A bloody Easter Sunday and political prevarications

• Sunday, April 28, 2019

There is a special kind of atavistic horror when terrorists attack places of worship. These strikes aim at decimating not only the life and limb of innocents but also destroying a community’s faith and spirituality, the very qualities that distinguish human beings from barbarians. As bombs ripped through churches and top end hotels on Easter Sunday and small children were killed while saying their prayers, Sri Lankans entered into their own interpretation of living hell. Christians could only echo the anguished words of Jesus Christ when he said, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do…’

A treacherous quicksand of political lies

But let us step back apace. Forgiveness aside, this nation is not comprised of idiots to accept this ‘I did not know’ explanations proffered unblushingly by the President, the Prime Minister and Ministers. The great efficacy with which the police and intelligence services acted in the wake of the Easter Sunday attacks suggests that there was no intelligence failure as touted. It was simply that political pressure coupled with stupidity held preventive concrete action criminally in abeyance. Put bluntly, this atrocity happened because of Sri Lanka’s politicians, no more and no less. Clueless, bumbling and grossly ignorant, they stumbled their way into a treacherous quicksand of lies, prevarication and infamy. Each manifest absurdity suceeded another.

Grinning Ministers informed us on national television in the first press conference after the attack that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had not been invited to the National Security Council meetings since the October coup last year. But that is no excuse whatsoever. This problem did not come about during the past six months; it had a far longer gestation period. And indeed, jihadist radicals in the East and elsewhere were being closely monitored for years by Sri Lankan intelligence. In the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks, a veritable arsenal of weapons is being recovered by police commandos and intelligence who obviously know exactly where to go and what ‘safehouses’ to pinpoint.

Sheer commonsense would tell us that much of this was known beforehand. No other explanation is conceivable. Yet no preventive action was taken. Why? Was the impunity attached to a few politicians courted by both the Government and the Opposition for their vote banks in the East, the answer? The ‘go slow to act’ of Sri Lankan intelligence monitoring coupled with the brushing aside of specific warnings by Indian intelligence speaks to far more than mere carelessness. The President  and the Prime Minister owe this country an explanation, beyond their asinine ‘I did not know’ stories. The resignation of a horrendously inept Defence Secretary and calling for the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to step down will not do.

Dealing with uncomfortable realities

In fact, the last two days have been particularly excruciating as those in command wilted under extraordinary pressure. President Maithripala Sirisena lost himself in a morass of unconvincing explanations, culminating in a ridiculous claim that all this would be dealt with ‘in a few days.’ The Prime Minister could only say that Sri Lanka’s law did not give the power to deal with those having links to foreign terrorist organisations. This explanation is as false as it is silly. I do not propose to enumerate the laws that could be used for this purpose. But self-evidently and on the Prime Minister’s statement itself, narrowly tailored laws or amendments to existing laws could have been brought in upon intelligence disclosures of jihadi extremism, if the Government felt that it lacked the needed legal force. Why was it not done?

This week’s tragic events puts the inevitable seal on the argument that Sri Lanka should not have counter-terrorism legislation at all. What is called for is a more measured and strategic approach. A harsh counter-terror law following Western models is not the answer. If that heedless way is chosen, we will be thrust into a playground for global forces of terror and counter-terror compared to which, previous domestic conflicts will be a walk in the park. Emergency regulations currently in force must be examined when space permits. However at least here, there is periodic parliamentary control of the state of emergency and the Supreme Court has the benefit of excellent cursus curiae requiring emergency regulation to conform to constitutional safeguards, provided judicial fortitude is shown.

There are lessons for others as well. It is a trite truth that just as all Tamils are not terrorists, all Muslims are not Salafi-inspired jihadists. But the spread of Wahabism had been an open secret from the Rajapaksa years, to the extent that the non-Wahabist dead were not allowed to be buried in Kattankudy and jihadists in that area had spread their tentacles elsewhere. Yet critiques of this phenomenon were met by cries of ‘victimhood.’ Pundits claiming exclusive ‘analytical’ perspectives through funded ‘projects on reconciliation’ questioned opinions of ‘ordinary’ residents of multi-ethnic communities in Mawanella and elsewhere who complained of increased conservatism in their Muslim neighbours.

I have experienced this reaction myself, when briefly touching on the responsibility of Muslim politicians in the radicalisation of their voter bases. Email responses have asked why there is no focus on Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism as impetus for this radicalisation, even though this factor had been repeatedly acknowledged in these columns. But the point is that one wrong cannot be justified by another. Now we are in undeniably new terrain. Islamic State jihadism which inspired the Easter Sunday attacks must be placed in its own and deeply frightening context of a monster, born at least in part out of the West’s historical transgressions in the Middle East.

The remarkable resilience of a nation

So as Sri Lanka becomes engulfed in grotesquely unfamiliar religious extremism, the one comfort has been the exemplary behaviour of affected communities since that bloody Easter Sunday. Wise preachings by Catholic and Christian clergy that ‘meeting violence with counter-violence is not the Christian way’ were taken to heart even in Negombo whose residents are not particularly famed for their restraint. Despite isolated incidents, the resilience of a shocked and angry nation has been remarkable. The courage of police officers and security forces conducting relentless investigations, despite loss of lives, has been commendable. This exemplifies the best of Sri Lanka but does not excuse the criminal behaviour of the political command.

If political negligence was at heart here, (taken at its best possible meaning), and if intelligence had warned of an attack on the Presidential Secretariat or on Temple Trees, would similar apathy have prevailed? This is all of a piece with how the police responded or more accurately, did not respond to the attack on the Methodist Prayer Centre in Anuradhapura earlier this month when a provincial councilor of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) ran amok.

This responsibility of properly addressing religiously motivated attacks lies equally on both the Government and the Opposition. With chilling presentiment, it was questioned in these column spaces last Sunday as to whether the State would be called upon to provide security to all Sri Lanka’s churches? Those words have proved to be sadly and forebodingly true.

And now, in the wake of unforgivable political failures, we are left with grievous loss, as individuals, as families, as communities and as a nation. Who will atone for this?

