Indian police uncovered a plot, but Sri Lanka didn’t act

Agencies
April 28, 2019

Colombo, Apr 28: While monitoring the usual channels, Indian police stumbled upon something extraordinary: a detailed plot for what would become the bloodiest attack linked to the Daesh group in South Asia.

Police were investigating suspected sympathizers of the withered caliphate in southern India when a name they had no record of surfaced — National Towheed Jamaat, the Sri Lankan Daesh-backed militant organization that authorities say conducted the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people.

Indian police managed to break into the group’s communications and began tapping into the plot, according to Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.

“That is why the kind of detailing of the incident they received was very, very specific,” Sahni said. “They knew the group, they knew the targets, they knew the time, they knew the whereabouts of the suicide bombers, and all of this was communicated to the Sri Lankan government.”

Top Sri Lankan officials have acknowledged that some of the island nation’s intelligence units were given advance notice about the attacks — starting weeks ago and up until the morning of the bombings — but that little was done to prevent them.

Both President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also Sri Lanka’s minister of defense and in charge of national police, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been kept out of high-level security meetings since Sirisena tried to oust him last fall, said they only learned about the plot after it had been carried out.

“The fact is, it’s very, very specific information and that has been conveyed to everyone in writing. That is the action that was missing in some cases. That’s what we’re investigating,” Wickremesinghe said.

The first intelligence brief from India arrived April 4, more than two weeks before the bombings. It said a suicide terrorist attack was planned against “some important churches” and listed six people likely to be involved.

The deputy inspector of police shared the report with at least four security unit directors, including those responsible for “VIPs” and foreign embassies, along with a memo, urging the directors to pay extra attention to the places and people in their care.

India’s final intelligence warning came just before the Easter morning blasts, Sahni said.

Why the warnings went unheeded is the subject of intense public debate, with some blaming the dismantling of a system built by former strongman President Mahinda Rajapaksa for rapid response to rebel activity during Sri Lanka’s long civil war.

For 26 years, the Tamil Tigers militants from Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil ethnic community fought for independence from the Buddhist, ethnically Sinhalese-majority state. Military forces under Rajapaksa’s brother, then-Secretary of Defense Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, brutally crushed them in 2009.

The current state minister of defense, Ruwan Wijewardene, said “weakness” within Sri Lanka’s security apparatus led to the failure to prevent the Easter bombings.

Sirisena, while campaigning for the 2015 election to defeat Rajapaksa, had stressed the need for fresh investigations of military officials, including intelligence officers accused of abducting and killing civilians, political opponents and journalists during the civil war.

Since then, some military officials have been arrested on charges related to their actions during the war and remanded in detention facilities. Court cases are ongoing.

But on Friday, Sirisena, perhaps with an eye toward the 2020 election, said that arresting military intelligence officials after the civil war had weakened national security. He promised a shake-up, asking for the resignations of both his secretary of defense and inspector general of police.

Some experts believe Sri Lankan security forces may not have given much credence to Indian intelligence because of its controversial role in the civil war.

India’s Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, the country’s external intelligence group, initially supported Tamil separatists, training and arming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelman in the 1970s. But after the group’s terrorist activities in the 1980s, RAW withdrew its support.

New Delhi made a pact with Colombo in 1987 to send peacekeeping forces to the island on its southern tip, and they ended up fighting the rebels. They were asked to withdraw a few years later amid allegations of abuses against Tamils. In 1991, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.

India questioned Sri Lanka’s heavy-handed approach to defeating the Tigers in the final months of the war, when tens of thousands of civilians were reportedly killed by government troops. Thousands more are still missing. Ethnic minority Tamils in the country’s north and east are still reeling from the effects of the war.

Indian security and intelligence agencies lost some of their “moral authority” with the Sri Lankans, said M.K. Narayanan, the former head of India’s external intelligence service.

“What really happened was India lost moral authority. India did not accept the policies that were being followed, so they lost a lot of support in Sri Lanka,” he said.

Genealogical and cultural ties between Sri Lanka and India date back thousands of years. According to folklore, the island’s majority Sinhalese are descendants of an Indian prince banished there 2,000 years ago.

The nation’s minority Tamils, meanwhile, are in part the descendants of more than a million tea and rubber plantation workers brought to Sri Lanka from southern India by British colonial rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And India shares intelligence with its neighbors in part to keep them within its sphere of influence, Narayanan said.

Located just 23 kilometers (14 miles) off its southeast coast, India sees Sri Lanka as a bulwark in its military defenses to ward off potential Chinese incursions. Soon after the Easter attacks, India deployed naval and coast guard ships along the narrow Palk Strait.

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Agencies
July 9,2020

The new visa regulations requiring international students in the US with an F-1 visa to take at least one in-person course or face the prospect of deportation is likely to "cause uncertainties and difficulties" for some students, the Indian Embassy has said.

