《社論》
Sri Lanka
斯里蘭卡
Easter evil
復活節惡魔
The bombers wanted to provoke a clash of civilisations. Don’t fall into their trap
炸彈襲擊者想挑起一場文明沖突，不要落入圈套。
A few months ago National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), an Islamist group from Sri Lanka, was known for little more than defacing statues of the Buddha. On April 21st nine of its members walked into churches and luxury hotels on the island and blew themselves up, killing more than 350 people. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the deadliest set of terrorist attacks in Asia in modern times.
幾個月前，斯里蘭卡的伊斯蘭極端組織NTJ以毀壞佛像而聞名。4月21日，9名 NTJ 成員走進島上的教堂和豪華酒店，引爆了自己，造成350多人死亡。伊斯蘭國宣稱現代亞洲最致命的一系列恐怖襲擊事件都與其有關。
How could this happen? Start with Sri Lanka’s bungling. The world has learned a great deal about how to thwart terrorists since September 11th 2001. A crucial lesson is that it is vital to share information quickly and widely, so that fragmentary intelligence can be pieced together and followed up. This is precisely what Sri Lanka’s government failed to do, despite receiving unusually detailed warnings. Part of the reason for that appears to be shameless politicking. The island’s president, Maithripala Sirisena, has been at loggerheads with the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, since the former tried to sack the latter in October. Mr Wickremesinghe has been excluded from meetings of the national security council since then.
這種事是怎么發生的？要從斯里蘭卡的混亂說起。自2001年911事件之后，世界在如何挫敗恐怖分子方面就已經學到了很多。快速廣泛地共享信息至關重要，這樣就能將零碎的情報拼湊起來，跟蹤追查，這是一個重要的經驗教訓。而斯里蘭卡政府盡管收到了異樣的情報警告，卻并未做到這一點。部分原因似乎在于無恥的政治活動。因為去年10月，斯里蘭卡總統邁特里帕拉·西里塞納試圖解雇總理拉尼爾·維克勒馬辛哈，所以兩人一直不和。西里塞納從那時起就被排除在國家安全委員會的會議之外。
A second explanation is that, although Sri Lanka has no history of jihadist terrorism, nor even of much tension between Muslims and Christians, it sits in an ocean of bubbling extremism. In recent decades in South Asia, intolerant strands of Islam have edged out the broad-minded forms that used to predominate. That has created fertile ground for jihadists. The Maldives, just a short flight from Sri Lanka, sent more recruits to is in Iraq and Syria as a proportion of its population than any other country. Bangladesh, across the Bay of Bengal, has suffered a wave of Islamist attacks on secular activists and minorities in the past six years. Sri Lanka’s suicide-bombers reportedly contacted is veterans from both those countries. International jihadists have also cropped up across the Palk Strait in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which is bound to northern Sri Lanka by ethnic kinship. It was an is suspect arrested there who is said to have yielded some of the intelligence passed to Sri Lanka’s government (which was then ignored).
第二種解釋是，盡管斯里蘭卡沒有圣戰恐怖主義的歷史，甚至穆斯林和基督徒之間也沒有多少緊張關系，但它卻處于極端主義的海洋之中。近幾十年來，南亞一些不寬容的伊斯蘭派別排擠了過去占主導地位且包容的宗教形式。這為圣戰分子提供了沃土。馬爾代夫距離斯里蘭卡只有很短的飛行距離，它向伊拉克和敘利亞伊斯蘭國派遣的新成員占該國人口的比例超過了其他任何國家。孟加拉灣對岸的孟加拉國，在過去6年里遭受了一波針對世俗活動人士和少數民族的伊斯蘭主義襲擊。據報道，斯里蘭卡的自殺式炸彈襲擊者和來自這兩個國家的退伍軍人有關。國際圣戰者也在印度泰米爾納德邦的帕爾克海峽出現。在那里一名伊斯蘭國嫌疑人被捕，據說他傳遞給斯里蘭卡政府一些情報(后被忽視)。
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