Security alert: More to it than meets the eye

The tourism sector has taken a hit due to security alerts issued by foreign embassies. 

Pic Ishara Kodikara, AFP

There is more to the Israeli presence in Sri Lanka than meets the eye. Also, there is more to Wednesday’s security alert than what the authorities and embassies claimed. 

Given the questions on the 2019 Easter Sunday massacres and successive governments’ hesitancy in answering them honestly, the present security alert about an imminent attack on tourist sites may smack of a conspiracy. It has eerie similarities to the warnings that preceded the Easter Sunday blasts targeting Christian churches and tourist hotels.

The warnings, as seems to be an alarming pattern, come from India, raising serious questions about Sri Lanka’s intelligence service’s capabilities to know what is happening on its home turf. Although intelligence sharing between two friendly countries is an accepted practice, Sri Lankan counterparts are often caught off guard by specific warnings from India’s intelligence. It is a cause for concern. 

The Easter Sunday attacks were a serious indictment on Sri Lanka’s intelligence and security apparatus. Sri Lanka’s Muslims have been under the state intelligence microscope since the Easter Sunday attacks. As a result, the chances of a homegrown plot are remote. Sri Lanka’s Muslims went through a tough time after the Easter Sunday attacks that gave rise to unprecedented Islamophobia in this country. They curse and condemn the terrorists behind the massacre. 

According to Sri Lanka Police, the once-bitten state intelligence has been on alert since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023, over the possible security threats to Israeli tourists from angry or misguided Muslims. Despite the genocide in Gaza, there have been so far no incidents related to it in Sri Lanka, except for regular peaceful protests by activists, including ruling National People’s Power youth wing members. However, the specifics of an attack came from India as the world marked the first anniversary of the Gaza genocide. The details said Muslim extremists had been planning an attack on an Israeli-run resort in Arugam Bay in the Ampara district. 

Three suspects have been arrested by Wednesday. But the security alert—with global media giving it wide publicity—has already done much damage to Sri Lanka’s tourism sector, which is making a vital contribution to Sri Lanka’s economic revival. In a great comeback after the Easter Sunday attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic crisis, Sri Lanka’s tourism sector earned US$2 billion in 2023, while recording 1.48 million arrivals. This was an impressive 82% increase in earnings compared to 2022. The sector was gearing up to see 2 million arrivals and earn US$ 3 billion in foreign exchange this year. Alas, the industry took a hit after the United States issued a security alert. This was followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, and Israel.

The threat was discussed at the highest levels of the government, and steps were taken to ensure security for tourists.

Whatever the nature of the threat, the new government, it is learnt, was dealing with it in such a way as to minimise the damage to the tourism sector. Then came the US embassy alert. Not much is known about the how, who and what of the US assessment.

If there is, as feared by the US embassy, a security threat, then the blame for it should lie with the previous administration. Instead of acting astutely to prevent a possible security crisis , it let the situation fester. Article after article appeared in newspapers and post after post on social media, highlighting tourists from Israel, Ukraine, and Russia illegally setting up businesses in Arugam Bay in the East and Weligama and other towns in the South after arriving in Sri Lanka on tourist visas. Their activities had affected local businesses. In Arugam Bay, provocative pictures of Israeli soldiers in Gaza and graffiti in Hebrew appeared on the walls of Israeli resorts, hurting the local Muslim feelings. So much so, social media activists describe Arugam Bay as an Israeli-occupied area.

But the Ranil Wickremesinghe government took little or no action, giving priority to attracting tourists to Sri Lanka while not giving a damn about what white-skinned tourists do here. It applied the law discriminately targeting largely Indians and Chinese who came on tourist visas and engaged in businesses, some of them in illegal activities such as scam camps. Media reports pointed out that the foreign exchange Sri Lanka was set to earn was being diverted to Israel, Ukraine, and other countries by these tourist-run businesses. Yet, the previous government took little or no action to check on them, as though white-skinned tourists, Especially, Israelis were too holy to touch.

Though then-President Wickremesinghe launched a drive to raise one million dollars to rebuild Gaza’s schools, it paid no heed to calls by progressives not to send Sri Lankan workers to Israel while genocide was going on in Gaza. It was like hunting with the hound and running with the hare. By sending Lankans to work in Israeli farms and construction sites, the then labour minister, Manusha Nanayakkara, helped Israel to prop up its war-battered economy that supported genocide.

What guarantee does the government have that these Sri Lankans working in Israel will not be brainwashed and used by Israel to stoke Islamophobia in Sri Lanka?

Many wondered whether the present government was also treating Israel with holy deference when Sri Lanka last week failed to sign a petition launched by Chile decrying Israel’s decision to declare the United Nations Secretary-General persona non-grata. Only a clarification from Sri Lanka’s UN envoy saved the day for the government, which, just like the previous governments, believes that the two-state solution is the only way to solve the Palestinian problem.

The envoy claimed that Sri Lanka told Chile to include its signature, and when the original list containing 105 signatures did not have Sri Lanka’s signature, he called for a revised list with Sri Lanka’s name on it.

More progressive Sri Lankan leaders have taken a principled stance on the Palestinian issue. Sirima Bandaranaike and Ranasinghe Premadasa severed Israeli links not because of petty electoral gains but on principles and in deference to Sri Lanka’s Muslim population. It was the United States that forced Sri Lanka to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1983 when the J.R. Jayewardene government wanted weapons to fight separatist terrorists in the country’s north and east. Despite the shocking revelation in ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky’s book By Way of Deception that the Israelis trained both the Sri Lankan soldiers and the separatist terrorists at the same time, the Jayewardene government took little or no action over Israel’s double dealings, except to appoint a commission of inquiry and bury the controversy.

The growing military ties with Israel saw Sri Lanka setting up an embassy in Tel Aviv in 2000 during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s presidency. 

With military ties with Israel growing, successive governments brought a balancing act into their policy on the Palestine issue. They supported Palestine’s cause without hurting Israel. Some in the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya believe that pro-Israeli elements schemed to ensure their candidate Sajith Premadasa’s defeat at the September 21 presidential election because he called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a terrorist and condemned Israel’s action in Gaza as terrorism.

As Sri Lanka’s state intelligence and police go after the suspects as they should, the authorities should not be unmindful of Zionist plots to promote Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred in Sri Lanka and probe whether the latest security crisis was an attempt by some elements to scuttle the new government’s Easter attack investigations.