Only something is rotten in the state of Southern Lanka? No, everything is rotten in the state of Southern Lanka. Only a full day has passed since the Easter Day bombings in Southern Lanka, but the world is watching closely. These bombings were dastardly, devastating, and coordinated. But be careful to trust the easy explanations that have come out from the SL govt or India because their easy explanations don't add up. To understand why, let's consider each possibility, find where they break, and use what we learn to the most plausible theory for who's behind the attacks (hint: the call is coming from inside the house!)
Popular but deceptive narrative
So many articles like this one declare that we were so close to reaching peace after the Tigers were defeated in 2009 (nevermind the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians who were killed; the use of chemical bombs and cluster bombs when doing so; the bombing of hospitals; the lack of accountability, demilitarization, rebuilding).First of all, when there is, still to this day, 1 soldier for every 2 civilians in the North, for the last 10 years, that is not peace. That is occupation, militarization, harassment, and an intentional prevention of rebuilding. With no truth finding allowed, there can be no justice, and without justice, there can be no reconciliation, and thus no peace. Peace is much more than the absence of violence. And we should know that threat of violence is tantamount to violence, right, if the intimidation achieves the same oppressive result as actual violence. Armed military going to your kids elementary school to get involved in their affairs, military occupying your farms and selling your vegetables -- this is not peace.
Second of all, reaching a full 10 years without a major explosion does not get you a certificate for peace. You were not close. It's just that SL has been clever to use superpowers against each other to deflect negative attention. SL and Myanmar continue to follow parallel trajectories, and while the world already became fully disillusioned with Myanmar's genocide continued by Aung San Suu Kyi's government, it is time for SL to receive the same spotlight.
Who do they currently say did the bombings?
Some reports say that the bombs were suicide bombs. This has been reported in a few major international publications. But these are govt sources. The same govt that claimed 0 civilian casualties in their genocide of Tamils in 2009 using multi-barrel rocket launchers, and chemical and cluster bombs. Right now, some of these publications are using that info to infer that it could only have been ISIS, and if they don't explicitly say so, then they're implying so.But the motives don't match up to the targets and the timing. Why target rich foreign (Western) tourist civilians and local Christians? Why do so in SL? (Most of those Christians happen to be Tamils, keep in mind.) Why wait until Easter Day in 2019, almost a full 10 years after the end of the war against Tamils?
Who can we rule out?
We can rule out the Tamils from involvement -- many of the Tamils are Christian, and many of the Christian victims in these attacks are Tamil. It couldn't possibly be done by the Tigers, who were defeated in 2009. The Tamils (and Muslims) of the Northeast (Tamil Eelam) have been defenseless since the absence of the Tigers and suffering under oppression. With the heavy military and intelligence presence in their homeland, and the oppressive conditions they live in, forcing them into economic hardships, there is little willingness to resume violence and worsen their already terrible conditions. Less than their willingness is the sheer possibility of any attack, let alone such a complex and coordinated one.It wasn't done by the Muslims of SL. While the majority of them speak Tamil, they identify separately as Muslims. But they have peacefully coexisted with Tamils for several centuries in the Northeast. It was a little more than a year ago that they were victims of right wing Buddhist mob violence. Those "riots" were coordinated by nationalist Sinhala Buddhist groups, most notably the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) ("Buddhist Power Brigade"). The BBS is known to mutually support Mahinda Rajapakse, and by extension, his crazier brother Gotabaya, both who were deeply involved in the genocidal war against Tamils. The BBS escaped any sort of punishment during that episode last year, but it was clear that Sinhalese were the perpetrators, and that the government was to blame. So wouldn't local Muslims want to get revenge on either the hardline Sinhala Buddhist nationalists or the SL govt? (Let's be real - since Ceylon's independence, there's no difference between those 2 options.)