"These new modifications at a time when many of the US universities and colleges are yet to announce their plans for the new academic year are likely to cause uncertainties and difficulties for some Indian students wishing to pursue their studies in the US," said a spokesperson of the Indian Embassy.

Responding to media queries, the spokesperson said the Indian government has taken up the matter with concerned US officials.

At the India US Foreign Office Consultations held on July 7, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla conveyed India's concerns on the matter to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale.

According to a recent report of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), there were 1,94,556 Indian students enrolled in various academic institutions of the US in January this year. Of these 1,26,132 were males and 68,405 were females.

Noting that partnership in higher education is a key component of the strong people-to-people ties between India and the US, the spokesperson said in the last two decades Indian students in American universities and colleges have been the harbingers of a strong partnership between technology and innovation sectors between the two countries.

The spokesperson hoped that the US authorities would provide adequate flexibility in their visa rule, keeping in mind the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic for the Indian students community.

We continue to engage all the stakeholders in the matters, including the US administration officials, Congressional leaders, universities and colleges as well as the Indian students community in the US as we move forward towards the 2020-21 academic year to further strengthen our bilateral partnership in higher education, the spokesperson said.

Announced by the SEVP on July 6, the new rules provide temporary exemptions for nonimmigrant students on F-1 and M-1 visas taking online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the fall semester of the 2020 academic year.

While these modifications do provide some flexibility for US universities and colleges to adopt a hybrid model -- that is a mixture of online and in person classes -- they also restrict international students on F-1 and M-1 visas from taking courses entirely online, the spokesperson said.

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News Network
March 5,2020

New Delhi, Mar 5: Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan assuring that the government has the coronavirus crisis under control, is like the Titanic captain telling passengers not to panic as his ship was unsinkable, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Thursday.

Gandhi's remarks came after Vardhan's assurance in Parliament that the government is taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) in India.

“The health minister saying that the Indian government has the coronavirus crisis under control, is like the Captain of the Titanic telling passengers not to panic as his ship was unsinkable,” Gandhi said in a tweet.

“It's time the government made public an action plan backed by solid resources to tackle this crisis,” he said.

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.

Gandhi has been raising concerns over the coronavirus infection since long. In a February 12 tweet, he had said coronavirus is an extremely serious threat to “our people and our economy”.

“My sense is the government is not taking this threat seriously. Timely action is critical,” he had said.

Earlier this week, Gandhi had hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the detection of fresh coronavirus cases in the country, saying he should quit wasting India's time “playing the clown” with his social media accounts when India is facing an emergency.

With the message of “Here's how it's done”, Gandhi had also tweeted a video of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressing Singaporeans on how to deal with the coronavirus.

The number of coronavirus cases in India is 29, including 16 Italians, the government had said on Wednesday, adding all international passengers will now be screened at airports, amid growing concern over the spread of the respiratory infection.

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News Network
March 16,2020

New Delhi, Mar 16: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt by the end of May and only a coordinated government and industry action right now can avoid the catastrophe, said global aviation consultancy firm CAPA in a note on Monday.

"As the impact of the coronavirus and multiple government travel reactions sweep through our world, many airlines have probably already been driven into technical bankruptcy, or are at least substantially in breach of debt covenants," it stated.

Across the world, airlines have announced drastic reduction in their operations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. For example, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines stated on Sunday that it would be grounding 300 aircraft in its fleet and reduce flights by 40 per cent.

The US has suspended all tourist visas for people belonging to the European Union, the UK and Ireland. Similarly, the Indian government has suspended all tourist visas and e-visas granted on or before March 11.

CAPA, in its note on Monday, said, "By the end of May-2020, most airlines in the world will be bankrupt. Coordinated government and industry action is needed - now - if catastrophe is to be avoided."

Cash reserves are running down quickly as fleets are grounded and "what flights there are operate much less than half full", it added.

"Forward bookings are far outweighed by cancellations and each time there is a new government recommendation it is to discourage flying. Demand is drying up in ways that are completely unprecedented. Normality is not yet on the horizon," it said.

India's largest airline IndiGo -- which has around 260 planes in its fleet -- said on Thursday that it has seen a decline of 15-20 per cent in daily bookings in the last few days.

The low-cost carrier had stated that it expects its quarterly earnings to be materially impacted due to such decline.

CAPA said the failure to coordinate the future will result in protectionism and much less competition.

"The alternative does not bear thinking about. An unstructured and nationalistic outcome will not be survival of the fittest.

"It will mostly consist of airlines that are the biggest and the best-supported by their governments. The system will reek of nationalism. And it will not serve the needs of the 21st century world. That is not a prospect that any responsible government should be prepared to contemplate," the consultancy firm said.

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