Attacks on Christians and foreigners have not been common in Sri Lanka, says South Asia expert Wagner in the Tagesthemen. He assumes that an international terrorist group is responsible for the attacks.
South Asia expert Christian Wagner of the Science and Politics Foundation excludes a connection between the series of attacks in Sri Lanka and the civil war that ended in 2009. „We’ve never seen attacks on Christian institutions or foreigners and hotels in 26 years of civil war,“ he said in the tagesthemen interview.
The form of the attacks in connection with suicide bombers have more to do with the past conflict. Rather, there are similarities with the attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and 2002 in Bali. There were international terrorist groups in action, which targeted targeted hotels and tourists.
„High level of planning and coordination needed“
The attack also does not fit into the current political situation in Sri Lanka, said Wagner. Although there are a number of violent conflicts in the country, but these are locally limited and there would be no suicide bombers deployed there.
In the search for potential perpetrators, the question was who would have the capacity to carry out attacks with such a high degree of planning and coordination. In Sri Lanka are local Islamist and militant Buddhist groups, but simultaneous attacks on various institutions are „a completely new quality of terror in Sri Lanka“.