How Wahhabism was fostered until it’s too late

Sri Lankan Muslims are the greatest strength in the country’s fight against Islamic extremism. However, their radicalization is also the greatest long term threat

30 April 2019

On Friday, the imam of a Sufi mosque in Saindamarudu was alerted by the locals about a suspicious crowd in a house in the neighbourhood housing scheme called, Bolivia village. That is an exclusively Muslim housing scheme of 400 houses built after the Indian Ocean tsunami. The owner of one of the houses there had given his residence on rent to a man who claims to be a telecom engineer from Kattankudy; since new tenants moved in, he has observed a stream of unusual visitors to his house.   

A delegation from the local mosque, the Grama Sevaka and the owner visited the house to inquire and were confronted by the angry tenants.  

The locals then alerted a passer -by traffic cop. A police team was dispatched from Kalmunai Police , and was fired upon as they approached the house.   

Police Special Task Force and army were called in for help. As the troops encircled the house and evacuated residents in the nearby houses, around three gunmen kept firing. Later in the night, three explosions believed to be suicide blasts ripped through the house. Following day, troops found the remains of three men, believed to be gunmen, laying at the entrance of the house. Inside, charred bodies of 12 others, including six children, three women and three men were found. The men were believed to have blown themselves up killing the rest of the family members.   

 A woman and a child was recovered from wreckage and were later identified as the wife and the child of the mastermind of the suicide bomber Mohammed Zahran.   

The father and brother of Zahran, Mohammed Rilwan who was mentioned in the previous intelligence memo were also identified among the dead. Prior to the raid on their hideout, the three men had recorded a video in which they claimed the credit for the previous attacks and urged the Muslims to give up earthly responsibilities to wage Jihad.  Without the local help, the raid would not have been possible. In most part of the world, especially in the West, battle against Islamic extremism is fought with limited success exactly due to the lack of community cooperation. Instead, Muslims youth, mainly of immigrant origin give the middle finger to the police.  

The greatest strength in Sri Lanka’s fight against Islamic extremism is the local Muslim community. Their cooperation is crucial anywhere, and especially in the East, where Muslim majority enclaves have already insulated from the rest of the country to a great deal.   

Just like in Saindamarudu, the community is cooperating with the law enforcement authorities to help nab suspects. (One of the female suspects in police wanted list Fathima Lathifa, and the wife of one of the alleged vandals of Mawanella Budhdha statues was handed over to police by her parents)  

However, the greatest long term threat to Sri Lanka is also the radicalization of the same Muslim community. If the current level of radicalization persists that would erode the future prospects of cooperation. Similarly, mishandling the situation, leading to mass victimization of Muslims due to security measures may also result in a fall out of the Muslim community with the Sri Lankan state.   

Sri Lanka’s challenge would be to strike a balance.  

To begin with that the country should come to grips with the full scale of radicalization, both in terms of violent extremism and non-violent extremism.  

Last week, President Maithripala Sirisena belatedly banned National Thawheed Jammaath (NTJ) and Jamathei Millathu Ibraheem (JMI) in Sri Lanka as per powers vested in him.   
National Thawheed Jammaath is a breakaway group of Sri Lanka Thawheed Jaamaath (SLTJ). It was launched by Mohammed Zahran in 2012 after he broke away with a local mosque of the Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaath. The first mosque of National Thawheed Jammaath was set up in a ramshackle hut in Kattankudy. Over the coming years, it grew in followers, resources and controversy it courted.   

The first mosque of Thawheed Jammaath in Beruwela was set up in 2002. It immediately triggered a major push back from local moderate Muslims

Zahran was reportedly removed from the leadership of NTJ in March this year after a clash with local Sufi followers. The clash sent Zahran and his brothers to underground. However, another brother of Zahran was appointed as the new leader of NTJ, which cast doubt over the sincerity of the decision to remove the hate preacher.  

Zahran and his followers then joined with a group from Jamathei Millathu Ibraheem (JMI). Local Thawheed Jammaath factions now claim innocence over the Easter Sunday Attacks and pin the blame on JMI.  

However this explanation is too simplistic.   

Thawheed Jammaath as a whole is propagating an austere form of Wahhabism based on literal interpretation of Quran and Hadith. It is this ideology of a recreation of medieval Islamic caliphate and a perceived clashed between Islam and the West that provides ideological inspiration for al Qaeda and Islamic State-led global Jihad. The only difference between other Thawheed Jaamaath factions and NTJ and JMI are their rationalization of use of violence- more specifically , the use of violence within Sri Lanka against Sri Lankan targets-to achieve their religious ends.  

The purported fallout of NTJ from the rest is due to this fundamental difference. Baring that all groups advocates an austere and militant form of Islam with reintroduction of Sharia and suffocating Arabized social and cultural norms. They all have more in common with Al Qaeda’s ideological vision than moderate local Sufi Islam.  

Their supposedly non-violent extremism is a stepping stone for violent extremism of global Salafi Jihad. Their followers travel back and forth between the two narratives.  

That radicalization happened due to the politically influenced indifference towards encroaching Wahhabism and sheer lack of political will to act against the looming threat. The spread of Thawheed Jammaath to Sri Lanka happened in 2002 on the back of Al Qaeda-led Salafi Jihad after 9/11 attacks.  

The first mosque of Thawheed Jammaath in Beruwela was set up in 2002. It immediately triggered a major push back from local moderate Muslims. Periodic sectarian clashes continued for the first decade. However, despite initial resistance, Thawheed Jammaath persisted, supported by large donations from Gulf states. More and more Muslims were lured into new Wahhabi brand of Islam. Financial and political calculations also led local Muslim political leadership to extend political patronage to creeping Wahhabism at the expense of moderate Sufi Islam. They may not have known the full scale of monstrosity that they were courting, however, their conduct effectively empowered Thawheed factions at the expense of moderate Islam.  
There are more than 200 Thawheed mosques in the country, of which only a few are registered as places of worship. Thawheed Jammaath followers have encroached positions of Ministry of Islamic Affairs and institutions that cater specifically to Muslims.  

