churches.

Just as Dialectical materialism calls  for a revolution leading to a  necessary final state which is an article of faith of Marxists, Islam defines that history must necessarily lead to the Islamic state after a Jihadic step. The “holy war” replaces the revolution of the Red Comrade. The historical destiny taught to young Muslims by impassioned Arabic Teachers who have come from the Middle East is as simple and clear as the JVP five lessons. Their role is to establish the Islamic State, with everyone practicing the Sharia law which encompasses not only morality, but economic activity as well – a complete ideology is sold.

Just as  many Sri Lankans, or even ministers are over-whelmed enough to readily accept ideas cooked up  in the West, because they are from the West,  these young people are also over-whelmed by “renowned” and fiery teachers from the Middle East who paint a glorious picture of the old Caliphate.  The idealistic young Muslim has a clear jihadist mission, taught to him by these fundamentalist “international teachers”. Achieving  this designated  noble cause,  the Islamic Caliphate  in the name of Allah becomes their mission. Achieving this  END is justified by ANY means whatever. It is a sacrifice that they make, in much the same way as  “rathu sahodarayas” (red comrades) are ready to fight the capitalist army and die in the process of the revolutionary capture of the state by the “working class”.

The young university students who readily absorbed the “five lessons” of the JVP, although almost stupid in content, attempted to overthrow the legitimate government because the message fitted in with their pre-conceived notions. These notions were about  the need to change the economic framework by “hook or crook”,  hammered into the Sri Lankan youth by the LSSP and CP politicians who came prior to the JVP. The tremendous disparity between their power and state power seemed irrelevant to a just cause. 

The early Marxists in Sri Lanka  had fomented  the trade unions to rise in militant “hartals”, hoping to capture power. They were sure of being the “Bolsheviks” who will  replace the “Menshevick”  government of Bandaranaike. So, the LSSP, a revolutionary party  did not worry about  popularity at the polls. Dr. Osmond Jayaratne, and Engineer C. B. Wijedoru, both central committee members of the LSSP assured me that Language Parity  was a policy strategically crafted to the revolution using unions with more than 50% Tamils, and not designed for elections. When they abandoned the “revolution” and joined Mrs. Bandaranaike, they jettisoned  parity and embraced  the majority language, as one language is more efficient for the classless, divisionless, unethnic  communist state. 

In the case of the radicalized young Muslims, they too hope to change what they see is an utterly immoral world. The world must conform to the draconian morality taught to them by the fundamentalist Arab teachers. Martin Luther had found such a moralistic message xplosively successful in an earlier era. These young people find an outlet to their moral and idealistic energy, and an identity thorough these extremist organizations. Their parent’s  society has failed to provide them with valid idealistic objectives suitable to the 21st century, and allowed  extremist teachers to infect them with a new passion. This process is not “brain washing”, but more analogous to the spread of an infection of virulent memes.

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The Social Media Block Isn’t Helping Sri Lanka

In a country with tight government controls on traditional media, social media is a double-edged but necessary sword.

A young boy lights a candle at a grave after a funeral for a person killed in the Easter Sunday attack on St. Sebastian’s Church, on Thursday in Negombo, Sri Lanka.

Carl Court/Getty Images

By YUDHANJAYA WIJERATNE-APRIL 25, 2019

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—Today has been a bizarre day. In an ideal world, I should be working on a project-funding proposal and trying to finish a short story about a near-future police force. Instead, I’m pacing the office. I just finished speaking with a journalist from a prominent media organization about the block on social media imposed in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the devastating recent terrorist attacks, its effects, and the information flows in this country. I’ve been digging into social media and politics for a while, so people think I have answers.

Now, the journalist is waiting for an Uber to take him to what is effectively a high-security zone. He doesn’t have his press pass. He is a foreign national, a brown man carrying two cameras and an enormous backpack. The latter is the hallmark of a suicide bomber right now. If the police detain him, he’s finished. If the neighbors see his backpack coming out of our office, we’re finished.

