Hyderabad: Who is responsible for the blasts in Sri Lanka on Sunday? Or is it, who are? For authorities are not sure. No organization has claimed responsibility so far. The first and the prime suspect is homegrown Towheeth Jamaath, a small fundamentalist outfit. Police have arrested 24 persons till now. Questions are being asked, may be clues will surface.
Sri Lanka is still reeling under the devastating jolt that killed nearly 300 and wounded about 500. Now the ugly question is rearing its head. Was the administration inept in pre-empting such attacks? Was the government complacent? Why did not the administration act properly even though foreign intelligence reports warned the Sri Lankan government of a possible attack? Heads have not rolled yet, but they might.
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In the past ten years or so Sri Lanka has remained peaceful after the disastrous defeat of the LTTE. Decades long fight tired the Sri Lankan forces and took their toll on the general security apparatus. So when the fights eventually ended and Sri Lankan security threats diminished, the whole security mechanism became slack. A kind of complacency set in. The first casualty was the alertness.
This might be the main reason why the intelligence reports were not acted upon. Lankan PM Ranil Wickramasinghe said, intelligence reports were not shared with him or with ministers. The Housing minister accuses officials of ineptitude.
There was another reason for administration's lack of preparedness. Sri Lanka witnesses little of Islamic fundamentalism. More than 70% of Sri Lankans are Buddhists. Hindus are about 9%, Muslims are around 7% and the Christians nearly 6%. There were no ethnic or religious clashes worth mentioning. While sectarian violence and fundamentalist attacks often take place in many South Asian countries, Sri Lanka is relatively free from such disturbances. So it comes as a big surprise that blasts on such huge scale would take place in the country. The authorities are grappling with the reality.
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Sri Lankan ministers and officials are saying that though Towheeth Jamaath is the prime suspect, there are foreign players as well. They appear sure that for a small outfit like Jamat it is virtually impossible to carry out the blasts alone.
Meanwhile Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena seeks international help to find the foreign hands suspected to be in cahoots with Jamat.
Till it becomes clear and definite who was or who were behind the dastardly acts, not only Sri Lanka but the whole world will search for answers.