Radicalization of Muslims is real and far reaching than one would assume. It cannot be combated merely by banning NTJ and JMI. Thawheed factions that are left out are not much different in terms of ideology they propagate. They may not espouse violence as of now, but, make no mistake, Islamic extremism is evolving and expansive ideology. They also provide sufficient radicalizing impetus. Suicide bombing is just a step away.  

The problem is Sri Lanka cannot ban all Thawheed factions. A good number of Sri Lankan Muslims, in some estimates around 20 per cent of the Muslim population in Beruwela, are followers of Thawheed Jaamaath. Some of them may already be cooperating with Police to nab the followers of their splinter group.  

 On the other hand, banning would drive them underground. Sri Lanka should launch an open dialogue with these communities, at the same time keeping a tab on their preaching and violent impulses of their more zealous followers.  

More importantly, the government should also launch a concerted programme to strengthen the moderate Sri Lankan Islam, empower their preachers, provide assistance to their Madrasas and encourage them to police their own communities for bad apple and to lead a counter radicalization narrative.

Follow @RangaJayasuriya on Twitter   

Jihadis In Sri Lanka

Given the rocky relations between the two ambitious politicians, such a lack of communication is understandable.

by Irfan Husain-2019-04-30

 

Whenever there’s a terrorist attack anywhere, I pray that Muslims weren’t involved. And if they are, I cross my fingers and wish none of them were Pakistanis. In the horror stories emerging from Sri Lanka, I seem to have got my second wish. However, this is scant consolation for the mayhem unleashed by a little-known Islamist group, the National Towheed Jamaath (NTJ), backed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

 

On Sunday morning in the UK, I received a string of text and WhatsApp messages enquiring about my safety. Friends knew that as I do every year, I had spent the winter at our beach house in Sri Lanka, but were unsure about my whereabouts. I immediately went on Twitter to discover the bloodbath that had occurred in Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa. The rest of the morning was spent in trying to find out if our Sri Lankan friends and their families were safe. As the magnitude of the atrocity emerged, I knew that only an experienced and highly trained group could have pulled it off.

 

In their long, brutal civil war, the Tamil Tigers had never deliberately targeted Chris­tians and foreigners. In any case, the defeated remnants of the ethnic Tamil group are too demoralised to attempt such a complex operation. That left Al Qaeda and IS as possible backers of the NTJ. The former has given up launching indiscriminate attacks, so that left IS. So I was not surprised when it claimed responsibility for the multiple attacks. What did surprise me, however, was the revelation that information about the impending suicide bombings had been passed on to Sri Lankan security officials by Indian intelligence a fortnight earlier. Both the prime minister and president claimed they had not been informed.

 

Given the rocky relations between the two ambitious politicians, such a lack of communication is understandable. Under the 19th amendment to the constitution (drafted by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe), President Sirisena has the defence portfolio, and thus responsibility for security. There are reports he did not invite the prime minister to meetings of the National Security Council.

 

Last October, he attempted to remove Mr Wickremesinghe but was thwarted by the supreme court. Since then, their power-sharing arrangement has become dysfunctional. Mahinda Rajapaksa, ex-president and the other claimant to power, has cashed in on this criminal intelligence failure and called on the prime minister to resign. As the next presidential election looms, expect him to ramp up the rhetoric. And as his track record shows, he is not above playing the extreme Buddhist/nationalist card to further his agenda.

 

Perhaps more serious than this squabbling is the backlash against Muslims that I had feared. Although the government has tried to cover up the ongoing attacks against Muslim families and businesses, there have been multiple reports of anti-Muslim actions, especially from Negombo, a largely Christian area.

 

Sri Lankan civil society has been appalled by this mindless (though understandable) backlash. One friend has announced her intention to stand guard outside Colombo’s Jumaa Masjid at Friday prayers. People remember how monks of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) led mobs who killed several Muslims following a petty altercation near Kandy a couple of years ago.

 

There is a deep undercurrent of nationalism among elements of the majority Sinhalese who basically say that Sri Lanka is for Buddhists, and the minorities live there on sufferance. This is despite the fact that Muslims constitute only nine per cent of the population; many of them have descended from Arab traders who came to the island centuries ago.

 

There has never been a history of discord between Muslims and Christians in Sri Lanka. So if the aim of the NTJ and IS was to create conflict between the two minority communities, they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

 

In the small town in the south a few kilometres from our beach house, there are a couple of mosques, three churches and several temples. While the Muslims largely keep to themselves, I have never heard of any attacks on their peaceful community. But now, there is palpable fear of a backlash.

 

One warning sign I have observed with increasing (and depressing) frequency is the way younger Muslims now dress: women often wear the full burqa, while even teenage boys sport long, Saudi-style dishdashas and straggling beards.

 

Sinhalese also complain about the lack of cleanliness in Muslim neighbourhoods and the consumption of beef in a country that largely avoids cow slaughter. All this is grist to the BBS mill. After Sunday’s slaughter, these memes are likely to be magnified.

 

Another aim of the attacks was probably to cripple the economy. Tourism, after the setback of last October’s constitutional crisis, was just recovering when the bombers struck. It will be a long time before the country can calculate the full cost of a colossal intelligence failure.

Easter Sunday Bombings: Convene A Parliamentary Select Committee

By Arun Kumaresan –APRIL 29, 2019

Arun Kumaresan – Air Vice Marshal (Ret’d)

To identify Public officials in all sectors who acted as stooges to the Political authority

A week has gone since the Easter Sunday bombings, and to the credit of our intelligence agencies and security agencies, they have shown their professionalism in their ability to swiftly react and contain. But these ‘positives’ need not make us complacent as this gruesome incident had all the hallmarks of a preventable event. Our law enforcement’s and security agencies’ professionalism has been repeatedly compromised by the political authorities over decades. This resulted not only in anarchy and mayhem but also allowed criminals, drug mafia, murderers, etc to roam free after committing heinous crimes against populace. They also continue to aid and abet to reelect their political masters thro all dubious means. In this context, whilst all ambits of these flaws cannot be investigated due to the exhaustive nature of such flaws by our political authorities, at least, the following needs an urgent scrutiny by the legislature to stem this tide of ‘utter impunity’ by our political authority. As a reference point to facilitate the said PSC, following points are tabulated:

• Did Mr. Azath Salley (the present Governor WP) and All Ceylon Jammiyathul Ulama (ACJU) President Sheik M.I.M. Rizwi inform as far back as January 2014, the existence of a religious fundamentalist organization with documentary evidence to the then  Secretary Defence Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa ?

