Easter Sunday attacks: Masterminds of the attack may be beyond the reach of the long arm of the law 

Two years have passed since more than 260 people were killed in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka by ruthless extremists in the name of an evil ideology, which has nothing to do with Islam. But the threat of extremism is still alive with no investigation revealing the masterminds behind the gory tragedy. 
Gaining traction in the public domain is a viewpoint that there is more to the attacks than meets the eye. The theory goes that the terrorists who committed the crime were just a bunch of holy idiots brainwashed by their handlers. The bigger picture is that extremism is a tool of politics. Recently, an opposition lawmaker told parliament that in countries like India and Sri Lanka, politicians stoke the fear of extremism to win elections.

While the victims’ kith and kin call for accountability and are fast losing hope of culprits being brought to justice, the attacks’ masterminds may be beyond the reach of the long arm of the law. May be there is a foreign hand. 
The failure to act on advanced information even after the terrorists had left a trail of clues about the impending attack indicates that the then authorities were buffoons incapable of ensuring public security while those tasked with the security job were either incompetent or let it happen for reasons only known to them.  That the Easter Sunday carnage happened despite so many early warnings is so unbelievable that it is not difficult to find people who give such explanations.

One may dismiss such people as conspiracy theorists, but international politics is not unknown for false flag terror operations. States, especially big powers, resort to such false flag operations to achieve political goals. False flag ops, terror attacks being part of it, have become overly sophisticated today due to the advancement of science, technology and mind-control psychology.  Intelligence agencies are not run by angels of mercy.  A key job objective of intelligence agencies is to map out plans A, B and C to destabilize a target nation, cause a regime change, kill leaders and set up fall guys. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the United States’ Murder Incorporate made 638 attempts in 40 years to kill Cuba’s legendary leader Fidel Castro. Pakistan’s one-time military strongman Zia ul-Haq was also a victim of a terror plot scripted by the CIA, according to some Pakistani military chiefs.  
In Iran in 1953, the British and American intelligence set the stage to oust the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mussadeq by getting their hirelings to plant bombs in mosques and putting the blame on Iran’s Communist Party. 

No intelligence agency is more dexterous in false flag terror ops than Israel’s Mossad.  One of its first false flag ops was the Lavon Affair which led to the resignation of the then Israeli Defence Minister in 1954 after the Egyptian authorities busted the plot. Six Egyptian Jews hired by Mossad were arrested. They were to set off terror attacks at US, British and Egyptian civilian targets and put the blame on the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Communists. The objective was to create chaos which in turn would weaken Egypt’s ability to fight Israel while offering an excuse for the British to stay put in the Suez region. 

Since then the Mossad has grown in sophistication. The Americans to their surprise found out some years ago that Mossad agents were posing off as CIA agents and recruiting Jundullah rebels in Iran’s Baluchestan region to carry out terror operations in Iran. The sophistication of the scheme is such that in some high-octane cases, the brainwashed recruit or the Manchurian candidate will never know he is being used by a foreign intelligence unit. In some Muslim countries where poverty and illiteracy co-exist with terrorism, often the suicide bombers are innocent teenagers.  In some regions of Pakistan, poverty stricken youths are paid one hundred rupees to carry a parcel from one place to another. On the way, a person who works for a foreign intelligence outfit presses the remote and makes the boy an unintentional martyr.
It is also alleged that Mossad created ISIS, just as it is alleged that the CIA created al Qaeda.  It is noteworthy that the ISIS has so far not attacked Israel.

In a July 2014 interview, which Iran insists it happened but the Americans say it did not, whistleblower Edward Snowden was quoted as revealing about a joint US, British and Israeli effort to “create a terrorist organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the world.”  According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that conducted the interview, the plan was codenamed Beehive or Hornet’s Nest and it was devised to protect Israel from security threats by diverting attention to the newly manufactured regional enemy: ISIS.
Although the claim was pooh-poohed by sections of the US and Israeli media, the fact remains that Snowden has not refuted the interview. Some may say this is because the former National Security Agency officer takes orders from Russia where he has found refuge after he became America’s most wanted fugitive for leaking documents to expose the CIA’s surveillance programmes that invade privacy.  

Given these few examples from a huge trove of false flag terror ops, closer home we are being told that India’s intelligence agency also creates ‘ISIS terrorists’ to identify potential terrorists in keeping with the adage that we need to set a thief to catch a thief.

The Presidential Commission that probed the Easter Sunday attacks in its report has included the testimony of an international terrorism expert under the chapter titled ‘Foreign Involvement’.  According to the testimony, the expert has said a character called Abu Hind was created by a section of a provincial intelligence apparatus. Now Abu Hind was Easter Sunday attack terror chief Zahran Hashim’s contact in India. The duo had exchanged voice messages and sermons. 

The expert told the commission that on April 4, 20 and 21, 2019, the information the then State Intelligence Service director received was from the Indian intelligence outfit after it had obtained it from the operative pretending to be Abu Hind. “Operatives of this outfit operate in social media pretending to be Islamic State (ISIS) figures. They are trained to run virtual persona.”

“The testimony was that Zahran believed Abu Hind was the Islamic State regional representative. Abu Hind was in touch with both Zahran and his brother Rilwan and had spoken to Naufer…” the report notes. 
The commission report has been criticised for not providing answers to key questions. Probably none will find the answers for eons to come, given the hidden agendas. Even Colombo’s Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith thinks so. Extremism is evil. But to eliminate extremism is intricate and no easy task.