As the investigation into the devastating Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka continues, the biggest question right now pertains to a gross intelligence failure. A confidential security memofrom a top police officer to division headshad alerted the government of the possible attacks 10 days in advance.
The information contained names, phone numbers, and whereabouts of suspects involved in the spate of explosions that ripped through the island nation; it had been collected from both national and international security agencies.
The US and close regional ally India had reportedly been tracking the growth of National Thowheeth Jama’ath for a while and had also warned Sri Lankan authorities as early as April 4; the warning said the radical Islamist group was planning an attack with a broader anti-Christian agenda.
So why did no one do anything about it?
Aftermath of the attacks
The suicide bombers-led coordinated attacks claimed 321 lives, with ISIS claiming responsibility for it on Tuesday although members of the NTJ are believed to have carried it out. Sri Lanka remains on edge as intel reports warn of further attacks; police officers found 87 bomb detonators at a crowded bus station in capital Colombo on Monday.
This is the first time the country has ever had to worry about minorities (Muslims account for 10% and Christians 6% of the Buddhist majority-population) posing a threat to each other. But the lack of alacrity and extent of disorganisation among government and security officials point to a massive intelligence failure that could have been averted but for the political infighting since 2018.
Immediately after the attack, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe admitted he wasn’t briefed about the warnings, confirming that since the feud last December, President Maithripala Sirisena and his parliamentary cronies left the PM ignorant of the information the security agencies possessed.
This has led to bitter recriminations post-April 21, raising questions about its contribution to “a spectacular security breakdown” and creating a new government crisis.
Where India figures in all this
Indian intelligence agencies have been monitoring the Indo-Pacific region for any sign of activity by Al-Qaeda or the ISIS. In particular, they had the movements of NTJ leader, Mohammed Zaharan, on their radar. Zaharan is reportedly a known extremist who has spent time in both India and Sri Lanka, preaching hateful messages online with greater frequency of late.
As early as April 4, India had provided Sri Lanka cellphone numbers and information about Zaharan and his lieutenants, who they said were planning suicide attacks on Catholic churches and the Indian Embassy in Sri Lanka, several Sri Lankan and Indian officials told the media.
Sri Lankan security agencies are believed to have run a few of these addresses and put a few NTJ members under close surveillance, which was what they’d put together in the April 11 memo.
According to Reuters, Indian intelligence officials also warned Sri Lanka about the threat to Catholic churches two hours before the first blast. Following the attacks, India has suggested that Zaharan might be hiding in eastern Sri Lanka.
So what did Sri Lanka do with this intel?
According to the New York Times, the country’s security agencies knew as far back as January that radical Islamists possibly tied to the group had stockpiled weapons and detonators. The April 11 memo even had the timings of visits a key recruiter for NTJ paid his wife.
Yet, nobody made a move to preempt the attacks until it was too late, neither was any warning communicated to any target; managers and employees of the largest luxury hotels in Colombo said they had not received any alert.
Instead, crucial information was deliberately withheld from key ministers.
International observers have found it surprising that within hours of the bombings of three churches and three hotels, Sri Lankan security services managed to detain at least 24 suspects (40 so far), suggesting they knew exactly where the group had been operating and targeting.
Displacing blame onto constitutional crisis
On Monday, several ministers severely criticised Sirisena for not acting on the detailed warnings before the attacks and leaving the PM out of the loop; others have demanded the immediate resignation of the national chief of police.
According to senior advisor Shiral Lakthilaka, who believes the attacks weren’t a result of security lapses, the president has appointed a special committee, led by a Supreme Court judge, to investigate the matter. However, he acknowledged that the April 11 memo had been circulated only among police officers in charge of VIP security.
Yet, Junior Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene, an ally of Wickremesinghe, did not make it to this inner clique, as he told Reuters about not having an inkling of the Indian intelligence findings.
Had the president, who controls the security services, not excluded the PM from top security briefings, would the outcome have been any different? Wickremesinghe believes it would have, claiming he and his allies would then have insisted on more security at the targeted sites. The failure to effectively respond to the warning is glaring evidence of a constitutional crisis undermining national security.
In October 2018, Sirisena fired and replaced Wickremesinghe with Rajapaksa who had, since then, been sacked by parliament twice. In spite of that he refused to resign, fuelling a political gridlock at the Centre in December. On December 16, the ousted PM was reinstated and sworn in again.
Why this matters
Although all the suspects detained so far are locals, foreign links are not being ruled out. Preliminary forensic reports have found that some of the explosives were incredibly powerful, and coordination was beyond the scale of a relatively unknown group like the NTJ. To pull off such a catastrophic attack as Sundays, it would have needed helpbut from whom?
Regional expert Michael Kugelman rightly argues that an Islamist radical group, if it wanted to stage an attack in Sri Lanka, would rationally target Buddhists (the demographic majority) and not Christians, the minority. That would further fit in the scheme of things since anti-Muslim violence recently took hold of central Sri Lanka, fed by rumours spread over social media about attacks on Buddhists.
With ISIS and vengeance for Christchurch motive entering the picture, all evidence points towards a concerted arrival of Islamist extremism in Sri Lanka. That very prospect puts a pin on the widely held belief that the group has been badly degraded ever since its caliphate was wiped out in Iraq and Syria last month.
It is well known that ISIS has existed longer without territory than with it, so eliminating it geographically is not good enough, especially with reports suggesting it is already morphing back into an insurgent group with branches across the world, including Nigeria, Libya, Egypts Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, and aspiring branches in Bangladesh, Somalia, and Indonesia.
At the same time, with such an extensive internal crisis in governance, one cannot also rule out the existence of a deep-state operating in Sri Lanka. The island nation ended a bitter 26-year civil war in 2009, after the military defeated Tamil separatist rebels. Conflicts between ethnic minorities and the Sinhalese-Buddhist populations are quite common even today.
Now with Sirisena declaring an emergency, security services have been bestowed with sweeping powers to arrest, interrogate, search, and seize. The extra-judicial collateral impact cannot be ignored, considering the country’s history of suppressing civil rights in the time of war. Sirisena has already announced that a restructuring of the force’s top rank and file is on the cards.
Meanwhile, the dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in effect; many schools and shops are still shuttered; traffic in the capital and airport terminals remains light; travel advisories raised by several nations have slowed down tourism in peak season. And after the enforced social media outage on Sunday that drew both praise and condemnation, Sri Lanka may even be contemplating a burqa ban in light of the bombings.
Prarthana Mitra is a Staff Writer at Qrius