• What action was taken on Mr. Azath Salley’s information or whether both of their assertions are mere fabrication?

• The law enforcement attempted to stop a protest march in late 2014 in Panchikawatte/Maradana area, by this organization that carried out the Easter Sunday bombings. Who gave the instructions to allow this march to proceed?

• Did National Thowheed Jama’ath (NTJ) or any members of the said organization receive state patronage and funding to work as intelligence operatives and/or underworld political activists? 

• Did Mr Azath Salley inform the Secretary Defence in January 2019 & then again recently in the presence of CID officials, the threatening nature of the said organization with credible information?
• Did All Ceylon Jammiyathul Ulama (ACJU) President Sheik M.I.M. Rizvi Mufthi, give details about the NTJ Leader Mohamed Zahran to the then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando in January 2019 ( & to any other previous holders of the said office )?

• Did politically powerful interfere in the investigations into an ammo & explosive haul recently recovered that appeared to be connected to NTJ enabled the release of the suspects who were under custody?

• Did Indian Intelligence inform thrice with specific details such as names, targets etc?

What action was taken by those who received the said intelligence information?

Was this information brought to the notice of the National Security Council and if so who were the members present and what directions were given by the Council?

• Identify the reasons for counter action not being initiated and ascertain any hidden complicity that prevented such actions or was it due to mere utter lethargy?

• What was the delay in convening the National Security Council when summoned by Hon. Prime Minister immediately after this horrific incident?

• Who prevented the Hon. Prime Minister entering the meeting room of the NSC at the Ministry of Defence on that sad day this incident took place and who made him to wait for approximately 30 minutes? Identify the reasons behind such action?

• Who were involved in giving instructions that caused the delay in convening the NSC??

• Ascertain from the Secretary to the President and the Secretary of Defence the reasons for not inviting the Hon. Prime Minister and the State Minister of Defence 

for a single meeting of the National Security Council held after October 2018; and

for a majority of meetings held between the periods 2015 to Oct 2018.

Read More

EATING BITTERNESS AGAIN

Capt Elmo Jayawardena-Tuesday, April 30, 2019

I will make this article short, simply because what I am writing is extremely sad. Two hundred and fifty plus totally innocent people died on Easter Sunday morning due to random bomb explosions. Many more were maimed and are fighting for their lives in hospitals. The extremists who are responsible would have had their own reasons for creating this terrible tragedy. Everyone has reasons for everything they do: but does that give them the right to kill innocent people? They planned, they came, they bombed, and the ones who paid the price were people who had gone to church on this Black Easter to pray and those who sat at a table to enjoy a celebrative breakfast.

So we heard the sirens again of ambulances carrying the wounded screaming to reach hospitals. Shell-shocked by-standers in semi-zombi mode were talking in whispers, making attempts to figure out what had happened. A ghostly silence shrouded everyone and those who were old enough were dragged back to pre-Nandikadal days which we have almost forgotten in the last ten years. It is four days as I write since the first bomb went off in Katuwapitiya. The gloom has gathered around everyone. And it has spread across the island like a weed-clogged wave. We do not know what happened except bombs killed people and we do not know why it happened. We also do not know what is going to happen. In some ways it is a dejawu of the days of our ethnic conflict. We fed on bitterness for three decades, the taste is well remembered and that is what is most frightening.

Grieving families

I paid my humble respects to a dear friend, Menik Suriyarachchi and her daughter 10 year-old Alex. They both died in the Negombo blast. I shook the husband Sudesh’s hand mumbling meaninglessly as I was totally incapable of any form of consolation with words. What can you tell a man who had lost both his worlds, the loving wife and a darling daughter? Driving back from the wake I thought of my old basketball friend Remigius Perera of Shamrocks and Sri Lanka fame. He had gone to Kochchikade Church for Easter mass. His final ‘time-out’ was called by a vicious suicide bomber who did not know him at all. Didn’t know Remigius was a simple tall man who played basketball. He didn’t have to die like this leaving a grieving family totally bewildered for the absolute waste of it all. That is what is so sad about this, everyone who died or got maimed had nothing to do with anything that is connected to this carnage.

Then came the aftermath and they started passing the political blame ball. It was embarrassing to watch them on television screens. I do not have any knowledge of security strategies and how they are implemented. But when a big-wig says we didn’t know this was so big, I wonder where he draws the death toll demarcation line of what is big and what is small? Then The Island editorial states that a senior minister dropped a bombshell at a press conference. I too saw it on a broadcast of ‘Ada Derana.’ He categorically stated that some people were arrested as suspects of terror activities in January; places were mentioned and so were the bomb-making equipment they were caught with. A terrorist training camp was mentioned. According to his revelation a powerful politician used his influence and got one of the arrested freed who was subsequently identified as one of the Easter Sunday suicide bombers. Suspected terrorist, police arrest and then released through someone’s political clout. Where is the bombshell without a name? Who is this un-named Rumpelstiltskin? Two hundred and fifty innocent lives lost. Their devastated loved ones sure have a right to know.
Terror attack warning

By April 11 it is said that there was a warning of a terror attack given by an intelligence arm of a friendly neighbouring country. The warning was repeated and with some details and names and it was also mentioned that the probable date was Easter Sunday and the attack would be against Catholic churches. The so-received information was printed and distributed to the relevant people in the helm of national security. It certainly would have gone to many a nook and corner so much so that an elderly gentleman on a hospital bed had warned his politician son to avoid going to church on Easter Sunday as there were stories going around of a possible bomb attack.

