Editorial

One week after the heinous bomb blasts that shattered the calm of an Easter Sunday, the pall of grief and anxiety that enveloped this country, has not lifted.

The dastardly attacks by crazed religious bigots condemned by their own community were another sad chapter of contemporary Sri Lankan history, and compounded by the fact that it could have been avoided, or in the least, mitigated.

Local Intel agencies had the ball, and dropped it. The chronic in-fighting within the Government led them to fall back on blame games and the pathetic “I knew nothing” excuses. The end result was a colossal loss of lives, sorrow and anguish, fear and unease among the people, and a dagger plunged into the tourism-driven economy.

That the Police let the country down is clear. Despite the Constitutional Councils and the independent Commissions, top brass continue to be servants of the political leaders rather than of the people. And now, they have been sold down the river by the very politicians whom they stoop to serve.

The President took over the Police Department last year partly because he wanted to directly supervise the investigation of an alleged assassination plot against him. But he, and those around him clearly did not have the capacity to handle the job.

Last Sunday’s coordinated attacks were anything but unexpected to anyone with a semblance of knowledge on security matters. Here were the Indians who keep a closer tab of radical movements repeatedly telling Sri Lankan authorities – almost on a daily basis — to watch out, and more closer to the date of the massacres, giving specific information. Ask any Sri Lankan policeman who served in the Eastern Province and he would have referred to the increasing radicalisation of the population and the reluctance of politicians in the area to rub the radical leaders on the wrong side. Video tapes of the masterminds spitting venomous hate on ‘non believers’ and the security forces have long been sent to Colombo.

The writing was very much on the wall. Recent arrests of Bangladeshi drug smugglers should have raised concerns of the involvement of narco-terrorism proliferating in the region. The Bangladesh Government itself is having issues with its radical movements and set up a Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Centre to fight moves to support an emerging Caliphate in this part of the world now that it is crumbling in Syria and Iraq.  There were reports that a Sri Lankan had died in the fighting for the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Others suspect that the puppeteers of the local suicide bombers came from Iraq or Pakistan or Qatar or London or Sydney – no one still knows.

Several mainstream Muslim politicians have moved in to protect those persons involved in extremist activities in the recent past – be they in Kattankudy, Mawanella or Wanathawillu. These now show a nexus that led to last Sunday’s coordinated attacks. Unfortunately, they have not learned from the recent past.

Back in November 1970, the then Jaffna SP, R. Sunderalingam, sent a report to Colombo of the political aspect of the illicit trade between Ceylon and South India. No one took notice. In the next few years, radical Tamil youth went to PLO and PFLP camps for weapons training and bomb making. Public receptions were held by TULF leaders for Tamil youth arrested for political violence, and they appeared for the accused in the murder of the Jaffna Mayor. In 1977, retired Supreme Court Justice M.C. Sansoni inquiring into that year’s communal riots referred to the encouragement the Tamil politicians gave the radical youth to indulge in violence, and to take up arms. The rest is history.

The Tamil politicians who protected those radical youth were eventually consumed by them. Let not the present-day Muslim politicians, for short-term political gain, forget history unless they wish to repeat it.

With the promulgation of a state of Emergency, the tri-forces and the police have been provided with the required legal provisions to go catch the remaining perpetrators of the inhumane crimes of Easter Sunday. In the pursuit of the existing cadres, and the ‘sleepers’ however, they too must heed the lessons from the past. They must refrain from breeding more terrorists in the process. They cannot afford to make a bad situation worse.

It is mandatory that they need the support of the people in whatever they do. They must not tar all and sundry with the same brush, rather, clinically identify the cells and isolate the culprits. The Muslim community is in a difficult situation; they cannot disown their faith or support terrorist activity in any form. Many have come forward to help in defusing tension and indeed all Sri Lankans need to do so, before it gets to a point of no return.

The Easter Sunday attacks last week, 77 years after Colombo was bombed on a day like this during World War II, had all the hallmarks and imprint of an internationally motivated plan purely going by the targets chosen – the Church, and the festivities of the day connected with the faith. The Islamic State (IS) took 48 hours to own up to its role in it.

Initially, many bewildered by what had happened asked “why the Christians?” not realising the global war raging between “Crusaders, Infidels, Jihadists” and the West’s inhumane bombings of Islamic nations.  Subsequently, however, with unverified reports of further attacks on targets other than churches, the question arose if the attacks were aimed at the Sri Lankan State. “Why Sri Lanka?”, was next on the lips of others.

Theories abound. The Government’s proximity to the West; retaliation for the war on drugs and so on. But the fact is that this is a terror outfit that can still be tackled with a fingernail before we need a machete, as the local idiom goes. The banning of the burqa is a minor issue, compared with the need to act decisively on intelligence reports and monitor the mushrooming madrasas in the country, which are funded from abroad and have foreign teachers.