The lessons Sri Lanka did not learn from the Easter Sunday attack, and will regret one day

MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam accused the NPP Government of failing to fulfil its promises regarding human rights and accountability

The Chemmani mass grave was extensively excavated from 1999 to 2006, and 15 skeletons have been found  

Debates over the Easter Sunday attacks involve exploiting this immense national tragedy for political and personal gain  

Last week, Parliament erupted with allegations and counter-allegations in yet another adjournment debate over the Easter Sunday Attacks. ITAK MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, who moved the motion on behalf of the Opposition argued that the NPP government, which promised human rights and accountability, including ‘revealing the truth about the Easter Sunday attack’, had failed to fulfil its promises, including in the Easter Sunday attack and ‘recent mass murders’ revealed in the Chemmani mass grave. The latter might need clarification, though; it is not the focus of this column.   

Chemmani mass grave, which was disclosed by former soldier Somaratne Rajapakse, the main accused of the murder of Krishanti Kumaraswamy and three members of her family, was extensively excavated from 1999 to 2006, and 15 skeletons were found. Several soldiers were initially indicted for the murders, and Rajapakse is serving a life sentence. The mass grave currently under excavation is different from the site pointed out by Rajapaksa and is a former burial site at Ariyalai, Sindhubathi. On February 13 this year, construction workers who were there to build a crematorium found human remains, leading to allegations of a mass grave. So far, 33 skeletons have been found, including some toys and a school bag. Skeleton remains should be carbon dated and subjected to forensic examination to identify the circumstances of their death and the approximate period for which the government has allocated 12 million rupees. Only the forensic findings could establish whether they were victims of mass murders, as ITAK MP and a host of the Tamil diaspora have alleged. This does not mean to dispute the fact that Sri Lanka had a violent past, and victims of the untrammelled violence in the past should receive justice. But the unholy enthusiasm to jump the gun is not exactly a quest for justice. Rather, it betrays an ulterior motive to profit from the pain of the survivors, and probably win a consolation prize for the vanquished LTTE.  

Earlier, a carbon dating report by a US-based laboratory found six skeletons in another mass grave in Mannar as belonging to the era between 1499 and 1719 AD. Another mass grave in Matale was carbon dated to a period before 1950.   

The debate over the Easter Sunday attacks follows the same pattern of exploiting a monumental national tragedy for political and personal interest. Predictably enough, last week’s Parliament debate did not produce any new findings on the investigation. Instead, it became a political football to be kicked around by petulant members of Parliament. Rather than ‘revealing the truth,’ there appears to be an overwhelming vested interest in implicating the Rajapaksas in the gruesome crime. The most ludicrous end of this premise is the argument that a group of Islamist fanatics, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, had killed themselves to bring a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist to power. On the other end, at the bare minimum, it argues that Rajapaksas, who were not in power at that time, created permissive and enabling conditions for the Islamic State-affiliated local terrorists to carry out the attack. The latter boils down to an incident where two low-level military intelligence operatives were accused of planting evidence to implicate two former LTTE cadres in the murder of two police officers in Vavunathivu on November 30, 2018. The murders were later attributed to the accomplices of Zahran Hashim. Another is an allegation made by asylum seeker Azad Maulana to Britain’s Channel 4, implicating former director of military intelligence Major General Suresh Sallay as having met Islamists in a hideout in the East, during the very period Major General Sallay claims he was in India pursuing his NDC course at the National Defence College. Local investigators should investigate these discrepancies rather than mouthing allegations of a self-seeking asylum seeker, who, in fact, left the country only after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted, and he, Maulana himself, was investigated for financial crimes.  

Multiple terrorist attacks on churches and tourist hotels on Easter Sunday killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners. It is no brainer that if even a remote complicity of the state apparatus in facilitating the attacks is suspected, these countries whose citizens were slaughtered on that day would have stood up, demanding justice and resorting to their own national initiatives to bring culprits to justice. Instead, the Australian National Police have informed that they have concluded investigations while the FBI and the US Justice Department indicted three suspects, who are currently in a Sri Lankan jail, over the Easter Sunday attack. Also, the FBI, in an extraordinary affidavit submitted to the District Court of Central California, identified Zahran Hashim as the mastermind of the Easter Sunday Attacks.   

However, politicians in this country are so callously politicking over a national tragedy.  

Anyone with a basic idea of national security who peruses the chain of events leading up to the Easter Sunday attack would recognise a cascading intelligence failure that made the attack possible. The Vavunathivu incident is not the only smoking gun. A month later, on Christmas Eve, Buddhist statues in Mawanella were vandalised and police arrested four youths in connection. Subsequent investigations led to the discovery of a large cache of explosives and detonators in Wanathawilluwa.  

However, instead of actively investigating and putting in place proactive security measures, there was lobbying to release two sons of a politically connected Moulavi, arrested in connection with the Mawanella incident. Then, a personal aide of Kabir Hashim, who helped the police to trace the Mawanella vandals, was shot at home. No arrests were made. Two dispatches of intelligence warnings by Indian intelligence agencies about an impending terrorist attack were completely ignored and not even discussed at the National Security Council. The day before the attack, an explosion was reported in Kattankudy as the Islamists tested their explosive devices. Still, no actions were taken.  

Why there was a cascading intelligence failure was not hard to establish. That was due to the politicisation of national security and intelligence operations. President Maithripala Sirisena considered an overly assertive investigation into Islamist extremism in the country to be detrimental to his relations with constituent Muslim parties. He precluded the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) from investigating extremist Muslim factions. He handed over the sole authority of investigations to his erstwhile Director of State Intelligence Services (SIS), Senior DIG Nilantha Jayawardene, who seemed more conscious of the president’s sensitivities than the impending national security danger.   

In the absence of clear political oversight and a mandate from the civilian political leadership, different intelligence apparatuses, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, SIS, TID, CID and others, instead of cooperating, obstructed and competed with each other.  

The not-so-overt discomfort of the head of the state and the commander-in-chief towards proactive investigation into Islamist extremism, itself, prompted security officials, who would naturally prefer not to cross paths with the political leadership, to make their calculations. As a result, intelligence agencies lost initiative.   

What led to the Easter Sunday attack was the absence of a unified national strategy and a unified intelligence apparatus to combat extremism. The politicisation of the national security and intelligence apparatus effectively resulted in their fracture, confusion, leading to a lack of coherent strategy and a mission.   

The result was that a bunch of home-grown Islamist extremists prevailed and carried out the deadly Easter Sunday attacks, though warning bells were ringing for a long time, and a proactive intelligence service would have pre-empted them.   

The primary lesson of the Easter Sunday Attack for Sri Lanka is to avoid repetition. That might need to identify the main cause of this cascading failure, which is the politicisation of intelligence.  

The second is to build a unified intelligence apparatus that cooperates in a unified mission rather than compete and undercut each other in parallel investigations.  

Third, considering Islamist extremism is a transnational threat, Sri Lankan intelligence apparatus should cultivate cooperation with international counterparts, not just for the sake of it, but to engage in active intelligence cooperation.   

Fourth, though it may be politically unpalatable, is to be mindful that Islamist terrorism is not a one-off incident. Grass roots racialisation, Arabisation, foreign religious text books, foreign preachers, and the growing influence of Wahabism are all contributing factors to extremism, though it may not take violent manifestations immediately. Violent extremism is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger radicalisation process and extremist enterprise.  

Sri Lanka should learn lessons from the tragedy and strive to avoid repetition. That is the greatest honour we could extend to the victims of the Easter Sunday attack.  

Instead, politicians in this country are politicking over our collective pain.   

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