Saint Anthony's Church was targeted by a suicide bomber on Sunday in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka and several other countries are in the sights of radical Islam and movements affiliated with the jihadist international. These extremist organizations seek to spread by taking advantage of local tensions and the presence of militant Islamist groups, both in Asia and Africa.
Claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, the Colombo (Sri Lanka) attacks which left at least 359 dead and 500 injured on Easter Sunday in churches and hotels, were they only intended to avenge the massacre committed the month last in two mosques in Christchurch , New Zealand?
The motives behind this carnage may be less a direct response to the deaths of 50 Muslims murdered in a New Zealand mosque by a white extremist than an adaptation of the faltering posture of the recently defeated Islamic State in the Levant, and an evolution of its strategy of terror.
The Islamic State’s caliphate collapsed in Syria after its defeat in Iraq, under the influence of multiple offensives, with the support in particular of the international coalition led by Washington. Hence the ambition of ISIS to redeploy itself to other areas, namely Africa and Southeast Asia, wherever Muslims are repressed and discriminated against and where counterterrorism pressure is lighter. .
Sri Lanka in the crosshairs
In this country where Muslims represent less than 10% of the population, the hostility of Buddhists (70% of the population) towards Muslims is growing.
In March 2018, violence broke out following the death of a Sinhalese Buddhist who was beaten by a crowd of Muslims. It was necessary to declare a state of emergency and deploy the army to restore order.
But the tensions are older: attacks against the Muslim community have been increasing for more than 5 years, the authorities attributing these actions to extremist Buddhist monks. These religious fanatics see Muslims as invaders who threaten Sri Lanka’s very identity.
In addition, the country has experienced a relative easing since the end, in 2009, of the Tamil independence guerrilla (LTTE, registered on the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union). Consequence of this way out of the crisis: police vigilance has relaxed.
Another factor favorable to the development of terrorist groups: dissensions within the regime between President Maithripala Sirisena on the one hand, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Speaker of Parliament Lakshman Kiriella on the other.
The latter accused officials of the Sri Lankan intelligence services of having deliberately withheld precise information provided to them by India on a risk of attacks, and of having done nothing to prevent terrorist action.
Other weak links
Sri Lanka, where a few dozen Muslims left to fight in the ranks of Daesh, (which testifies to a radicalization of a minority within the Muslim community) is not the only territory concerned: “The Bangladesh, India or Thailand could bear the brunt of this progression of the Islamic State, by its capacity to readjust permanently to the targets which they can touch ” , according to Anne-Clémentine Larroque, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, cited by France Inter .
The Philippines is no exception. We will remember the two bombs that exploded on January 27, inside and then outside of Jolo Cathedral. Eighteen people were killed and more than 80 injured in this region which is the stronghold of the Islamist group Abou Sayyaf.
Three days later, two people were killed and four others injured in a grenade explosion thrown inside a mosque on the island of Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.
For Guardian journalist Jason Burke, a jihadist specialist, local Asian terrorist groups often act as ISIS contractors. And to cite Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Bangladesh as examples …
One foot in Central Africa
In his last speech broadcast on social networks, in August 2018, the Iraqi Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi called on his supporters to join the “caliphate”, “in Iraq, in the Levant, in Sinai, in Khorassan (zone Afghan), Libya, West Africa and its center ” .
A call that was heard in Africa, since the Islamic State (IS) organization claimed, Thursday, April 18, its first attack in Central Africa. This armed action took place in Bovata, near Beni, in the north of the province of North Kivu, on the northeastern borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). IS has signed its press release on behalf of its “ wilaya [province, in Arabic] of Central Africa”.
The Congolese regime (under President Joseph Kabila and now under President Félix Tshisekedi) has sounded the alarm. On April 4, in Washington, before the Atlantic Council, the president of the DRC reiterated his warning and his request for help .
Has IS outsourced its action to Bovata? This is a plausible scenario, especially since links with all or part of the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), a local armed group of Islamist persuasion created in the mid-1990s in neighboring Uganda, have been established.
Indeed, members of the Congolese group insisted on formalizing their allegiance to ISIS in October 2017, a few days after killing two UN peacekeepers and two months before massacring 15 others. The jihadist bush Salafists now operate under the name Madinat Tawhid wa-l-Muwahidin (MTM, “the city of monotheism and monotheists”). Their black banner is inspired by the graphics of other IS groups.
Jason Steams, director of the Congo Study Group (GEC), remains cautious after Islamic State’s claim: “ How can ISIS justify its activism in a secular country where Islam is not persecuted? ” . “We take these kinds of statements seriously,” replied Monday the head of the United Nations Mission in Congo (Monusco), Leila Zerrougui.
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