Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

Because the Indian Ocean is sort of the world’s energy interstate and China will have a maritime presence, perhaps even a naval presence in some distant morrow. So the opening of this port in south Sri Lanka is of real geopolitical significance.” ~ Robert D. Kaplan author of Monsoon[1]

Crime is essentially about meaning and semioticsis the ‘science of interpretation’ ~ Marcel Danesi

Six weeks after 2019 Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, it was open secret among Colombo’s diplomatic community and intelligentsia that Saudi Arabia knowingly or inadvertently had funded and certainly had prior notice of the attacks, while the United States of America had prime motive to stage the Hollywood-style shock and awe” suicide attacks, mysteriously claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS), two days later. An Israeli new Agency called Whitestream meanwhile claimed the suicide bombers were funded by BITCOIN, but dropped the narrative after Bitcon threatened to sue.

Sri Lanka is a 70 percent Buddhist county with around ten percent each of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and hence the Euro-American, Christian-Islam Clash of Civilizations” narrative has little traction in the island where the Christian and Muslim communities have historically excellent relations–a detail that seems to have confounded the Masterminds of the attacks on selected churches and luxury hotels in a carefully planned logistics operation.

The US had planned to sign the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, after the attacks that effectively paralyzed and destabilized the country for weeks when acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan would visit the island after the Shangri la Dialogue in Singapore.

SOFA would enable American troops to enter the strategically located Indian Ocean Island in an emergency” such on Easter Sunday to fight ‘IS terror’ and yoke Sri Lanka to its War on Terror. The strategic Indian Ocean island which would be effectively rendered a servicing and intelligence logistics hub (code for military base), centered on the coveted Trincomallee deep sea natural harbor in the Eastern Province, which some ‘terrorism experts’ claim IS wants for its Caliphate. There is no evidence to suggest that IS has blue water ambition.

IS in Sri Lanka and a Steep Geopolitical Learning Curve

While many countries have lifted travel warnings seemingly confident that no more attacks are forthcoming six weeks later, in the streets of Colombo heightened anti-American sentiment is apparent:  There is a sense that larger global forces are circling, playing and preying on the country. Thus, the English language Island newspaper on quoted award winning Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: the rise of Disaster capitalism” that describes how CIA tested economic and environmental shocks” are administered to bend societies to the will of the American Empire and related business and security interests. [2]

As the shock of the Easter carnage ebbs in Sri Lanka questions regarding the motives embedded in the empirical detail and design of the crime have come to the fore. There is a growing divide between international expert narratives that claim IS was responsible and local perception that the US had a hand in the Easter attacks. Some commentators have suggested, following Tony Cartalucchi, a former US Marine intelligence officer that: the US deliberately created ISIS to serve as a pretext for illegally occupying Syria after the invasion of Iraq..  and will continue to use ISIS’ convenient expansion worldwide to justify a continued, global US military presence worldwide as well.”[3]

The insular and nationalistic general public of strategically located Ceylon/Sri Lanka, ‘islanded’ for generations by several centuries of European colonialism and post-independence Euro-American occupation of the Indian Ocean, suddenly seems to be going through a steep learning curve regarding the country’s geostrategic and geopolitical futures as questions are being raised as to who funds, owns and operates the shadowy IS network?

Shocks and terrorists, economic and environmental Disasters, also provide opportunities for learning and growth– if only local and global political leaders who seem impervious to learning lessons would stand aside.

Trump’s Pivot to Asia and a Pattern of mysterious attacks

On the last day of 2018 President Donald Trump signed legislation designed to strengthen America’s role in the recently invented Indo-Pacific”. The airily titled Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA) is the most comprehensive statement in a generation of America’s regional interests. It authorizes expenditures of $1.5 billion annually through 2023 to enhance U.S. military, diplomatic and economic engagement with East and Southeast Asian allies such as Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan.

Retrospectively, the IS claimed attacks in Sri Lanka appear as part of a larger pattern of mysteriously triggered attacks and political unrest the South and Southeast Asian region at this time: 1) On February 15 there was an outbreak of near-war in Pulwama on the India-Pakistan Kashmir border during the run up to elections in India; 2) on April 21 Easter Sunday turned into a mysterious bloodbath in Sri Lanka and; 3) in May 22  post-election violence was unleashed in Jakarta, Indonesiaalthough the popular President Joko Widodo was re-elected with a wide margin. 4) unrest is on-going in Hong Kong at this time. As elections loom later this year in Sri Lanka there would certainly be more externally orchestrated attempts to promote Muslim-Buddhist dissention to de-stabilize the country and maintain the US backed (neo)liberal Prime Minister and his network in power.

Indonesia’s economy is South East Asia’s largest.  By 2050 it is expected to be the fourth largest economy in the world, after China, India and the United States, according to PwC. According to BBC’s Karishma Waswani, Police suspected that behind the post-election violence in Jakarta was an attempt to incite anti-Chinese violence as Chinese investment had become a contentious issue in this election as President Joko Widodo had been courting Beijing to invest in much needed infrastructure in the country. Additionally, there has long been resentment against ethnic minority Chinese Indonesians perceive to be wealthier than ethnic Malay Indonesians.

These mysterious terrorist attacks with undertones of religiously inflected social unrest, along with rapid de-escalation in some of Asia’s most populous, multi-religious and culturally diverse South and Southeast Asian countries like India and Indonesia before and after elections framed Muslims as the terrorists” and or miscreants. In many instances Chinese interests and partners emerge as targets in these mysterious attacks.

In the case of the Pulwama attacks in the absence of communication channels between India and Pakistan, U.S, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates played a role in ensuring the quick release of the IAF pilot, Wg. Cdr. Abhinandan Varthaman, thereby defusing the near war situation.  Causing disasters and then providing humanitarian and peace building advice and assistance while selling advanced defense systems is a billion dollar US led global military-business-intelligence industrial complex.