What's worse, last year after those anti-Muslim attacks, in order to shirk responsibility, the "progressive" Sinhala intelligentsia attempted to use the backlash against social media to deflect any criticism to Sinhalese or the Sinhalese-dominated government. In a time when Facebook was increasingly being scrutinised for its role in helping elect Donald Trump as president in the US, and Facebook was being blamed by the Burmese govt for allowing Burmese racism to spread, SL jumped on the irresponsibility bandwagon too, blaming its racist history on social media. Where was social media when the SL govt systematically executed Black July in July 1983 for a full week, shutting off media to the outside world, allowing mobs to use voter lists to target and kill Tamils, and deploying police and army to the scene who just stood by and watched? Where was social media for 1981, 1977, 1974, 1971, 1958? SL is a racist country, full stop. The problems well precede social media. So, now, knowing how cavalier the Sinhala Buddhist establishment has been to Muslims, why would SL Muslims decide to attack Christians and rich white people, on Easter day, no less? Why create new enemies instead of targeting the real enemies? It makes no sense.
It's not the US or the West -- this much is obvious.
Now, does India stand to benefit? Perhaps a little, if only because it makes Western influencers (donor countries, foreign investors, rich tourists) much more hesitant to engage with SL. This allows India to maintain its relative control over the region despite the increasing US involvement. But it would be foolish to do so because the bigger concern for India is the accelerating Chinese involvement that has past the point of no return. After the last presidential election, when people heralded the joint govt of Wickremasinghe and Sirisena as some liberal Western-oriented surprise outcome, in which they would cut down their ties to China created by the Rajapakse family's tenure, it took less than a year for SL to reverse course and re-embrace China. Most notably, the big project in Colombo gives China a 99-year lease on the city that it's building off the shore of Colombo for itself. To announce its arrival to the region, China docked a submarine in Colombo twice within a month in 2014, and despite India's immediate anger after the first time, China did it again with impunity. China is here to stay in SL. More obviously, India would have a lot of money to lose from Western companies with manufacturing hubs in India and Western IT companies with offices in India if they found the region to be unsafe and unstable.
Who stands to benefit the most?
What will happen if this period of uncertainty and panic persists? Well, a more exaggerated example of that happened in July 2001 when the Liberation Tigers cut through a wire fence and blew up a dozen parked fighter jets and a half-dozen parked empty passenger planes at the Colombo airport and adjacent air base. The shipping and insurance companies immediately levied high premiums, and the export- and tourism-based economy contracted for the year 2001 by 7%. The economic woes resulted in pressure on the ruling govt, so the president dissolved parliament to force new elections for Dec 2001 which were duly won by the opposition. This kind of event leads to an inevitable change in government.Gotabaya and the Rajapakse family by extension are the clear beneficiaries of the attacks. There is already a growing resentment with the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena joint govt that has been ruling since 2015. The tensions between them boiled over just 6 months ago and almost resulted in Mahinda Rajapakse being instated as prime minister. That attempt ultimately failed, and term limits prevent Mahinda from running again, so it is Gotabaya who must carry the torch. The popularity of Mahinda is still palpable. Even though Ranil is a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist with the best of them, in the same way Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese nationalist who is unmoved by the genocide of Rohingyas, SL's populace had concluded long ago that he was not Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist enough. He was not anti-Tamil enough. So a regime change would see Ranil out, the Rajapakses back in. Sirisena, who used to be Defence Minster when the Rajapakses executed genocide of Tamils in 2008-2009, will humbly step aside in that eventuality. Even most Ranil supporters cannot deny that he was not effective at executing any of his own policies. The Rajapakse family's strong authoritarian persona is currently seen as a positive by the Sinhala populace in the face of security concerns -- after all, they "ended the war" in 2009.
Furthermore, the next SL presidential elections are happening in 6 months. What does an attack on a country like this do in the lead up to an election? It tilts support in favor of the more hawkish candidate. The Indian elections are currently ongoing, and just 2 months ago in February, PM Modi was looking weak in the polls and unlikely to get back to being PM. The Pakistan attack in Kashmir at the time, and his response a week or so later with fighter jets in Pakistani territory made him look tough, and he used the opportunity to gain a lot of PR and sympathy, to the point where it's not clear any more how the election results will end up. Attacks between India and Pakistan are not common, so the timing of this attack was quite convenient for Modi. The pre-election timing in SL is similar, but the scale of these attacks will make the coverage last longer, and the effect greater. SL election campaign coverage will be dominated by this issue.
