Easter Sunday 2019 to IRIS Dena 2026: Weaponization of Religion and Geopolitics
by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
The writer, Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Gospa News author since 2021. Links to Gospa News articles have been added by our Editorial Staff
The United States torpedo of the Iranian ship, IRIS Dena, in the Seas of Sri Lanka last month reveal Geopolitical economic continuities with a crime committed seven years ago: The 2019 ISIS-claimed Easter Sunday terror attacks were a complex logistical operation in 6 different sea-front locations on the east and west coasts of geostrategic. Then as now, the Mastermind of the crime remained hidden in plain sight.
The Easter attacks of 2019 killed four Chinese marine research scientists who were staying at the Kingsbury hotel, which overlooks the Colombo harbor- South Asia’s busiest port.
This resulted in the Chinese Research Vessel- Shi Yan-3 that was docked in the Colombo Harbour abandoning its mission and returning immediately to China. The Chinese research team was collaborating with the National Aquatic Research Agency (NARA), on a project in the Eastern Seas off Lanka.
In recent years the United States government with India as a junior partner has not made a secret of their interest in preventing the Chinese Superpower’s research vessels visiting Sri Lanka. So too, the US has demonstrated an enduring interest in the Indian Ocean’s Maritime Domain. Now it has gone a step further to sink an Iranian ship in the Seas of Sri Lanka, located at the center of Indian Ocean energy, trade and submarine data cable routes.
With the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear that the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed Easter Sunday attacks on sea-front hotels and churches in 2019 had the same signature and similar geopolitical economic interests to the sinking of Iran’s IRIS Dena last month in the Seas of Sri Lanka.
There were no in-land targets selected by the bombers who hit the coastal towns of Batticaloa, Colombo, Negambo in 2019. Broadly, the Indian Ocean Maritime Domain was the focus of attention and action resulting in lockdown of harbours and fisheries communities.
Were the Chinese scientists who died in the Easter attacks along with 250 others, much like the Iranian Naval band musicians who were killed by a US torpedo after participating in an Indian Fleet review collateral damage in the crimes of a sinking empire?
However, the Sri Lankan intelligence agencies, politicians and media still by and large promote the narrative that there were no external actors, geopolitical interests, or foreign Mastermind behind the 2019 ISIS-claimed Easter attacks on coastal targets that killed over 250 people.
Common Geopolitical Economic Pattern in the Crimes
There is a common thread, pattern, motives and interests in these two crimes committed in Geostrategic Sri Lanka- Easter 2019 and IRIS Dena 2026. They involved foreign actors and networks with local collusion. These include conduct of cover up investigations to confuse and spread disinformation and mask the external motives, Mastermind and foreign intelligence networks behind the crime.
Then as now, the same confusing signals about Indian intelligence complicity in US crimes in Sri Lanka were apparent. The Iranian IRIS Dena was in South Asian waters because it had come for an Indian Fleet Review ceremony in Nagapattanam and was returning to Iran when it was sunk in Sri Lanka’s exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by a US torpedo.
Only, now the masks and gloves are off. The wretched crashing superpower no longer hides it 800 military bases or crimes around behind s mask of human rights and democracy talk.
The Easter Sunday 2019 attacks in Sri Lanka killed over 250 people of many nationalities and injured many more. Last month’s sinking of the IRIS Dena in the seas of Sri Lanka killed 84 Iranian sailors and caused environmental damage.
Messages to China and Iran: US owns the Indian Ocean?
While subsequent investigations into the Easter attacks have focused on the local suicide bombers and their networks, the question remains: were the suicide bombers led by Zaharan Hashim of the obscure National Towheed Jamat (NTJ) organization, following a script delivered to them via remote social media platforms that purvey Online Religion?
Was the Religion Bot, code named Sonic-Sonic purportedly living in Malaysia designed to hide foreign CIA and Mossad intelligence agents and networks, skilled in weaponizing religion/s spirituality and the occult, with remote funding and Online recruitment of terror networks? Here Rand Corporation Anthropologist, Jonah Blanc’s book “Mullahs on the mainframe” may be instructive. After all, it is obvious that an ISIS-linked Mastermind would not blow himself up in the first attack.
Were the 2019 Easter attacks that aborted the Chinese research vessel’s visit to Sri Lanka primarily to send a strong message to the rising Asian Superpower?
MasterMind and Cover-up Investigations on ISIS Easter Bombing in Sri Lanka
Retrospectively it seems clear that the Easter crime was a geopolitical economic event and a message to a third country –-Hands off geostrategic Sri Lanka—the US owns the Indian Ocean with or without the “String of Pearl” harbors?!
Of course, the Easter 2019 attacks were also carefully designed to crash geostrategic Sri Lanka’s economy and precipitate a journey of neocolonial Eurobond US dollar debt entrapment. Indeed, the attack was perfectly timed to ‘pump and dump’ the country and “Make the Economy Scream”, just after the World Bank had upgraded Sri Lanka to an Upper ‘Middle Income Country’ (MIC Trap). At the time, the national poverty rate was a mere 4.1 percent.
Today there are claims that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate is 25 percent and the lender of last resorts the IMF its savior! This despite Sri Lanka being the wealthiest county in South Asia by all metrics except the exorbitantly privileged US dollar.
The Easter attacks were also designed to weaponize ethno-religious identity politics in the multicultural island nation with rumours about Muslim women suicide bombers buying white cloths to target Buddhist temples. All this provided a smoke-screen to mask hybrid economic warfare on the geostrategic island, now caught in a neocolonial International Monetary Fud (IMF) and Eurobond Debt trap. Sri Lanka has effectively lost its economic sovereignty and policy autonomy to the IMF at this time given cascading impacts of various exogenous economic disasters.
