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Generational Dynamics World View
*** 25-Apr-19 World View -- ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
  • Sri Lanka bombing said to be worst since 9/11
  • ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing
  • Chaos in the Sri Lanka government
  • Sri Lankans fear a return to the civil war
  • Sri Lanka's Generational Recover Era

****
**** Sri Lanka bombing said to be worst since 9/11
****


[Image: g190424b.jpg]
One of the blasts tore through St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Getty)

The death toll has risen above 350, and over 500 injured, in the
Easter Sunday bombing of churches and hotels in Colombo, the capital
city, and other cities in Sri Lanka. The church bombings took place
in the middle of Easter Sunday services, to maximize carnage. Some
analysts are saying that this is the worst terror attack since the
attack on 9/11/2001.

So far, police have arrested 30 people in conjunction with
the attacks.

The investigation has concluded that the perpetrators were National
Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), a little-known jihadist terror group
operating in South Asia. NJT has not claimed credit for the attack.
In fact, no one claimed responsibility for the attack until ISIS did
so through its public relations agency Amaq. NJT has been in
existence since 2014, but hasn't previously done much more than
vandalize Buddhist statues.

According to the police, the suicide bombers are well-educated, from
middle or upper-middle class well-to-do families, and hold college
degrees from the United Kingdom and Australia.

That's why this is so puzzling to analysts. It's a huge leap to go
from vandalizing Buddhist statues to Sunday's extremely sophisticated
attack, six coordinated suicide attacks in cities across the country,
with multiple attacks, multiple attack sites, multiple cities,
multiple churches, two hotels and a banquet facility, all coordinated,
using bombs that are fairly sophisticated.

A claim by ISIS is always suspect, since they've often taken credit
for terror attacks they had nothing to do with. However in this case,
the complexity of the attack combined with Christian and tourist
targets that are more ISIS-like targets supports the view that ISIS
was involved before the attack. Speculation now is that ISIS sent out
some operatives to recruit and train NTJ, perhaps in the role of
terrorist consultants.

Another questions is the massive number of weapons that were
involved, including caches of more weapons that were discovered
by the police after the attack. The question of how so many
weapons could be smuggled into the country was answered by
one analyst who pointed out that the country is still awash with
weapons from the Sri Lanka civil war that ended in 2009.

Sri Lanka is a mainly Buddhist and Hindu country, but there is a small
minority of Muslims. Muslims make up 9.7% of the population, Roman
Catholics make up 6.1%, Hindu 12.6%, and Buddhists make up 70.2%. The
JTH is thought to have grown out of that small group of Muslims, and
were recruited by ISIS to plan Sunday's attack.

****
**** ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing
****


ISIS has suffered major setbacks in Syria and Iraq, and has lost its
caliphate and all the land that it controlled. However, ISIS is not
eliminated, just like al-Qaeda. Both ISIS and al-Qaeda are like
terrorist fundamentalist religion sects; just because you kill some of
them, there are more to take its place. ISIS is the "younger" of the
two terrorist groups, so they appeal to different generations,
depending on the country.

So ISIS has to adopt a different game plan, and that game
plan is to launch terror attacks in other countries. Thus,
we can expect to see more attacks like the one in Sri Lanka.

Why was Sri Lanka chosen? It has a small Muslim community, about 10%
of the population, with no history of terror attacks, so it might have
been easy for ISIS operatives to find a couple of dozen disaffected
young people who could be radicalized and trained to carry out this
attack.

One surprising aspect is that no Buddhist targets were chosen for the
terror attack. These undoubtedly would have been the choice of an
indigenous terror group like NTJ, but once they had pledged allegiance
to ISIS, they would have been committed to the ISIS objectives. ISIS
would not be interested in a Buddhist target, since they want to
attack Western targets, and that leads to the selection of hotels and
Catholic Churches.

There has been speculation that the attack on Catholic churches may
have been in retaliation for a recent high profile attack on a Muslim
mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The motivation for making this
connection appears to be a purely political attempt to blame the Sri
Lankan bombing on so-called "white supremacists." However, the
planning for the Sri Lanka attack must have begun months earlier. So
the most influence that the New Zealand attack could have had is,
perhaps, a last minute decision to attack an extra church.

****
**** Chaos in the Sri Lanka government
****


A major scandal is brewing because US and Indian intelligence
agencies had warned Sri Lanka intelligence agencies on April 4
that there was reason to believe that a terror attack would occur
around Easter. The information was distributed on April 9 to
some ministries, but apparently not any farther.