The Minister who was warned by his father lying on a sick bed may not have gone to church. So would the masses that were killed had they known the possibility of this horrendous tragedy.

I know for sure there were 5 other people who didn’t know of this possible heinous crime. My friend Menik Suriyarachchi and her little darling daughter did not know. So was my basketball friend Remigius who had no idea of any planned bomb attack. That is 3 out of the 5 people who definitely were unaware. The balance two knowing would have made all the difference.

Unfortunately, they happen to be the Captain and the Vice-Captain of our nation. What kind of a circus is our governing administration? Who is responsible for this breakdown of vital communication? Will they ever be exposed and charged for their negligence? Or like so many other instances will all this end up under the proverbial carpet?

Looks like we are on track again to eat bitterness, as if 30 years weren’t enough.

That is the sum-total of this unbelievable chain of events. What I wrote here is what I gathered from the newspapers and from the television channels.

Who knows what is true and what is not? As sad as this situation is what is infinitely sadder is the mockery I see at times in press conferences and the ones who make vain attempts grinning like clowns to pass the buck, whilst some others try to pick Brownie Points at the expense of a national tragedy.

Two hundred and fifty innocent lives that were lost on Easter morning should not be pawned for political excuses or political gain.

Sadly, all that of course, come straight from Diyawanna Oya.

Global terrorism threatening democracy should be tackled at global level

The Easter Sunday attacks are the work of an extreme group and should not be used to castigate a particular religion or faith – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

• Enemies of Democracy – Part 2

Call for rising above narrow prejudices or biases

Monday, 29 April 2019

The gruesome killing of unsuspecting civilians in Sri Lanka by an extreme Islamic group connected to Islamic State or IS last week has been roundly condemned by local – religious, political, and civic – as well as global leaders.

The message delivered by all of them had one common plea: This is the work of an extreme group and it should not be used to castigate a particular religion or faith. In other words, everybody expected the masses to behave rationally and act beyond narrow personal prejudices and biases. This is in line with common characteristics which we all inherit.


Man has divided himself artificially

We, Homo sapiens or Men the Wise, are same everywhere genetically. Thus, unlike animals of different groups, they can merge and reproduce offspring that are fertile and capable of reproducing themselves. Nature has no division of human beings. It is humans who have divided themselves artificially into different groups.

Ethnically, people have divided themselves as white, black, yellow or brown. Culturally, Eastern or Western. Faith-wise, Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists. Thus, the whole world is a diverse society and when one lives in such a society, one has to accept, appreciate and understand different practices which others are following. If one group tries to impose its systems on others, it leads to conflict, conflict to suspicion, suspicion to hatred and hatred to aggression.


Destruction of man through implosion and explosion

When a society fails to check the boiling aggression, the inevitable result is man attacking man in numerous ways. First, it may be at a psychological level where people of other ethnicities or faiths are condemned in public. Then, it can spread to physical levels causing physical harm to them. Both these attacks are destructive.

The psychological attacks convert man into a subdued being by forcing him to suppress his intellectuality. It leads to destroy man from within causing implosion. The physical attacks destroy him by setting a process of explosion from outside. Sri Lanka had witnessed both these types of attacks being hurled by one community against another with total impunity.

The latest has been what it went through last week where some extreme Islamic elements had gone into action causing bloodshed and mayhem.  Whoever who is causing such mayhem, it is a threat to democratic coexistence by denying right to live and right to prosper peacefully.


Man has always been battling with himself

But throughout history, mankind has been destroying each other on these lines. In the middle ages, there were battles between Islam and Christianity. Each side wanted to finish the battle by annihilating the other. Of them, the most gruesome was the battle for Jerusalem, which was claimed as the seat of faith by both parties. As documented by Oxford educated historian, Yuval Noah Harari, in his Sapiens, in some instances, the carnage made by battling humans was so gruesome that the streets of Jerusalem had been flooded ankle-deep with human bloods.

But with the general economic prosperity created by the advent of the industrial revolution, the focus of battle got shifted from religion to economics. Both the first and the second world wars were fought not for religious supremacy but for economic supremacy. However, in the recent past, while economics is still the main cause, the focus has shifted to ethnicity and religion. Accordingly, the extremists belonging to all religions have begun an all-out war against other believers.


It’s a global terrorism today

When these wars have spread from a centre to faraway places on the planet, they have become globalised terrorism. One such group which has taken terrorism to global level in the recent past has been the Islamic State or IS aspiring to convert the whole world into a single Islamic State on the line of the Caliphates that existed many centuries ago. Though its military power has been checked by counter military attacks in Iraq and Syria, its seat of administration, it seeks to show its strength by conducting isolated terrorist attacks in other parts of the world. Thus, the recent terrorist attack orchestrated by IS in Sri Lanka has been in line with this strategy. All it had to do was the use of its financial strength and ideological concoctions to recruit local agents to carry out the attacks.


Resemblances with economic globalisation

Thus, in many respects, it bears a close resemblance to economic globalisation. Both have origins in a foreign land, involves fund flows, recruit local workers and produce an output for the global market. The only difference is that economic globalisation produces a desired output called a global good, while global terrorism produces an undesired global output called a global bad. While the global good adds to the welfare of people, the global bad does the opposite. Hence, the latter has to be forced on protesting consumers by using terror tactics.


Willing and unwilling followers

What do global terrorists want? They have brewed an ideological concoction unique to them and want to send that bitter mixture down the throats of others by using coercion. First, they come up with verbal threats and those who yield to their threats willingly are hailed as their own brethren. Then, they target the unwilling. This group is coerced to accept their line of thinking and the worldview they have painted at the threat of causing physical harm. This group forms the unwilling followers.


Terrorist edict: Destroy who don’t obey

Thus, even the followers have two different class statuses, the willing always getting precedence over the unwilling. All others are vilified as enemies deserving to be destroyed. A lot of human efforts, talents and financial resources are then spent to plan and execute the destruction. The modus operandi usually takes the following form.