The Uber driver, thankfully, is a Muslim. Right now, he understands more than anyone else what it is like to be suspect. We have a small chat. He reminds me of a guy I used to work for, back when I was selling keyboards and mice at a mall retail store. Every other month someone would start a thread on a popular local internet forum, railing at the store for being Muslim-owned. The people who jumped into the cesspool of hate included a semifamous ex-con who was fond of making death threats. My boss would scroll up and down anxiously, but his store stayed open regardless. The driver, likewise, intends to roll on. This is, I assure the journalist, a bad time to be in Colombo, but it’ll get better. It always does.

To understand Colombo, one needs to first grok how small it is—not just in terms of size, but in terms of community, Colombo is one of those places where everybody knows everybody else. Forget Facebook’s 3½ degrees of separation. It’s near-impossible to meet someone without finding out immediately after that they’re somehow connected to your father, mother, sister, brother, cousin, batchmate, colleague, frenemy. Whereas other cities seem to offer casual anonymity, Colombo takes it away.

So take this tightly bound community. Rip out a few hundred people. Hospitalize a couple of hundred more. What you get is a wounded, panicked, screaming beast.

The first news of the wounds came to us through social media. Bhanuka Harischandra, a friend of mine and a successful startup founder, put up an Instagram post of the outside of the Shangri-La Hotel with a caption about seeing bodies tossed out by a blast. He was there to meet a potential business partner. His next post was from the Cinnamon Grand—where the suicide bomber stood in the buffet line, according to reports—with bits of ash and shrapnel in his T-shirt. Then came a flurry of tweets asking what had happened to Kingsbury, another luxury hotel. And a church in Batticaloa. And St. Sebastian’s. Then another church. Photos were shared through Facebook.

Only then did news of the attacks break on television.

Media in Sri Lanka is tightly controlled by a very few people and often riddled with political bias. It is customary in Sri Lankan politics to steamroll, impugn, and commit character assassination on those who do not join you in victory; journalists have traditionally been forced to be instruments. Media might be freer now, but these bruises still remain, entrenched by political power.

In a country with such tight government controls on traditional media, social media is more of a boon than Western commentators would assume. In October, the current president of Sri Lanka decided to violate the Constitution, instigate a coup, and appoint the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, as prime minister—while an elected prime minister sat in office.

Within minutes, Sri Lanka effectively had two governments and two prime ministers. Parliamentarians were crossing over to opposing parties, and some lesser minister’s bodyguard had fired into a mob. The videos of all of these reached us a full 15 minutes before the news anchors started their spiels, their political affiliations obvious. Without social media, we would not have known what was going on during that volatile political situation.

And this week, as chaos reigns, people in the West are celebrating the decision to block access to social networks. As of Thursday, the block is still in place. A state of emergency has been declared, and we have no idea what time curfew will be tomorrow, let alone the fate of the Facebook block. Official information sources are increasingly starting to resemble hoaxes themselves.

In this zeitgeist, the few journalists who engage with the Colombo community, such as Azzam Ameen, a reporter with BBC Sinhala and a journalist with a fast thumb, are go-to sources. The text from Ameen’s Twitter and Facebook pages is copied and shared in WhatsApp groups—family and friends, entire school batches (or classes) from many decades ago. The block—which is not a ban on people accessing social networks so much as an easily circumventable order for internet service providers to block the websites and apps—is making it harder for many to access Ameen’s information. But it isn’t stopping rumors from flourishing. I should know, since I’ve spent a great deal of my time trying to help people verify information.

Maybe a block could have been useful—if the government had presented a clear stream of relevant information.

In the West, many praised the most recent social media block. Kara Swisher wrote in the New York Times, “When the Sri Lankan government temporarily shut down access to American social media services like Facebook and Google’s YouTube after the bombings there on Easter morning, my first thought was ‘good.’ … because it could save lives … because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built … so many false reports about the carnage were already circulating online that the Sri Lankan government worried more violence would follow.” Swisher acknowledges at the end of her column that “shutting social media down in times of crisis isn’t going to work.” But she seems unaware of the actual source of the problem here.

The Sri Lankan government has tried all this before. It shut down social networks in March 2018, in response to riots targeting Muslims. In the events leading up to those attacks, the government didn’t do anything about the anti-Muslim hate speech peddled on social media by the far-right Buddhist organization Bodu Bala Sena and its affiliates; they’re monks, after all. This negligence is precisely what caused organized mob violence in the first plane. The government let hate speech run its course, then took the rug out from everyone—even, for some bizarre reason, blocking my own author website (my political blog was left intact)—and then blamed the scapegoat of the day, Facebook. Media attention was focused at the time on the role of Facebook in violence in Myanmar, and Western journalists lap this stuff up.

