The devasting Easter bombings in Sri Lanka are one of the deadliest ever attacks claimed by Islamic State (IS).
The attacks shocked many because Sri Lanka was not an obvious location for IS activity and the group was hobbled after the collapse of its caliphate project in Syria and Iraq. The lack of appreciation of this threat, led to multiple compounding intelligence and security failures .. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/23/sri-lankas-perfect-storm-of-failure-bombings-government-mistakes-terrorism/ .. by the Sri Lankan authorities, which resulted in these deadly bombings.
Yet the attacks in Sri Lanka should not have been all that surprising. While the territorial defeat of Islamic State was an important counter-terrorism win, the attacks in Sri Lanka are a stark reminder of what counter-terrorism officials have been stating for years — IS does not need to hold territory in order to remain a lethal global threat.
Increasingly that threat is presenting itself in Asia.
Photo: Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks via its AMAQ news agency. (AP: Aamaq news agency)
Thinking beyond the caliphate
The collapse of the caliphate and the retreat of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has not diminished the appeal of jihad as a solution to injustice, corruption and poor governance.
Photo: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Reuters)
Growing sectarianism, disinformation and extremism provide openings for the ideology to take hold in people's hearts and minds.
Sri Lanka, and other regions in Asia, fit into Islamic State's broader strategy of gaining a foothold in countries and regions where there is a history of communal violence, where there are weapons and explosives readily available, where political and security structures are weak or weakening.
But practically speaking, how does IS manage to maintain its global reach even while losing its base in Iraq and Syria?
There are three ways:
1. Reliance on its regional networks and affiliates
IS is increasingly relying on its affiliate organisations and networks around the world to maintain its relevance via mayhem and to serve as vectors for its ideology.
IS began preparing for the eventuality of the caliphate's collapse since at least 2015. Instead of calling its followers to travel to Iraq and Syria, it reversed its instruction and told its supporters to migrate to its affiliate organisations or to remain in their home countries and conduct terrorist attacks on their behalf there.
IS has invested resources and energy in developing affiliates and networks in Asia — such as incorporating local groups like Abu Sayyaf and the Ansar Khalifa Philippines in the Philippines under its banner, establishing Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Central Asia with operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and nurturing networks in India, the Maldives and Bangladesh.
IS supporters in Asia are also increasingly networking among themselves with some reports of Maldivians and Sri Lankans training with ISKP.
IS operatives act as handlers for local individuals, guiding their attack plotting, helping identify targets, maintaining their motivation and remotely organising logistics.
The group fingered for the Easter attack, National Tawheed Jamaath, was a small, little-known group whose only previous activity was defacing Buddhist statues.
It stretches credulity that they could have conducted synchronised, sophisticated attacks of this magnitude alone. They needed outside management to pull off this highly coordinated operation.
We do not yet know the exact role Islamic State had in the Sri Lanka attack, but there are indications the Easter bombings where not just inspired by IS but in some way directed.
There are also at least 32 Sri Lankans who were known to have travelled to IS territory in Syria and Iraq. Authorities have acknowledged some could have returned to Sri Lanka at some point or gone to neighbouring countries and there is a possibility one or more of them could have served as a connection between NTJ and IS.
The IS media and propaganda machinery is alive and well and fuelled by a global network that can release messages across times zones and in multiple languages.
When IS claimed the Sri Lanka attacks, it released statements in Arabic and English, as is its wont, but it also did so in Tamil and Malayalam, two languages spoken in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, India, where it has a number of supporters.
IS has still not made major inroads among the Muslim population in those areas, but the fact it is putting in so much targeted effort reveals its persistence in seeking to establish its presence throughout Asia.
Lydia Khalil is a research fellow in the West Asia Program at the Lowy Institute.
Australian internet providers told to block websites hosting Christchurch terror video
"Ardern vows never to utter name of Christchurch gunman"
E-safety commissioner given power to monitor sites and order offending websites to be blocked
Josh Taylor @joshgnosis
Sun 8 Sep 2019 15.00 EDT Last modified on Sun 8 Sep 2019 15.02 EDT
The e-safety commissioner has been given power to order internet service providers to block sites hosting the Christchurch terrorist attacks. Photograph: Alamy
Australian internet service providers have been ordered to block eight websites hosting video of the Christchurch terrorist attacks.
In March, shortly after the Christchurch massacre, Australian telecommunications companies and internet providers began proactively blocking websites hosting the video of the Christchurch shooter murdering more than 50 people or the shooter’s manifesto.
A total of 43 websites based on a list provided by Vodafone New Zealand were blocked.
The government praised the internet providers despite the action being in a legally grey area by blocking the sites from access in Australia for people not using virtual private networks (VPNs) or other workarounds.
To avoid legal complications the prime minister, Scott Morrison, asked the e-safety commissioner and the internet providers to develop a protocol for the e-safety commissioner to order the websites to block access to the offending sites.
The order issued on Sunday covers just eight websites, after several stopped hosting the material, or ceased operating, such as 8chan.
The order means the e-safety commissioner will be responsible for monitoring the sites. If they remove the material they can be unblocked. The blocks will be reviewed every six months.
“The remaining rogue websites need only to remove the illegal content to have the block against them lifted,” the e-safety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said.
She said each time a site was blocked the agency would assess whether site-blocking powers need to kick in. She said there had not been an incident since Christchurch that had warranted it.
“There is a high threshold, and there is parliamentary oversight, as there should be,” she said.
“The slippery slope argument I keep seeing [is] this is not obscene content or objectionable content [but] it’s clearly illegal. I don’t see any public interest in making this kind of material that is designed to humiliate and to incite further terrorist acts and hatred.”
The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, said the site-blocks were not intended to be a silver bullet.
“We cannot allow this type of horrific material to be used to incite further violence or terrorist acts,” he said.
“Website blocking is not a universal solution to online harms, but it is important that this option be available to the e-safety commissioner in extreme cases such as this.”
Communications Alliance, which represents internet service providers in Australia, welcomed the certainty provided by the direction.
“We are pleased to see the framework that is now in place as a result of constructive collaboration between industry, government and its agencies,” its chief executive, John Stanton, said.
Inman Grant also revealed that under the government’s recently passed abhorrent violent material legislation, the e-safety commissioner has issued four notices to websites for hosting child abuse material. It had successfully got the websites to take down the material.
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