First, the foot soldiers who are to carry out the destruction on the ground are indoctrinated with an extreme religious ideology. They are often told that there is only one religion which is true in the world which is theirs. When others practice different faiths, it prevents them from attaining the ultimate goal of going to heaven. Thus, they are told, those obstacles have to be removed.

That is the greatest service they can perform for God from whom they have got everything in life: livelihood, success at examinations, career advancement, family life, intelligent and super children and so on. Hence, it is morally correct to destroy all others who practice different faiths. Then, the deadly schemes are funded out of moneys raised globally for the purpose. Weapons and explosives are acquired, foot soldiers are lined up and the final assault on those who stand in their way to reach heaven is carried out.

Global terrorism should be tackled by global action and not merely by national action. This is because global terrorism is a global bad like global warming affecting all the nations in the globe. Today, it is in Sri Lanka. But tomorrow, it will be in another country. Hence, these incidents are not isolated ones confined only to national borders of a country. The terrorists will continue to fight their war with the global community since they have the necessary ideological backing, funding and a continuous supply of foot soldiers to fight their war. Thus, the global community should get together in order to fight this war. For that purpose, a global action programme should be drawn with common funding, intelligence sharing and joint collaboration. Without this, any action taken by individual states to eradicate terrorism with a global origin will not be a success. It is therefore time for the global community to work together

No dearth of voluntary foot soldiers
On earth, those who have sacrificed their life in the hope of going to heaven are hailed as martyrs. Though there is no evidence that they have reached heaven as expected, those on earth continue to believe so. Hence, when one person has sacrificed his life, there are many more to take his place. As a result, there is no dearth of volunteers willing to sacrifice their life for the sake of their faith. Thus, carnage continues and since it is directed from foreign lands, national governments fail to eradicate it.


Mistrust is a threat to democracy

Democracy thrives in an environment where people trust each other. At an individual level, a person should trust his neighbour, his employer, businessmen who supply his needs, teachers, religious leaders and so on. This trust is needed to build personal human relations as well as numerous economic relations which a person has to have. But the fear with which everyone gets inflicted due to terrorist attacks, because it is his or her life which is at stake, causes them to mistrust everyone. At every corner of the street, he will see death approaching him. Therefore, he will not step out of the house. Even when he is inside the house, though it may be fully protected, he runs into unexplainable fear if he is disturbed by the slightest noise coming from outside. As the proverbial Sinhala saying says, he will see a terrorist even in a water basin in the kitchen.


Reinforcing fear in people

Once a person is inflicted with fear, the first casualty will be the rational thinking and sanity. Friends, relatives, media personnel, politicians, religious leaders, knowingly or unknowingly, contribute to reinforce fear in him.

Immediately, after the recent terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, I continued to receive messages, posters, short audio clips and videos which all asked me to be careful and to be on the alert because there are all kinds of Sri Lanka’s enemies who are at work to destroy this beautiful island. It appeared that the objective of the senders of these unsolicited messages was to drive fear into me. When one examines them carefully, one would soon find that the messages conveyed or stories narrated do not stand to reasoning. Yet, the gullible people swallow them without subjecting them to any critical inquiry or background checking.

Without stopping at that, they re-forward these fear-striking messages to their contacts as if they are doing some service them. But, knowingly or unknowingly, they help terrorists to achieve their goal: striking fear into their target group.


The fallacy of a strong man

The fear that is built in the minds of people and the consequential irrational thinking then become a fertile ground for the appearance of person in the guise of a saviour but with some dictatorial ambitions with him. This is the biggest danger to democracy as I have argued in the previous article in this series (available at: http://www.ft.lk/columns/Enemies-of-democracy-–-Part-I-Demand-for-a-strongman-to-rule-the-country/4-676699 ).

The danger with such saviours is that at the time they get power, they appear to be fully docile and well-intentioned. But sooner or later, after they have tasted the power, they become monsters making it impossible for people to remove them resorting to normal democratic processes. The authoritarian rules that are created in those countries, as I have argued, tend to suppress freedoms of people in the name of national interests.

To get the people’s support for the repressive actions, feelings of nationalism are aroused among the citizens. Once they are intoxicated with nationalistic feelings, they are presented with a host of enemies threatening the very existence of the nation. All repressive and authoritarian actions are justified on that ground. Hence, without due checks and balances in place, it is inappropriate to call a strong man to assume power simply to eradicate the menace of terrorism in the country. The post-2009 period in Sri Lanka is a testimony to this.


Global origin of the present terrorist attack in Sri Lanka

The present terrorist attack in Sri Lanka has a global origin. IS has set up a terrorist cell in the country in order to destroy the targets of its choice as and when it chooses to do so. They have funded the cell, supplied it with explosives and provided training to foot soldiers. Sri Lankan armed forces will be successful in apprehending the local agents and bringing them to justice. But it will not end the threat of terrorism, since its global masters are still at work.

What this means is that global terrorism should be tackled by global action and not merely by national action. This is because global terrorism is a global bad like global warming affecting all the nations in the globe. Today, it is in Sri Lanka. But tomorrow, it will be in another country. Hence, these incidents are not isolated ones confined only to national borders of a country. The terrorists will continue to fight their war with the global community since they have the necessary ideological backing, funding and a continuous supply of foot soldiers to fight their war.

Thus, the global community should get together in order to fight this war. For that purpose, a global action programme should be drawn with common funding, intelligence sharing and joint collaboration. Without this, any action taken by individual states to eradicate terrorism with a global origin will not be a success.

It is therefore time for the global community to work together.
(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com.)

Bloody Easter Sunday: Terrible tragedies and pathetic explanations

 

by Rajan Philips-April 27, 2019, 7:16 pm

The worldwide coverage of Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday calamities has established most of the facts about the stunning scale and coordinated execution of the bombings, and raised some fundamental questions about the external dimensions to this tragedy, its internal agencies and the senseless way they have implicated the social and political interests of Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, and above all the abject failure of the divided Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration to act on more than sufficient prior information and potentially prevent the Easter Sunday Tragedy. The former Army Chief Sarath Fonseka rightfully lambasted both the government and the (joint) opposition in parliament for their collective omissions. As he said, the entire government deserves to stand down and resign itself before the people.

