Post by Admin on Apr 23, 2019 17:23:39 GMT
Was there any warning?
On April 11, a top Sri Lankan police official reportedly issued an advisory warning of potential suicide attacks on churches. (This letter has not been independently verified by Foreign Policy.) In that advisory, deputy inspector general Priyalal Dassanayake wrote that a radical Islamist group called National Thoweeth Jama’ath was planning nationwide attacks.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged that some information about a planned attack had been circulating. “We must also look into why adequate precautions were not taken,” he said.
Wickremesinghe’s comments could be interpreted as a criticism of President Maithripala Sirisena, the commander of the country’s security forces.
Sri Lanka’s politics has been in turmoil recently.
Sirisena became president in 2015 after he won a surprise victory over the strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had controlled the country’s politics for more than a decade. Sirisena appointed his ally Wickremesinghe as prime minister, and the two set out to reform the country’s economy and seek accountability for atrocities committed during the country’s civil war.
But Sirisena and Wickremesinghe fell out in 2018, leading the former to suspend parliament and appointhis one-time rival Rajapaksa as the new prime minister. Weeks later, under pressure from the country’s Supreme Court, Sirisena reinstated Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Relations between the two have not recovered, with observers expecting Sirisena to seek a fresh mandate at the polls.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s economy has grown at a tepid 4 percent, the currency has weakened, and Colombo has struggled to repay loans from donors such as the International Monetary Fund. In one case, Sri Lanka lost a major port—as well as 15,000 acres of land—to China after it could not repay funds it had borrowed for infrastructure projects.
A history of violence
While it’s unclear if the country’s history played a role in Sunday’s attacks, Sri Lankans have experienced decades of sectarian violence. In 1948, Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, won independence from British rule. The country’s Sinhalese majority, countering what they saw as colonial favoritism toward Tamils, disenfranchised Indian Tamil migrants, leading to the groups’ neglect.
That led to the formation of an armed insurgent group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1976. The group initially campaigned for a Tamil homeland in the country’s northeast. But the movement turned violent, with the LTTE attacking police and army forces as it sought greater national prominence. The Tigers became known for their suicide bombings, which they were among the first militants to pioneer, and deployment of child soldiers. In 1997, the U.S. State Department officially designated the LTTE a terrorist group.
For years, Sri Lanka’s army—mostly Sinhalese and Buddhist—carried out campaigns to root out the insurgents from their hideouts in the country’s northeast. The war finally ended in 2009 after the army killed LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. But watchdog groups say both the LTTE and the army were guilty of war crimes and rights abuses. According to the United Nations, about 40,000 civilians were killed in the final stages of the civil war.
Tourism dropped sharply during the war years, hitting a low point after a tsunami devastated Sri Lanka in 2004. There were only 500,000 visitors in 2009; the industry has since recovered to attract 2 million visitors last year.
Even so, the tensions of Sri Lanka’s bloody history have lingered. The final, intense period of the civil war left hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced, thousands of whom are still missing. Communal tensions reignited last year: In the central district of Kandy, Buddhist Sinhalese mobs attacked mosques and Muslim establishments. In response, Colombo imposed a nationwide state of emergency. In 2016, Sri Lankan authorities reported that 32 Sri Lankans had joined ISIS, but the terrorist group is not known to have a presence in the country.
On April 11, a top Sri Lankan police official reportedly issued an advisory warning of potential suicide attacks on churches. (This letter has not been independently verified by Foreign Policy.) In that advisory, deputy inspector general Priyalal Dassanayake wrote that a radical Islamist group called National Thoweeth Jama’ath was planning nationwide attacks.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged that some information about a planned attack had been circulating. “We must also look into why adequate precautions were not taken,” he said.
Wickremesinghe’s comments could be interpreted as a criticism of President Maithripala Sirisena, the commander of the country’s security forces.
Sri Lanka’s politics has been in turmoil recently.
Sirisena became president in 2015 after he won a surprise victory over the strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had controlled the country’s politics for more than a decade. Sirisena appointed his ally Wickremesinghe as prime minister, and the two set out to reform the country’s economy and seek accountability for atrocities committed during the country’s civil war.
But Sirisena and Wickremesinghe fell out in 2018, leading the former to suspend parliament and appointhis one-time rival Rajapaksa as the new prime minister. Weeks later, under pressure from the country’s Supreme Court, Sirisena reinstated Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Relations between the two have not recovered, with observers expecting Sirisena to seek a fresh mandate at the polls.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s economy has grown at a tepid 4 percent, the currency has weakened, and Colombo has struggled to repay loans from donors such as the International Monetary Fund. In one case, Sri Lanka lost a major port—as well as 15,000 acres of land—to China after it could not repay funds it had borrowed for infrastructure projects.
A history of violence
While it’s unclear if the country’s history played a role in Sunday’s attacks, Sri Lankans have experienced decades of sectarian violence. In 1948, Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, won independence from British rule. The country’s Sinhalese majority, countering what they saw as colonial favoritism toward Tamils, disenfranchised Indian Tamil migrants, leading to the groups’ neglect.
That led to the formation of an armed insurgent group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1976. The group initially campaigned for a Tamil homeland in the country’s northeast. But the movement turned violent, with the LTTE attacking police and army forces as it sought greater national prominence. The Tigers became known for their suicide bombings, which they were among the first militants to pioneer, and deployment of child soldiers. In 1997, the U.S. State Department officially designated the LTTE a terrorist group.
For years, Sri Lanka’s army—mostly Sinhalese and Buddhist—carried out campaigns to root out the insurgents from their hideouts in the country’s northeast. The war finally ended in 2009 after the army killed LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran. But watchdog groups say both the LTTE and the army were guilty of war crimes and rights abuses. According to the United Nations, about 40,000 civilians were killed in the final stages of the civil war.
Tourism dropped sharply during the war years, hitting a low point after a tsunami devastated Sri Lanka in 2004. There were only 500,000 visitors in 2009; the industry has since recovered to attract 2 million visitors last year.
Even so, the tensions of Sri Lanka’s bloody history have lingered. The final, intense period of the civil war left hundreds of thousands of Tamils displaced, thousands of whom are still missing. Communal tensions reignited last year: In the central district of Kandy, Buddhist Sinhalese mobs attacked mosques and Muslim establishments. In response, Colombo imposed a nationwide state of emergency. In 2016, Sri Lankan authorities reported that 32 Sri Lankans had joined ISIS, but the terrorist group is not known to have a presence in the country.
