The Sri Lanka Bombings: Not a Christchurch Retaliation

Christchurch. Sri Lanka, Oh the Humanity

First off, as a human being, I have to state, the murder of 50 Muslims by Brenton Harrison Tarrant in Christchurch, New Zealand was a despicable act. It was an abominable crime against humanity.

As a Christian priest, I have to further add that such crimes are utterly at odds with the tenets of my religion. He didn't perform these acts as a Christian. He performed them as a bigot.

Then on Catholic Easter Sunday, an attack killed, at current count, 321 people, injuring hundreds more. These attacks targeted Christians and also foreigners at certain sites.

We have seen in the news that the so-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks. And it seems certainly true that local Sri Lankan extremist groups could not have carried out an attack of such sophistication and effectiveness without help from some foreign network.

But the claim has now emerged that the Sri Lankan attacks were in direct retaliation for the Christchurch murders.

Let me explain, as a former intelligence agent, why that can't be true.

The Attack Planning Cycle

Significant study has been made on how terrorist attacks such as that witnessed in Sri Lanka are conceived, planned, and executed. For an excellent study on the matter, see this thesis.

And the upshot of this study is that an attack on the scale of Sri Lanka needed several weeks or even months of planning well beyond the time frame of the Christchurch attack.

A man who decided some morning to stab some people in a market, obviously needs nothing more than a knife and some resolve. Zero planning required.

But a man deciding some morning to blow himself up in that market will not be able to carry out the attack that same day. I mean, unless he already is in contact with people who can supply him at a minute's notice with a suicide vest, etc. But all that implies that someone besides that man had already done some pre-planning for such an attack. 

How much planning time does it take to plan and then carry out something like the Madrid Bombings? How much time does it take to plan and then carry out something like 9/11?

How much time would it take to plan and carry out something like the Sri Lanka bombings (April 21)?

The answer is, simply, a lot more time than has passed since the Christchurch attacks took place (March 15).

And, by "a lot more" I mean several weeks and months.

I strongly suspect that the Sri Lanka attacks were in the planning and surveillance phase long before Christchurch happened. 

The Christchurch attack may very well have created the convenient pretext for a claimed motivation, but it is not real. 

Does This Matter?

The simple answer is, yes and no.

On one level, yes it matters very much if the Sri Lanka Bombings were in preparation before Christchurch and were originally planned to be an attack just for the sake of an attack.

In that case, the pivot by IS to claim that it was a retaliation needs to be rejected and opposed.

On the other hand, the murder of those 50 Muslims created the sad pretext whereby extremists just as reprehensible as Tarrant could erroneously claim justification for perpetuating the cycle of violence. 

The cycle of violence can only end when members of both communities make such violence and extremism utterly abhorrent and unacceptable within our communities.

I am a Christian. We have work to do when it comes to making people raised within our tradition know that violence is an unacceptable response. 

I am not a Muslim. I leave it to them to consider whether they are doing enough to combat intolerance and bigotry and acceptance of violent means within their ranks.

I am a human who wants the violence to end.