General Fonseka pulled no punches at the Rajapaksas for failing to lay the foundation to develop a professional security intelligence apparatus for the state after the war, instead of using state resources to spy on and silence political opponents and personal enemies. Even now, it is political calculations rather than genuine concerns that seem to be driving the leading figures of the establishment – that includes Sirisena, Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksas and their entourages, in their reactions to the Easter Sunday tragedy. With elections on the radar, the potential candidates will do everything to shift blame and gain political mileage. This is reprehensible but not at all surprising.

To be clear, while taking to task the establishment leaders for their collective failure, we should not divert from the hugely individual and familial tragedies involving over three hundred people who died and over five hundred who were injured on Easter Sunday. The majority of them had congregated to celebrate mass on Easter Sunday, which marks the resurrection of Christ, one of the two most canonically important religious celebrations on the Christian calendar (the other is not Christmas, but the arrival of the Holy Spirit, fifty days after Easter). The others were unsuspecting tourists, many of whom were repeat visitors to the island. It will take many seasons to fully repair the psychological scar that Sri Lankan tourism was dealt last Sunday. While we cavil at the Sri Lankan establishment and commiserate with those who suffered, we should also applaud the hundreds of Sri Lankans – the individual medical doctors (thankfully, the GMOA has kept its mouth shut so far), emergency relief workers and ordinary good Samaritans, who rose to the occasion to compensate for the disaster that their leaders had collectively failed to prevent.

Going by the news reports and commentaries over one whole week, it seems to me that the American government, and - for different reasons, the Indian Government, are officially more worried about the tragic events in Sri Lanka than the island’s establishment figures. A few American commentators have called the Easter Sunday attacks as the biggest coordinated terrorist attack after 9/11 (2001) in New York and Washington. Both Indian and American agencies have reportedly been providing intelligence information to Sri Lankan authorities. Although the American Ambassador in Colombo has denied that her government had any prior knowledge of the attacks, that does necessarily mean there was no intelligence sharing by American agencies. The FBI officially arrived in Sri Lanka after the tragedy to help the Sri Lankan government with the investigations.

There are no doubts, however, about the information provided by India. India alerted Sri Lankan officials on three occasions – a coincidental number for the Holy Weekend, recalling St. Peter’s three disownments of Christ after his agony in the garden ofGethsemane. The first was on April 4, second on Holy Saturday, and finally on the morning of Easter Sunday before the services. The warnings were not acted upon and the explanations have been pathetic. More heads should have rolled, and should continue to roll, than the singular and the open-mouthed head of the Defence Secretary. Many questions remain and below is a representative selection of them.

Probing Questions

The Heads who were not informed: This has been the stock explanation of the Head of State and the two, but divided, Heads of Government. Many people believed the Prime Minister when he confessed that he had not been kept in the know – about information provided by India. That seemed believable given the antipathy between President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and the Sirisena’s exclusion of Ranil Wickremesinghe from National Security Council effectively since October. But when the President belatedly arrived from Singapore and added that he, too, was left out of the intelligence loop about Easter Sunday warnings, it did not convince anybody but only added a ton of suspicion to the vast national disbelief in our political leaders.

If the people are to believe that the President is not lying, he should do something more than get only the resignation of the Defence Secretary. He should also explain on what basis he kept the Prime Minister out of the National Security Council (NSC) and ordered the NSC officials to disregard the Prime Minister. The President might have been getting wrongheaded advice that he has the power to do anything with the Prime Minister except firing him. But Sirisena should know that even unlimited powers do not give the President the right to act like a mad hatter and endanger national security.

The Prime Minister’s insouciance: The President’s exclusion does not absolve the Prime Minister of his own omissions. He should have protested this serious breach of national security protocol at the top of his voice in cabinet, in parliament and to the country at large. That he did nothing of the kind is a monumental dereliction of duty considering what the country had to suffer on Easter Sunday as a result of the petty political games between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Sirisena’s puerile games are well known, but Ranil Wickremesinghe may have been playing his special long game – giving Sirisena the long rope to hang himself by keeping quiet about his (RW’s) being kept out of the national security look. And not for the first time, the Prime Minister’s cunning has boomeranged, except this time it has taken a huge toll of lives on the country.

Security sleep at the switch: Was it only the breakdown in high level communications that left the police and security forces to literally sleep at the switch until they were woken up by the early morning blasts on Easter Sunday? Or was there anything deliberate in not disseminating the information given by India and not acting on those warnings? What surprised and angered many people was the lightning speed with which police and security forces began arresting suspects, and arresting them in stunningly large numbers. Obviously, police had information on these suspects and when a warning was given about impending attacks targeting churches and hotels, it should have been obvious to anyone to connect the two dots.

The New Year holidays the previous weekend has been suggested as a potential reason for the security lapse. The lapse was really a crime and holidays can never be a mitigating factor. Another red herring is about the President’s war on drugs and the attendant neglect of security issues. This red herring has spawned its own conspiratorial red herring – that vested interests who are alarmed by the President’s war on drugs wanted to create a diversion away from the world of drug business. Are the drug lords smiling now? No cause is implausible after a plausibly preventable tragedy has occurred in spite of prior warnings about it.

In 1962, it was the tormented senior police officer’s (Stanley Senanayake) drunken loose talk at home that led to the government being alerted by the officer’s father-in-law (P de S Kularatne) in the nick of time to foil a well-planned coup d’etat against the first government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike. In the light of the crucial role that rumours and gossip play in Sri Lanka, especially in Colombo’s establishment and political circles, it is difficult to believe that information about a major attack could have been so severely ignored only as a result of negligence. Will the Presidential Commission of Inquiry be able to separate truth from gossip and rumour and let the people know what really happened?

