‘Current govt failed in national security, killed abilities of military intelligence’

Why was Sri Lanka selected for this attack? Why were no worship centres of majority Sinhalese Buddhists groups targeted?

No one knows the real answer. Maybe we can think of a few reasons such as, they wanted to show their strength in a new country, or they may have seen Sri Lanka as a soft target while being strategically and geopolitically important. Or maybe another reason is the influence of the West here for many years in governance, especially the US, and in the change of government in 2015. Or they may have decided to strike when they matured enough to enter into arms activity. It may be a tit-for-tat for Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, as many said… The retaliation theory linking the New Zealand attack or their politics against Christians, which is common in their attacks all over the world, maybe the reason for not choosing Buddhist centres.

Do you suspect the role of any other country behind this attack?

I don’t think any other country has a reason to destabilise Sri Lanka now.

What went wrong, what failed the government in preventing this attack?

Unpreparedness. As this government failed in every other field including governance, development, economy, reconciliation and even the eradication of corruption, they failed in national security too. They had a very low priority for national security. While there was no active terrorism after 2009, you should still have been prepared to handle a situation. But the abilities of military intelligence was killed by this government. They withdrew the mandate given to the military intelligence and gave it to police. Some 5,000 officers of army intelligence were inactive under this government, many of them arrested on false charges after 2015. This government failed to understand that if you have no national security, there is no reconciliation or individual freedom or human rights. After the blasts, people have lost individual freedom, they are afraid to go to mosques and churches, social media is not available. There is no progress for a country if you don’t have national security…

What is the remedy?

Now, it will take time to activate our intelligence system again. They are blaming officers for this attack when the government shouldn’t have allowed it to get to this stage. Our people were not mentally ready to act even after there was an alert from another country about the possible attack. National security should be unambiguous, everyone should be ready… Whoever talked about extremists were called racists by this government. They called them warmongers, accused us of creating imaginary issues. That mental state of the government was passed on to its officers too. That has to be changed.

How do you differentiate between a group of radical Sinhalese Buddhists like Bodu Bala Sena, which ran riots against minorities, and a group like National Thowheeth Jama’ath?

Bodu Bala Sena never tried to say that everyone has to become a Buddhist. They were branded as radical Buddhists because they talked about the threat from these Muslim extremists. What they feared at that time has been proven now. They never…opposed the existence of other religions. But extremist, radical Muslim ideology is a danger to the country because they want to make everyone a Muslim.

Did excessive focus on LTTE fail Sri Lanka in seeing the growth of radical Muslim elements?

No. We had a clear threat perception after the war ended in 2009. Besides the revival of the LTTE, the growth of extremist elements and transitional crimes such as drug smuggling were the major threats after the war ended in 2009. We didn’t want to have an active military operation against these threats. But I sent my officer to the US for training on Islamic extremist groups. After his training, I appointed him as the director of military intelligence. He told me they need a mechanism to monitor cyberspace. I established a cell to monitor extremists globally and locally. We bought computers, recorders, software tools and recruited people who read and speak Arabic. We knew their activities but they were not talking about arms activity then. We had a group trained by Australia to handle this. But after 2015, the government stopped that. That trained officer was sent out even after he briefed these threats to the security council. I don’t know why that happened. Three families left for Syria in 2015. Later, the number touched 35 and finally we heard a total of 71 left for Syria. Then I heard that most of them were killed in the war there. Some returned in 2017-18 but we didn’t arrest them or take action. Only in 2018, radical Muslim groups here started talking about violent ideology and weapons, I am told. Our trained and motivated intelligence system should have been active to monitor them.

Don’t you think the Sri Lankan government also played a role in the growth of some radical Muslim groups by giving weapons to them to fight LTTE with the army?

No, we never supported radical groups but there were Muslim people, who were part of the government, who helped the war. It was the people’s fight against LTTE terrorism. They never organised as an armed group. There were some radical groups who were attacked by LTTE that had come to support the army, but they never fought the war with the army. They were fighting for their own protection.

Arms given to those anti-LTTE groups may have reached the hands of religious extremists now.

No. I totally disarmed them after 2009. I disarmed all of them including Douglas Devananda, Sidharthan, Karunas and Pillayan (Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan). The (then) president (Mahinda Rajapaksa) wanted to disarm them before the elections.

What difference do you see between LTTE terrorists and these religious extremists?

Both are motivated by ideology. One on an ethnic basis and the other on religion. But when both are brainwashed to become suicide cadre, their purpose is same — the destruction of innocent lives. I don’t see a big difference between the two. To do organised work, they need a leader. Like the LTTE, they also had a leader for these blasts. Our job is to identify them, their safe houses, their sources of explosives and neutralise that terror network.