People also fail to understand blocks can be quite easily circumvented with virtual private networks. Innocent people—who may be unaware of the security risks—search Google for “VPN” and download the first thing they see, opening their devices and network traffic up for all kinds of nefarious third parties. The block also sends the actual racists and hate speech–mongers underground. Whereas once we could see some tip to the iceberg, now it stays underwater, propagating across networks that are far more difficult to examine—WhatsApp and SMS, for instance. If more people start using Signal or Telegram, we might as well forget the whole thing altogether.

To be clear, social media isn’t entirely benign in Sri Lanka or anywhere. Here it took a dark twist very quickly after the Easter bombings. The blame game kicked off with a vengeance. In general, four fingers were pointed:

1. The Muslims did it.

2. The Sinhala Buddhists did it. (This was expounded on, completely unverified, by a journalist at the BBC.)

3. A hypothetical resurgent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—the group the government fought in the Sri Lankan civil war that ended a decade ago—did it.

4. The current government stood by and did nothing. Maybe it wanted this to happen.

I put up a warning against the spread of misinformation that went viral shortly after. It didn’t seem to have done much good. Not just for social media, but for traditional media as well. BBC World aired some pundit claiming the attacks were from Sinhala Buddhist mobs, a complete untruth.

Soon the social networks were buzzing with fake news and misinformation spreading like lightning precisely because of the tightly connected nature of the beast. Hoaxes appeared on school-batch groups, work groups, and family-and-friends channels and spread out to second- and third-degree networks with a flick of the finger. A small cadre of volunteer fact-checkers leaped in to bridge the gap between journalists on the ground and a panicked public.

The things I have been asked to verify over the past 48 hours stretch from the silly to the post-apocalyptic. Fakes starting with “Azzam Ameen told my friend.” (Easy for me to debunk: I just had to drop Ameen a Twitter message to confirm it fake within minutes.) Doctored screenshots claiming Dialog Axiata, a prominent telecommunications company, was fining people for the use of VPNs (easily countered by talking to telecom regulators, examining the relevant acts for mentions of fines and VPNs, getting a Dialog customer care agent to consent to be recorded confirming this was fake, and then pestering Dialog until it did the same through Twitter). Rumors of the water supply in Hunupitiya being poisoned (not so easily countered; residents knew nothing, and by the time we finished calling, there were vehicles on the streets of Kiribathgoda and Mattakkuliya urging people not to drink tap water). A fake police page claiming use of VPNs would get you hauled away by the police. “Someone closely connected” to either Army or Navy circles talking about a lorry full of unexploded bombs going up and down (That one turned out to be like Nostradamus: eventually true.)

Maybe a block could have been useful—if the government had presented a unified front and a clear stream of relevant information and then clamped down tightly on all the jokers out there. Instead what we saw was a minister smirking about how his father told him this would happen days ago and the prime minister’s camp saying the National Security Council refused to meet the prime minister until the president got back from a jaunt overseas. We got the secretary of defense shrugging off the attacks and whining about how unfair it was to single him out. We saw the president claiming to have absolutely no knowledge of the matter.

And across Colombo, my friends are reporting to me of Muslim tenants asked to leave homes, of Uber drivers refusing to take on Muslim clients, of family groups asking their daughters not to wear scarves and for sons to shave their beards. Likewise, a flood of people offering support, places to stay, food, reparations. Every so often, an incident grows beyond the minor and escalates to the point where someone like Ameen will have a look at it, verify it with the police and local authorities, and post it with images.

What the government should have done is engage, instead of block. They have the capacity. Last year, when I was editing the president’s Wikipedia article to link it to a “Constitutional Crisis” page, the President’s Media Division swung into action immediately: Myself and others (who wish to remain unnamed) ended up in a bizarre Wikipedia edit war. Every time we linked to any derogatory news about the president, they would remove it.

This particular division, as far as I know, is close to 100 people. One hundred people fact-checking via social media could have done so much to manage the chaos and restore orderly information flows.