So after the attack on April 21, the prime minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe complained loudly on Monday that he had never received
the warning, and if he had, the attacks could have been prevented.
Wickremesinghe blamed the president for keeping it from him.

The president, Maithripala Sirisena, did not immediately respond, but
finally on Tuesday said that he hadn't received the warning either.
However, many people believe that Sirisena did received the warning
but took no action.

In October of last year, Sirisena, who is pro-China, tried to fire
Wickremesinghe, who is pro-India, over a dispute over whether China or
India should be awarded a port infrastructure project.

Sirisena had wanted to replace the fired prime minister with a prime
minister of his choice, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also pro-Chinese.

Rajapaksa was the president of Sri Lanka before Sirisena. When
Rajapaksa was president, he signed the agreement with China to build
the Hambantota seaport. This was China's first major "debt trap"
deal, putting Sri Lanka into so much debt that it had to hand control
of the seaport over to China. Today, Sri Lanka is still in so much
debt that it will never be paid back. Furthermore, China not only has
control of the Hambantota seaport, but it also has control of a large
enclave of Chinese workers and their families who are employees of the
seaport. The seaport project has been a disaster for Sri Lanka, and
it's not hard to see why Rajapaksa is unpopular.

Now that the Easter Sunday attack has occurred, Sri Lanka is returning
to a full-scale chaotic constitutional crisis. On Wednesday, Sirisena
on Wednesday fired the chief of police and defense secretary.
However, the general public are furious that government officials
received intelligence information from India and the US weeks ago, and
didn't act on it. Many are blaming it on the bitter dispute between
Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.

****
**** Sri Lankans fear a return to the civil war
****


Sri Lankans had hoped and assumed that this level of violence
was over, once and for all, once the Sri Lankan civil war ended
in May, 2009. As a result, people became complacent, and
security was lax.

For 30 years, from the 1970s to May 2009, Sri Lanka's entire society
has been dominated by the Sri Lankan civil war between the ethnic
majority (Buddhist) Sinhalese and a separatist faction, the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, consisting of an army of
thousands from the ethnic minority (Hindu) Tamils.

It's worthwhile reviewing how it ended, because that's highly relevant
today. As I was developing generational theory, I followed the Sri
Lanka civil war closely, and wrote a number of articles about it,
since it was one of only two generational crisis wars going on at the
time (the other being in Darfur).

There had been low-level violence between the Tamils and Sinhalese
since the 1970s, with periods of violence separated by numerous peace
agreements and ceasefires. In 2006, the tempo of violence increased
sharply, and it seemed clear that there would be no more peace
treaties, although there was officially a moribund ceasefire in effect
that had been negotiated by the Norwegians in 2002.

In January 2008, a series of terror attacks by the LTTE caused
the Sri Lankan army to issue a statement saying that the ceasefire
agreement would be thrown out completely, and that the army would
destroy the LTTE by the end of the year. From the point of view
of generational theory, this was a signal that the war was taking
a major turn. Patience was running out, the value of a human
life was diminishing, and nothing mattered any more except
winning. This was the point where the civil war turned into
a generational crisis war.

During the next year, both sides committed acts that have been
described as war crimes. In brief, the Tamil Tiger terrorists
embedded themselves into civilian neighborhoods so that any bombs
targeting Tamil Tigers would also kill civilians, and the Sinhalese
army bombed the Tamil Tiger locations, even though it meant bombing
civilians. This is a classic example of the moral degeneracy that
occurs on both side of a generational crisis war as it approaches its
climax, and the need to win takes precedence over everything else,
particularly the lives of civilians.

In the spring of 2009, it was clear that Sri Lanka was approaching the
climax of the generational crisis war. And this is where all the
reporters, politicians and analysts got their analyses completely
wrong. Everyone that I read was saying that one battle was nearing an
end, but that it had been going on since the 1970s, and would continue
far into the future. I even wrote a message to Stratfor and told them
that their analysis was wrong, and that the war would end completely.
Of course they ignored it. Stratfor charges big bucks for their
newsletter, but like other analysts they were completely wrong, and
just followed the herd and wrote what everyone else was writing,
and got it wrong like all the others did.

When a generational crisis war ends, it does not then go on afterwards
in another battle. When Berlin was captured, the Nazis didn't
continue the war in some other country. When Japan was bombed, the
Japanese didn't continue the war on another Pacific island.

A crisis war ends with what I can an "explosive climax," referring to
the genocidal acts and atrocities that both sides commit out of
desparation to end the war. Once the war concludes, each side is
exhausted and traumatized -- not just because of the atrocities the
other side had committed, but because of their own atrocities.

