Geopolitics Of The Easter Attacks: The Weaponization Of Religion Amid Hybrid War (In The IOR)

Catholics, Buddhists and Muslims hold silent protest to demand truth about Easter Sunday massacre SL Time, Colombo Page News Desk, Sri Lanka.

By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake –APRIL 3, 2021

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

“We have met the enemy and he is us” — Walt Kelly from Pogo Comics, quoted in “The ISIS is US: the shocking truth behind the Army of Terror”[1]

“Crime is a form of communication that is both complex and fascinating as it is always characterized by a relationship that can be established between elements present and something absent, or yet to be discovered…Investigating a crime and trying to prevent recurrence means evaluating every possible voluntary and involuntary message left by an author..”[2]

On the first Sunday of March 2021 church congregations in Sri Lanka were joined by Buddhist monks and prominent Muslims for a multi-religious protest to mark “Black Sunday”; the second anniversary of the deadly Easter Sunday suicide bombings that rocked the country two years ago, killing 279 people and injuring many more.

Local and national religious leaders, aware of the on-going weaponization, fragmentation, and use of religion/s against core values such as ahimsa or non-violence, by external actors interested in advancing their geopolitical interests in this strategically located Indian Ocean island, stood together to call for justice and accountability for the victims of the mysterious ISIS claimed attacks. Protestors held placards and demanded: “Tell us who the masterminds are?”

The simultaneous attacks staged at 7 different luxury tourist hotels and coastal churches at Easter 2019 were mysteriously claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS), far from this strategic Indian Ocean island.

The carnage that sent the country into lockdown and the economy into a tailspin was clearly designed, hybrid-war style, to cause maximum damage to both Economy and Society. The attack was clearly staged by a global-local network while the design of the crime reflected foreign interests.

Sri Lanka is in the cross hairs of great power rivalry as a hybrid cyber Cold War unfolds in the rapidly militarizing Indian Ocean region as big states use transnational religious networks and cultural ‘soft power’ and religious terror narratives including the Islamophobic ISIS narrative, which Delhi-based academic Saeed Naqvi has deemed a ‘diplomatic asset”, to cultivate local-global networks of political influence and bi-partisan corruption rackets to advance their geostrategic interests.

While the attack on hotels was meant to cripple the tourist-dependent and highly indebted island economy, the attack on churches was meant to cause a cascade of inter-religious violence and destabilization of this multi-religious country, rendering it vulnerable to foreign boots on the ground or even to a foreign military base being set up to purportedly ‘protect Christians from ISIS terror’ in the rapidly militarizing Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

However, since Christians and Muslims are minorities in this Buddhist-Hindu cultural majority country and have historically enjoyed excellent inter-religious relations, it appeared that the foreign masterminds behind the Easter crime had miscalculated and imported a Euro-American “Clash of Civilizations” narrative that has little traction in multi-religious South Asian context. There was no local history or motive for a clash of civilizations between Christians and Muslims who had amicable interreligious relations in the island.

From a local perspective, the designers of the crime seemed to have targeted the wrong religious community, and so the masterplan behind the deadly Easter crime began to unravel with his eminence Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith declaring that the attacks were staged by international actors who benefit from destabilizing regions and countries and weapons sales.

It was in this context that the powerful Buddhist clergy of Sri Lanka, who have historically confronted colonial projects, backed the Arch Bishop’s demand for accountability and joined the Black Sunday protest to compel the Government of Sri Lanka to deliver the truth about the masterminds behind the attacks since the recently released Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) Report into the crime had revealed no new analysis regarding those behind the attacks.

For non-recurrence of such violence, identifying the master minds and holding them accountable would be surely imperative.

Chinese targets in Easter attacks: fundamental questions unanswered in PCoI Report and other investigations

Fundamental questions, or perhaps co-incidences such as why the leader of the attacks, Zahran Hashim and a second suicide bomber both targeted and died at the Chinese owned super luxury Shangri-La Hotel on Colombo’s sea front rather than in a church or Buddhist temple if their crime was primarily religiously motivated, have been ignored in investigations.

Aside from Shangri-La the other hotels and churches that were bombed were hit by just a single suicide bomber. There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that Zahran Hashim, leader of the National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ), the obscure group blamed locally, knew about or was concerned about Uyghurs in China.

Intelligence experts also pointed out that a leader of a terror group would never kill himself at the outset, and suggested that the attacks were staged by other actors fronting the local National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ).

Four Chinese marine scientists in Sri Lanka for joint marine exploration lost their lives in the attack on the Kingsbury Hotel.  Remarkably, the US and Indian owned, Hilton and Taj Hotels that are next to Shangri-La were untouched.

The global and local narrative after the Easter carnage focused on religious motivations in the Easter attack and elided the economic and geopolitical dimensions, while some foreign experts suggested that they were staged in retaliation for attacks on a mosque in New Zealand, a claim that was dismissed by the NZ Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden!

Too many strategic Chinese targets to be a co-incidence? Did the designers of the Easter attacks use religion as a partial smoke screen? While media attention and investigations have been focused on the churches that came under attack, the media narrative has been crafted to obscure the vital facts of the crime that may provide clues to the masterminds and messaging evident in the geopolitics behind the Easter carnage and its economic motives.

There has been a veritable infodemic regarding swords in mosques in the local media although no one died of sword attacks. Various other stories about ISIS setting up a Caliphate in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka were circulated by international experts.

Since answers to fundamental questions were missing after 2 years of investigations, people from all religious communities on the island came together to voice their disappointment with the Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), that increasingly appeared to be a bi-partisan party political ‘cover up”, especially of the international actors behind the attack. It was perceived by many locals as part of a larger hybrid war on both the economy and society of Sri Lanka caught in the midst of a Cold War waged by USA and its NATO allies and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad friends, on China.

In the wake of the attacks the Foreign Minister, Managla Samaraweera announced that the US Govt. was ready to disburse the 450 million as a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), ‘grant’ that would give US companies access to land and transport sectors to be re-structured despite a great deal of opposition from Sri Lankan Trade Unions and civil society groups.

Finger Prints in the Design of the Crime point to Hybrid War and local-global networks

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