Instead, the government and its chaotic approach continue to compound problems. In a case of horrible mistaken identity, for instance, the police and Criminal Investigation Department have just plastered a photo of Amara Majeed, a student at Brown, as a suspect on national TV. It was local social media that found out who she was. I have been fact-checking information for the past three days, and I am forced to conclude the police are incapable of looking up an image on Google.

One wonders whom to trust, and the inevitable truth is this: I trust people on social media more than I trust the instruments of government. Because in Colombo, where there is little anonymity, me and mine know the person and can reach them in minutes.

This is not to diminish the role of some news agencies that did their job this time around, but I cannot trust they’ll do the same once the next election rolls around and something else happens. And as for the government, there are probably colonies of bacteria on the Red Sea that are more competent at running a country. And that’s putting it kindly. 

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Combatting the Cult of ISIS

Featured image courtesy AFP

RAVI RATNASABAPATHY-27/2019

It now seems clear that the attacks on Easter Sunday were carried out by local radicals, under the aegis of foreign fundamentalists. The problem is contained in that there is little support for this group from the wider Muslim community. While those involved must be swiftly identified with and dealt with, the bigger question is how to check the spread of radicalisation?

A paper[1] by Joel Day and Scott Kleinmann offer an approach that is summarised below.

Violent extremism is a cult, not a religion

According to the authors, treating violent extremism as a problem of religion or belief is a mistake. The process of radical, violent mobilisation shows closer links to that of a cult.

“The central problem with focusing on beliefs is the issue of variation. Simply put, if “radical” beliefs produce terrorists, then why doesn’t every Salafist or political-Islamist mosque produce terrorists? Even more complicated, why have most of those providing material support to Islamic terrorist groups shown little understanding of theology, but instead seem to be attracted to the thrill of jihadi adventurism (Venhaus 2010)”

Accordingly counter strategies based on empowering moderate, liberal voices to preach inclusion and tolerance to seemingly more “extreme” mosques may not be effective, indeed even counterproductive.

When confronted with countering evidence, individuals may become defensive and cling on initial beliefs more strongly, driving fence-sitters towards radicalisation.

“It is therefore problematic to assume that “countering narratives,” showing extremists the error of their ways, or debating theology would do anything other than produce hostility and even spur heightened aggression.”

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting inside Pulse, a gay nightclub. The killer was believed to have been gay, consumed alcohol, not known in the local mosques but showed signs of identity confusion, anger, isolation, and other attributes shared with violent individuals of all sorts.

Countering a cult

To deal with a cult the focus should be on weakening the organisational ties within the movement, not on debate. In debate people tend to rely more on intuition than reason. If people are not working from ideological standpoints there is little possibility of making headway through discussion so it may make more sense to counter the networks and personal ties between individuals and terrorist groups instead.

This model maintains that since ideology fails to predict or abet terrorist violence, other social factors such as alienation, mental health, or bonds with other bad actors explains violence. It is not that ideology doesn’t matter at all, but rather that ideological pulls exist within a social context. It is the social context that counter strategies should be focusing on.

How do cults work?

Cults Create Affective Bonds Around Friendship, not Belief

Most recruits to cults and new religious movements come from those who know one or more members of the group. The personal connection between recruiter and recruited is far more persuasive than the content of the belief system as the testimony of former cult members shows:

“The way the Jesus Army worshiped was a bit odd at first … but I soon got used to it. What really attracted me was the sincerity of the people and the obvious love and bonding that they had with each other”.

Likewise, a participant in another cult reported that:

“after his first visit to the FWBO center, he thought members of the centre were crazy and decided not to go back. However, he thought about all the people he knew there, and he recalled what a great time he had with them. Subsequently he turned up for the rest of the course.”

Similarly, terror networks operate around bonds of kinship and friendship. Scott Atran found that 95% of foreign fighters who joined ISIS were recruited by friends or family. Similarly, in his study of Al Qaeda networks, Marc Sageman found that friends and family ties were involved in the recruitment of 82% of the jihadists in his study (2004, 111–112).

A vast literature finds that terrorists are not goal-seeking or strategic, but instead are motivated by a desire for friends and comradery (Abrahms 2008). It is worth recalling that 6 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were brothers (Wickman et al. 2013).