And that's what happened in Sri Lanka. The BBC, Stratfor, the AP were
all predicting that war would continue, and they were all wrong. The
war ended and there was no more fighting as the Generational Dynamics
analysis correctly predicted.

****
**** Sri Lanka's Generational Recover Era
****


A similar error is being made today by analysts and journalists
analyzing Sri Lanka's society today. They all assume that Sri Lanka
society is like the society in India, in America, in Europe, or
someplace similar.

To understand the mood of Sri Lanka's society today, you have to
compare it to, for example, America in the 1950s, in a generational
Recovery era following WW II. That was the time when the Silent
Generation were taking charge. They had been so traumatized by the
Great Depression and WW II, that Time Magazine called them the Silent
Generation because they just did their job and never complained.

Sri Lanka's society today is like that, in a generational Recovery era
following the crisis civil war. Everyone -- the Sinhalese, the
Tamils, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Muslims -- everyone is still in
a state of shock, traumatized by the atrocities that had been
committed during the civil war, just doing their jobs, not
complaining.

There are small groups of exceptions. There's Bodu Bala Sena (BBS -
Forces of Buddhist Power), a terror group led by Buddhist monk
Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, formed in 2012 to purify Sri Lanka for the
Buddhists by exterminating the Christians, Hindus and Muslims.
Gnanasara was jailed last year for terrorist acts.

Another group is the one in focus today: The National Thowheeth
Jamaath (NTJ, National Monotheism Organisation), a formerly obscure
Islamist group formed in 2014, with a reputation for vandalising
Buddhist statues. The Muslims were perhaps a little less traumatized
than the Buddhists and Hindus who committed all the atrocities
during the civil war, but they were still deeply affected.

The main difference for NTJ, apparently, is that a disaffected group
vandalizing Buddhist statues were radicalized by ISIS operatives to
accept training, and to turn their targets away from Buddhists towards
Christians and western tourists.

Generational theory provides a description of Sri Lanka's society in
the years to come, and unfortunately the news is not good. When the
war ended in May 2009, the Sinhalese, Tamils, Buddhists, Hindus,
Christians and Muslims were all traumatized, and became like the
"Silent Generation," just doing their jobs without complaining. But
as a new generation of kids grows up after the war, they do not share
those traumatized attitudes, and they're going to be looking for
revenge for real or imagined atrocities. That means that the
frequency of terror attacks by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims is going
to attack, as the new generational cycle proceeds. Sydney Morning Herald and News First (Sri Lanka) and Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) and AP and Sky News (Australia) and Al-Jazeera

Related Articles:


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Sri Lanka,
National Thowheeth Jamaath, NTJ, National Monotheism Organisation.
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Sinhalese, Tamils,
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, Tamil Tigers,
Bodu Bala Sena, BBS, Forces of Buddhist Power,
Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, Maithripala Sirisena,
Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mahinda Rajapaksa, India, China,
Hambantota port, China, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI

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John J. Xenakis
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-14-2016, 03:21 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 05-23-2016, 10:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by radind - 08-11-2016, 08:59 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 01-18-2017, 09:23 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 02-04-2017, 10:08 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 03-13-2017, 03:33 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by SomeGuy - 03-15-2017, 02:56 PM
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 05-30-2017, 01:04 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 07-08-2017, 01:34 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-09-2017, 11:07 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 08-10-2017, 02:38 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 10-25-2017, 03:07 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by rds - 10-31-2017, 03:35 PM
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by noway2 - 11-20-2017, 04:31 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-28-2017, 11:00 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 12-31-2017, 11:14 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 06-22-2018, 02:54 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:42 PM
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 07-11-2018, 01:58 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-18-2018, 03:42 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Galen - 08-19-2018, 04:39 AM
25-Apr-19 World View -- ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing - by John J. Xenakis - 04-24-2019, 10:05 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 09-25-2019, 11:12 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-09-2020, 02:11 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Camz - 03-10-2020, 10:10 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by tg63 - 03-12-2020, 11:11 AM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by JDG 66 - 03-16-2020, 03:21 PM
RE: 58 year rule - by Tim Randal Walker - 04-01-2020, 11:17 AM
RE: 58 year rule - by John J. Xenakis - 04-02-2020, 12:25 PM
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by Isoko - 05-04-2020, 02:51 PM
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by mamabug - 01-12-2021, 02:53 AM
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RE: Generational Dynamics World View - by galaxy - 02-28-2022, 12:26 AM
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