Political interference and Police indifference: A remarkable development immediately after Easter Sunday was the rallying of several Muslim community leaders not only condemning the senseless attacks on Easter Sunday, but also complaining that police and their political masters have consistently failed to take action even though community leaders had been warning about extremist activities of miscreants who were fully free to put their plans into action on Easter Sunday. On Easter Monday, Minister Kabir Hashim dropped a political bombshell accusing "a powerful politician" of forcing the police to release from custody a suspect who had arrested over incidents in Mawenella. The released suspect became one of the suicide bombers on Easter Sunday. The identities of individuals who carried out the attacks and the influential politicians who allegedly sponsored them or protected them from police action have all been exposed now.

The main worry, however, should be that these interferences are systemic, and they fit into the larger practice of government and political leaders telling police what to do and what not to do. The practice in its most blatant form was started and perfected by the Rajapaksas. The main reason the present government could not firmly put an end to this practice is because the two main government leaders separately wanted to protect the Rajapaksas from prosecution. Once you start politically interfering with the system, you cannot limit the beneficiaries to be only those whom you like. Rank outsiders can also benefit and wreak havoc after they are set free. That’s what the nine suicide bombers did on Easter Sunday. They are now known to be who they were. But what is not known sufficiently is the broader of cast people in the establishment who knowing or unknowingly sat on their hands when the prior information from India was swirling around. They too serve, who only sit and wait.

ISIS and the Indian Factor

For the whole of last week until the statement by Brigadier Chula Kodituwakku on Friday, virtually all detailed reports were provided by the Indian, American and British media, and they were reproduced by the local media. A missing component in the reporting of the information provided by India to Sri Lanka is whether and how Sri Lankan officials engaged their Indian counterparts after the information was passed on to them. As far as I have seen, there has been no report of any serious engagement by anyone in Sri Lanka with anyone in India, or even with the Indian High Commission in Colombo which was making its own arrangements to protect its precincts, to follow up on the information provided by India. This lacuna raises a number of questions, and one would hope that the Presidential Commission of Inquiry will spend some time probing this matter. The main question is weather there is a tendency in Colombo to downplay any information that comes from India. And whether President Sirisena is part of this bias.

No doubt, there is an understandably entrenched bias against India within the Sri Lankan establishment circles. But how far will Sri Lanka go cutting its security nose to spite India? At one point, India played the regional-imperial role in aggravating Sri Lanka’s national question, although it was the blunders by successive Sri Lankan governments that enabled India to gatecrash into Sri Lankan politics. At a later point, India was forced to deploy its army against the LTTE and eventually extend a strong helping hand to the Sri Lankan government to exterminate the LTTE. Putting old and recent histories aside, there is much common ground between India and Sri Lanka in dealing with the fundamentalist abuse of Islam (that is the true phenomenon, and not Islamic fundamentalism which is a misnomer) and its violent manifestations in India and in Sri Lanka.

A special feature of this common ground is the linguistic and cultural affinities between the Muslims in South India and Sri Lanka. Indian intelligence reports have alluded to connections between fundamentalists and militants in the two countries. Moderate community leaders in both countries should establish their own connections to combat the rising menace of extremism. The Sri Lankan government for its part must focus on developing better relationships with state governments in South India. The establishment leaders in Colombo will do their countrymen a great service by striving more to co-operate with state governments in South India rather than flying to South Indian shrines and consulting South Indian astrologers.

At the same time, it would be regressive and counterproductive to seek a chauvinistic commonground based on Hindutva in India and Buddhist extremism in Sri Lanka to counter Islamic extremism. Hindutva is the mode of operation for Prime Minister Modi. A Sri Lankan version of that would be the preferred mode someone like Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Barring Pakistan, South Asia has provided a buffer against the spread of extremist ideologies from the Middle East into Asian countries. The basis for this resistance has been India’s secularism. The rise of Hindutva and other religious extremism will only fan the flames of extremism on all sides. For Sri Lanka, it would be a colossal folly.

The birth of the hotchpotch movement for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is in many respects a reaction to the failure of west’s interference in the Middle East, and its support of the state of Israel against the stateless Palestinians.President Trump has dropped all the pretentions of his predecessors and fully aligned his America-First policy with the Israeli-Only policy of the re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu. Even though Trump has found common cause with Arab countries who are opposed to Iran and ISIS, the fundamental source of the Arab world’s resentment against America and the west is not disappearing anywhere. Even though, ISIS has been dealt a crushing territorial defeat, its capacity to sporadically sprout attacks in far flung places is a constant worry to the Americans.

The Easter Sunday attack in Sri Lanka is being seen by the Americans is one such attack in a far-flung location. As commented in the New York Times yesterday, the Sri Lankan attacks came four weeks after the "ISIS caliphate was erased in Iraq and Syria, four months after Trump had declared victory over ICIS. Even though there is no overarching evidence about the role of ISIS in the Sri Lankan attacks, observers have pointed out the many indicators of ICIS’s inspirational involvement in the attacks. They view the Sri Lankan bombings as a "harbinger for a new phase of ISIS attacks."

Whatever might have been the provocations for its genesis, the methods and madness of ISIS do not belong in a civilized world. Since Sri Lanka has been sucked into its orbit, it has no choice but to act in concert with others. But a greater part of what Sri Lanka can and must do involves domestic politics and the way in which the state will reconfigures its relationship with its plural population and address their specific resentments. Historically, political resentment among the Sinhalese was manifested by the JVP insurrection, the LTTE took the Tamil resentment to unprecedentedly deadly levels, and now the Muslim resentment has been devastatingly played out by a small group of Sri Lankan Muslims on Easter Sunday. But unlike the JVP and the LTTE, which had no external inspiration, the National ThowheethJama’ath, or its splinter group, would seem to be driven almost entirely by external (ISIS) inspiration.

The external inspiration did not start with ISIS, or come about in a sudden flash. It has been building up over a number of decades and through multiple channels. Yet, without dismissing the domestic support for the Towheeth group as lunatic fringe, it is fair to say that the overwhelming feeling in the Muslim community to the group and its actions on Easter Sunday is one of horror and revulsion. The current and future governments must consolidate this sense of horror and revulsion among broad sections of the Muslim community and encourage them to push back on the fundamentalist abuse of their religion by small groups of misguided individuals.