Social Connections are Deep and Meaningful

A cult is not simply a quixotic fringe group with unorthodox practices: they are a community of practice. For alienated, isolated individuals, cults create affective bonds of love and attention received from nowhere else.

The culture of jihad is more than ideology: a burgeoning literature has found that terrorist groups have cultures of practice that go far beyond doing terror. Terrorists read poetry, weep and hug, sing, eat, and have a culture that can be observed outside of the material threat they pose.

This phenomenon is the “soft power” of jihad, which pulls recruits in not with force, but with cultural appeal and interrelational ties.

Cults Thrive on Intensive Interaction Between Recruits and Elites and Forge Social Encapsulation

Cults rely on exclusive, and isolating bonding practices that forge the conditions necessary for violence. Social encapsulation inoculates the recruits from outside influence, neutralises the stigma frequently associated with participation in such groups, and masks their deviant behaviour.

Conversely, the more civil connections a group has with others, the more engaged they become in the democratic process. Cohesion and overlapping, bridging ties between communities can prevent splintering, ideological isolation, and foster mutual respect.

Cults Offer Direct Compensation and Provision of Goods in Exchange of Allegiance

People may join associations to procure goods they could not otherwise get on their own. For cults and extremist groups alike, rewards can include power, material provisions like food and shelter, as well as ego and cosmically driven outcomes. The former Saddam Hussein Baathists joined ISIS not for ideological reasons, but to procure power and goods they were otherwise denied following the US deBaathification policy.

Many foreign fighters in ISIS don’t have experience in Arabic, which indicates that the ideology cannot be very well developed. Instead, they are promised wives, adventure, and alternatives to the lives they live in the West.

Women are promised comfort, the ability to raise a family in a pure Muslim environment—the utopia is even complete with houses, clothes, and even blenders (Speckhard 2017). None of these core elements of cult-recruitment and radicalisation operate around ideology per se.

Towards a more social strategy to counter extremism

Terrorist groups, like cults, are friend and kin networks that isolate and encapsulate new members, offering various forms of compensation and affection those members could not get elsewhere. Instead of ideology, policymakers should focus on the bonds of affection between friends and kin and build campaigns that target the correct avenues of extremist radicalisation.

The first step is to be able to identify early signs of radicalisation and those best able to do so are an individual’s friends or family. However if reporting can lead to harsh government reprisals, they will be reluctant to do so.

“Community-based mosques, youth clubs, and social services should be given more resources to gain the trust of entire friendship networks. Local basketball tournaments, food-drives, open shari’a classes, and drop-in counseling sessions are civic trust-building exercises. Within these civic institutions, friends can feel safe to report warning signs because they trust the community to carefully reprimand and rehabilitate the offender and act as a social bridge to law enforcement. Mosques should be celebrated for building deep community ties, because such social fabric is far more likely to prevent radicalization than debating the finer points of shari’a law in chat rooms.”

For example, Denmark has recently employed an affective bond-based counter-extremism program that focuses on linking up would-be jihadis with mentors, learning skills, and providing avenues of hope. This actively combats the cult-like mechanisms of friendship, love, intimacy, and compensation.

Danish mothers have also established a peer network called “Sahan,” where mothers worried about a child can seek advice and counsel from others on how to intervene.

In Canada and Germany, groups have sprung up called “Hayat”—the Arabic word for love—to highlight the loving network that ISIS sympathisers actually have at home.

Second governments should not be about policing -reporting “strange ideas or behaviours.” The government needs to support vulnerable communities-job fairs, tutoring, recreation, and civic engagement to ensure people are productively engaged.

“Since religious ideology doesn’t predict violence, but rather the social conditions of groups, governments should think of CVE as simply providing good government. In essence, we guard against violence by making our societies less vulnerable to cult-like groups seeking to isolate, encapsulate, and predate on weak individuals”.

Mosques should be celebrated for building deep community ties, because such social fabric is far more likely to prevent radicalisation than debating the finer points of shari’a law in chat rooms.

We should target and counter all types of “extremist violence.” The cult analogy points to the social factors that give ideology meaning, but all types of violence have social conditions that constitute actors in particular ways. Countering extremism should be conceptualised as engaging a social phenomenon, not just a set of beliefs and ideas.