All these attacks occurred in the lead up and following the long-anticipated landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruling that the UK and USA must de-colonize the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Island, located south of the Maldives, where the secretive US military base Diego Garcia operates purportedly to ensure regional security and fight global IS terrorism. Now a CIA Black cite for illegal renditions.

Arguably, unlike the Obama administration’ ballyhoo pivot” to Asia, Mr. Trump’s turn to the East seems darker — bellicose: Strategically located, Sri Lanka sits halfway between Iran and China in the Indian Ocean on one of the world’s busiest energy, trade, and global internet Undersea Cable Routes (UDC). Robert Kaplan termed it the world’s energy interstate”. From post-Easter developments in the recently invented Indo-Pacific” ocean, it appears that a United States led Cold War on China is slowly unfolding in the Indian Ocean at this time, as US war ships position themselves near Iran, and in the South China sea, and Donald Trump’s sanctions on Iran’s oil trade bite. There were attacks on ships in the area, the IS did not claim them. These attacks are attributed to Iran by ‘knowledgeable experts’.

The Rule of Experts and Weaponization of Religion

In the wake of the April disaster in Sri Lanka a fog of contradictory claims  and narratives were crafted by international terrorism experts as to why IS had chosen Sri Lanka for its latest adventure – a deep dive in the Indian Ocean far from familiar mountain and dessert terrain.

It was suggest that Sri Lanka was 1) an easy or soft target” due to co-habitation issues between PM and President although the county had comprehensively defeated the LTTE known as one of the deadliest terrorist group 10 years earlier; 2) the IS needed a publicity boost for its followers to feel good” psychologically after defeats in Syria and Iraq at this time. 3) Sri Lanka President and police have been distracted by a sudden drug epidemic that mysteriously hit the country;  4)  Islamic state was expanding and moving its caliphate to South and Southeast Asia and was pivoting to the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka.

However, as a Bangladesh security expert asked: why Sri Lanka and why not Nepal or any other country with dysfunctional and corrup leaders?Meanwhile, German and British intelligence experts suggested that the images and narratives attributing the attacks to IS were staged” and the video of Al Bagdhadi talking about the attacks have been questioned by Arabic and French intel experts as audio tape had been imposed on the video, again raising questions regarding who is behind the IS narrative, and owns, operates and uses the IS, and who benefits?

  Singapore-based expert Rohan Gunaratne, with known links to the US military business intelligence industrial complex claimed that IS has territorial ambitions to set up a province of its Caliphate in Sri Lanka’s Eastern province where the Trincomalee deep Sea port coveted by USA for a military hub is conveniently located. Meanwhile a Rand Corporation expert and anthropologist, Jonah Blank, suggest that IS operates on a franchise’ model – like a US corporation (Mac Donald’s or KFC?), to cause one off opportunistic adventures![4]Rand’s Blank, who is the author of Mullahs on the main frame”, when interviewed about the terror attacks in Sri Lanka while in Indonesia as unrest was on-going there, provided insight on the US corporate model that the IS is based on. Blank also attempted to connect the Easter crime in Sri Lanka with attacks in New Zealand. However, the NZ Prime Minister Jacinta dismissed out right any connection between attacks on mosques in New Zealand the carnage in churches in Sri Lanka.

The Arch Bishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcom Ranjith meanwhile seemed to hit the nail on the head when he talked about a hidden hand” behind the IS narrative to spread Islamophobia and invite attacks on Sri Lankan Muslims to disrupt the peace, while questioning the general and vague claims that IS was responsible for the attacks in Sri Lanka. The IS narrative is a global grand narrative that has spread Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment (like the Clash of Civilizations” narrative), that was played in Sri Lanka although there is no history or motive for Sri Lankan Muslims to attack Christians since both these religious communities are minorities in Buddhist majority Sri Lanka. We must hence look beyond local ethno-religious identity politics to external and geopolitical forces and actors to explain the enigma of IS attacking Christians in Sri Lanka.

A Game of Thrones?

In the Final analysis ‘playing the blame game’ and identifying local politicians and intelligence agencies that are controlled by external actors is a waste of time. They are bit players in a Geopolitical game of Divide, Distract, loot and colonize.

It is well established that all political parties in Sri Lanka are controlled to great or lesser extern by foreign funding to key leaders or player. M.L.M Hizbullah of Kathankudi certainly directed Saudi funding to the suicide bombers while another Ajaz Hizbullah was jailed as distraction to keep the Human Rights NGOs’ busy after the Easter Sunday attacks.

 Pointing fingures at the UNP or SLFP/PP or Gota, Basil or Ranil Rajapakse as beneficiaries of the Easter Carnage is a distraction because they are all controlled to greater or lesser extent by powerful external actors who wage Full Spectrum Dominance (FSD) warfare in strategic Sri Lanka with access to Artificial Intelligence, Voice cloning software that was also used in the Killing of Dinesh Shafter, primary witness in the Court Case on the 2015 Central Bank (CBSL), Bondscam that stands to be dismissed as the main culprit President Ranil Rajapakse now has immunity.

Gotabaya Rajapakse who later became President after the Easter attacks, with his brother Basil as Finance Minister were both US citizens at the time of the Easter Carnage. They benefited from the de-stabilization and attack on the economy to return to power, but so too did Ranil Wickramasinghe the long-term US favourite, then Prime Minister who lost out, only to be resurrected as President after the Araglaya inspired Regime Change operation last year. Meanwhile, Sirisena was thrown under the bus and blamed for the Easter Carnage. But who really benefited by destabilizing the country and a new round of elections after the Easter Sunday attacks?

(TO BE CONTINUED)