And then there's China who is the secondary beneficiary. The Rajapakses will come back to power, and when they do, any previous notions of "re-balancing" between China-India or China-West go out the door. China, with its newfound wealth, encourages its people to become tourists to SL. China cannot replace the West's entire budget for SL exports, but it can certain fill the void left by the West's imminent reduction in demand.
Why Gota on Easter?
Most people are not discussing the elephant in the room, here. Gotabaya is going to run for president, and as part of the rules, he must first give up dual citizenship status, so he is renouncing his US citizenship. In order to not lose the opportunity for universal jurisdiction, Tamils based in the US are filing lawsuits against him for his role in the human rights abuses in 2008-2009 before that citizenship is fully processed for revocation. Gotabaya see those court cases as purely made up to prevent him from contesting for president, or at least a cloud that would hang over him if done so. Previous attempts against Mahinda were thrown out in the courts because the courts believed that such an action is political, and as such, the US govt must authorize an action against a head of state in a manner that defies norms of diplomatic immunity. So not only would Gota think the court cases against him now are political, but that they are tacitly supported by the US all of a sudden, in a change of policy. Remember how Gota said, immediately after the defeat of the LTTE, that before the West criticizes SL for war crimes, the West should first prosecute themselves (US and UK) for war crimes? Of course he hasn't forgotten. And let's be honest, the BBC Hardtalk interview in 2010 showed how crazy Gota can be. So it wouldn't be beyond Gota to be willing to knowingly harm the country's economy just to send a message to the West that he should not be trifled with. It has been only 10 days between the news of the lawsuit and these attacks. And Gota has kept up the tradition he started in 2009 (start at 18:34 mark) of flying off the handle in interviews with those manic eyes and wild anger that causes his words to jumble up. Or the creepy smile of disingenuous talk worthy of a Bond villain. If what I am suggesting is true, it also means that planning the bombing of places frequented by rich tourists from Western countries (including the US) would incur the intense active opposition from such countries. But then again, the Rajapakses have played a dangerous game of angering the West since 2009 and have faced virtually no consequences yet.Why it is not Islamic State
This theory of Islamic State, aka ISIS, aka the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, being the organization to have carried out these attacks is also far fetched. Even though they have fought a coalition of rich Western countries whose citizens are victims in the attack, the strategic value of SL, all the way across the Indian Ocean from Iraq and Syria, is very dubious. Besides, any sort of international group capable of carrying out such attacks still needs a locally-based cell to carry out the attacks. And with the level of military presence and surveillance all around the country, even 10 years after the war, it is highly unlikely that such a locally based group can exist without the knowledge and tacit support of the SL govt.Why it is not other far-feteched reasons
Do not be fooled by made-up self-serving theories peddling by the various actors in the region. For example, the Indian publication The Times of India is peddling the idea that a violence Muslim group based in Tamil Nadu is responsible for the attacks. The plausibility here suffers for the same reason as the Islamic State theory -- how could such a group coordinate without local assistance that wasn't carefully monitored by the SL govt? Such a theory plays well into the hands of Indian PM Modi as he continues to campaign while the voting process rolls on for another few weeks and are counted a few weeks after that. Modi has already benefited in opinion polls from the Kashmir attack due to his persona of toughness on security matters. Modi has always wanted to punish South India for resisting his BJP party, especially Tamil Nadu, in the most stereotypical North Indian condescending way possible. This theory seems to be in the minority currently.Taking a tragedy that you caused and blaming it on your opponents is exactly what GoSL did during Black July in 1983. They first blamed the Communist political parties for a day before blaming the Tigers, even though they coordinated the whole week long attacks.
Not fully convinced?
Take a look at these tweets:(read the tweets above in the stream, all 1-5 points)
https://twitter.com/CChristineFair/status/1120023625493614592
and as a follow up to reserve judgement but hold suspicion for GoSL statements and motives:
https://twitter.com/CChristineFair/status/1120083048329089027
In conclusion
Keep following the news for updates, but keep your thinking cap on. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.Read more!