As Robert Putnam has argued, the fabric of a healthy democracy is the relational bonds between citizens (Putnam 2001). Similarly, the fabric of a strategy to counter extremism is to build a social network of alternatives to the appeal of violence.

The attacks were carried out by a few individuals, with little broader support. The government, civil society and the Muslim community need to work together to defeat this.

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[1] Joel Day & Scott Kleinmann (2017) Combating the Cult of ISIS: A Social Approach to Countering Violent Extremism, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15:3, 14-23, DOI: 10.1080/15570274.2017.1354458

One week after; authorities still play a blame game

By Gagani Weerakoon-APR 28 2019

Sri Lanka, a decade after defeating world’s bloodiest terrorist group LTTE, was once again rocked by a wave of terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday.

With these attacks, the people of the country came to realise the Government and the President they elected turned out to be utter failures as they engage in embarrassing, yet shameless game of passing the ball.

A week after the incident, there is a massive progress shown in tracking down suspects and destroying their plots to increase terror attacks with military forces taking charge of operations under the Emergency Regulations that the country once again imposed. However, the Inspector General of Police who happened to have received information on the attack - 12 days prior to it - remains unmoved despite President and various other parties calling for his resignation. He in fact, had remained silent ever since last Sunday’s attacks without offering as much as an apology to the country.

Emphasising that the Defence Secretary and the IGP had miserably failed to fulfil their responsibilities, President Maithripala Sirisena insisted that the Government, including several of its stakeholders, must take responsibility for the Easter Sunday carnage as it had weakened the intelligence service.

He said the prosecution of military intelligence officers after the war, left the country vulnerable to attack.

“This even led to a clash between the Government and me. During the past three years, I voiced my concern about military intelligence personnel being prosecuted on various allegations.
 Even the former top brass of the Tri-Forces were summoned and grilled by various other affiliated bodies like the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.
Those who portray themselves as human rights protectors confronted me, saying that the law is equal to all.
 So much so that the Director General of the CIABOC stepped down from her post when I asked as to why she was going on a witch-hunt against the military top brass,” he said while noting that this situation led to the essence of the intelligence service leaving the country.

Addressing the Heads of Media institutions last morning, President Sirisena said he did not get intelligence information even after 12 days of receiving the original warning

That does not mean that I am trying to wash my hands off the matter, he said, blaming the top defence establishment including former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, IGP Pujith Jayasundara and five DIGs to whom the initial warning letter was sent by the Indian intelligence services, for not warning him of terrorist threats.

Meanwhile, noting that the Security Forces were carrying out widespread arrests, with more than 70 people being held so far, President Sirisena said that he believed there to be more than 140 supporters of the Islamic State (IS) in Sri Lanka and that all of them will be arrested and ISIS would be wiped out from the island.

The President also said that his campaign against illegal drugs might have been a factor in the attacks because of the connections between drug gangs and terrorism.

“There is a nexus between international terrorism and the international drug trade. Furthermore, I got massive support for the anti-drugs campaign from Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, who joined us at Anti-Drug Walks. Perhaps the terrorists hastened the attacks on churches for these reasons,” he said.

He also vowed to reorganise the security services including the State Intelligence Service and intelligence units of the Police and Tri-Forces, to prevent the recurrence of terrorist activities such as the Easter Sunday carnage.

The decision comes in the wake of President Sirisena acknowledging that there was a serious lapse on the part of the Defence Secretary and the IGP who failed to inform him about the intelligence agency letter from a ‘friendly foreign country’ sent on 4 April, warning about a possible attack.

The letter warned of possible attacks on churches, places of public gatherings and Very Important Persons (VIPs).

“The IGP has sent that letter to the Staff DIG and it then went from table to table and finally it was forwarded to DIG Dassanayake of VIP Security, who, in turn, forwarded it to those in charge of the security of VIPs.
I was not informed. Neither my security head nor the head of the Prime Minister’s security was informed.
Both, the Defence Secretary and the IGP came to wish me on New Year’s Day (14 April) and they did not say a word about this warning letter. It was a serious lapse on their part and a shirking of their responsibility,” he said.

President Sirisena said, the Government had to declare an emergency situation to suppress terrorists and ensure a peaceful environment in the country.

“What have been imposed by Gazette are clauses pertaining to suppressing terrorism only. If these impositions were not made, the powers prevailing were not sufficient for the Police to take proactive measures and the Army, Navy and Air Force could not take part actively in the operations,” he said.
Referring to the current operations, raids and arrests of suspects, he praised the law enforcement and intelligence services for their efficiency and dedication in responding to this situation.

“The Government has already cracked down on criminals, suspects and those responsible for the recent attacks and many arrests have been made. Therefore, I believe we can avoid a repetition of such gruesome acts of violence in the future,” he said.
 “I have already planned necessary action to build an environment where the people of this country could live freely and without fear in the future,” he added.

Answering a question about the safety of schools and places of worship, the President said the Government will create an environment where public servants, students, entrepreneurs and the public could act liberally in a free and peaceful environment.

Muslim Ministers deny

Following Sunday’s carnage there is a massive public outcry to arrest or question certain Muslim Ministers who had long been suspected of associating with organisations that engage in radicalising Muslims.
 Minister Rishad Bathiudeen rejecting all allegations levelled against him said that neither Mujibur Rahman nor Azath Salley had any involvement with extremist terror outfits but said he can’t keep track of the daily activities of each and everyone he interacts with.

He told a news briefing held at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in Colombo yesterday, that he was not involved in getting any suspects arrested in Mawanella or Wanathawilluwa, released.

The Minister said his siblings and MP Rahman or Governor Salley had no connection with any extremist terror outfits as claimed.

“I know that my two brothers and two sisters have no links with any extremist terror organisations. At the same time, I personally don’t know who are renting their houses or who come into their houses.
 If anyone has done any wrongdoing, the law enforcement authorities should take action against them and I can’t intervene,” he said.

When asked whether MP Rahman or Governor Salley were involved in getting any of the suspects released, the Minister said, “As I said, they are not involved with any extremist terror outfits.”

When journalists asked whether he maintained any relationship with Easter Sunday terror attack mastermind Zahran Hashim, the Minister said he had never even met that person.

Commenting on the arrest of the spice trader Mohammad Yusuf Ibrahim, the Minister said Ibrahim had been felicitated by even former Presidents and Ministers but that doesn’t mean that they knew what was going on in the spice trader’s life.

Meanwhile, he said all terrorist and extremist groups should be banned and said the Muslim Religious Affairs Ministry should take the responsibility of streamlining Madrasas and banning Muslim extremist outfits.

“The Ministry should monitor Madrasas, their curricula and the foreigners who are teaching in these schools. When a mosque is being built, the Ministry, along with the All-Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU) should look into the necessity of building a new mosque. This should also be streamlined,” the Minister said.

 It is in the midst of this that UNP Colombo Municipal Councillor Noordeen Mohomad Thajudeen gets arrested over the recovery of 46 swords at Slave Island yesterday, police said 46 swords, kris knives and several uniforms similar to those worn by the Army were recovered from a mosque at Palliyaweediya in Slave Island on Friday morning.

On the other hand, Army has taken the brother of Minister Rishad Bathiudeen into custody in Mannar with regard to the ongoing investigations in connection with the Easter Sunday bomb attacks.

Police Media Spokesman, SP Ruwan Gunasekera said, that later the Army had handed him over to the Mannar Police.  He was released after recording a statement.

According to ground sources, the Army had initially arrested him as he sped past a military check point defying orders to stop. Thereafter, the officers at the check point had alerted the next check point to stop the SUV bearing the State emblem and a VVIP sticker.

Burqa ban

Justice Minister Thalatha Atukorale has come under attack by Ministers Mangala Samaraweera and Malik Samarawickreme for forwarding a Cabinet Paper proposing to ban burqas in the country.

Earlier, Parliamentarian Prof. Ashu Marasinghe moved a Private Member’s Motion in Parliament on Tuesday 23 April to ban the burqa. He added that burqas have been an issue to curb the terrorism operated worldwide and when questioned from Muslim leaders they say that burqa is not traditional Muslim attire.

However, he too came under criticism by Minister Samaraweera who pointed out that it could lead to unnecessary human right issues and undue criticism by the international community.