Disinformation Game: CIA and Mossad’s Islamic Terror Catspaw
The sinking of the IRIS Dena in Sri Lanka’s EEZ clearly show that the country remains in the cross hairs of big power rivalry in the Indian Ocean and subject to various forms of hybrid economic warfare including Geoengineering. The island is also afloat in Disinformation and cover-up investigations to conceal the geopolitical economic motives of the crimes committed on land and seas.
However, masking the Indian Ocean Geopolitical economic interests and targets of the attacks is more difficult as the War in the Middle East has extended to South Asia, with the Indian Ocean and oil rich Middle East emerging as the epicenter of conflict as world War 3 ramps up.
Buddhist and Hindu-dominated Sri Lanka, was set up and is part owned by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This was after the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, in order to conduct regime in Syria– as part of the ‘Greater Israel’ project. Hence the name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Recent events in the Middle East have revealed that the ISIS was set up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on false pretenses; the US claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
As Columbia University Professor Jeff Sachs among others have revealed, the ISIS was set up by the CIA and US special forces occupying Iraq to carry out a regime change in neighbouring Syria against then President Assad – Hence the name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — ISIS. Since then, ISIS terror attacks have proliferated around the world with ISIS avatars and the Greater Israel Abraham accords to enable Israel to take over parts of Syria and Iraq have unfolded.
These continuities illuminate the foreign hands and interests behind the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019 and the recent attack on the Iranian Ship.
Intelligence Agency Compromat? Mastermind hidden in Plain Sight
Notwithstanding the coordinated international and local Disinformation in the corporate and social media echo chamber to hide the external geopolitical economic motives in the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019, it is clear that a group of home-grown local terrorists could not have conducted such a logistically complex operation. There were simultaneous explosions in 6 different locations on the East and West coasts of Sri Lanka:
Indeed, it is now quite clear that the external ‘Mastermind’ of the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage remains hidden it plain sight – and continues to wreak havoc including sinking ships in Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean world where sits front and center.
The illegal US-Israeli war on Iran with US war ships circling the Indian Ocean and the British occupied Chagos Islands with the Diego Garcia military base are an indicator of continuing attempts by the world’s biggest Rogue State to exert control over Indian Ocean energy, trade and submarine data cable routes. This is also to shore up the Petrodollar and its global reserve currency status for which control of Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC) across the Indian Ocean is seen to be vital.
A New US Cold War Weaponizes Religious Diasporas in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region
While promoting the narrative of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ the US has attempted to claim dominance of the Indian Ocean, also with monsoon and seabed geoengineering, using weather warfare as a ‘force multiplier’ as part of hybrid economic warfare. At this time, it has assembled its environment polluting war machine in the Indian Ocean to target Iran.
A foreign Script and Mastermind with local collateral damage?
Were the people who died in hotels and churches collateral damage in the Superpower’s power projection in a small island country and to warn China which has been subject to much propaganda about ‘debt trap’ lending to the Global South that it must lay off Sri Lanka?
The Easter attacks symbolically targeted the Chinese Port city project at the entrance to the Colombo harbor – South Asia’s busiest port. St. Antony’s church. The lead suicide bomber and a second died at Chinese owned Shangri La Hotel. Both overlook the Colombo Harbour and Chinese port city. The adjacent Hilton Hotel – between Kingsbury and Shangi La were spared.
No one dares to name the Superpower as a Criminal Actor and call out its crimes, not even the Catholic Church which is full well acquainted with the Cold War weaponization of religions at this time?
Thus another Easter has come and gone without the Foreign Mastermind of the ISIS-claimed Easter Sunday bombings of hotels and churches being revealed in Sri Lanka. Rather, endless cover up investigations of the Geopolitical interest writ large in the design of the Easter 2019 crime scene have unfolded by local investigative institutions and the church itself in collusion with their foreign counterparts.
Every attempt has been made to muddy the waters with local blame games and Disinformation to hide the external Mastermind behind ISIS attacks of 2019 in Sri Lanka, and around the world.
The collusion of local institutions and political actors with external intelligence agencies that removed the cell phones of the bombers continues. But the geopolitical economic targets of the attack are clear as the standoff between the United States and China has ramped up since 2019.
Once we recognize the Geopolitical dimension of the ISIS claimed attacks it is easy to identify the Mastermind. A foreign intelligence agency which has long used ISIS as an alibi to Weaponize Islam with Israeli Mossadpartner in crime for which the Zion Church in Batticaloa was hit in an own goal.
The CIA and Israel’s Mossad have with a long track record of promoting Islamist terror groups in the middle east for regime change operations.
Last year the ISIS off shoot Al Nusra, headed by Al Shara became President of Syria following a regime change operation against Syrian President Bashar al- Assad. Al Shara famous for head chopping with a recently lifted bounty on his head was welcomed by Donald Trump in the White House!
Continue reading an article on the Easter attacks that was published at InDepthNews in 2021
by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
The writer, Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Gospa News author since 2021. Links to Gospa News articles have been added by our Editorial Staff
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MAIN SOURCES
[i] The Washington Blog, Wayne Madsen, Syrian Girl Partisan, John-Paul Leonard 2016 “ ISIS is US: The shocking truth behind the army of terror.” Progressive Press. San Diego. California.
[ii] Criminological Communication: Understanding Crime through the Media and Human Communication Giacomo Buoncompagni: Sociology and Criminology: https://www.longdom.org/open-access/criminological-communication-understanding-crime-through-the-media-and-human-communication.pdf
[iii] Askar H. Enazy 2009 Saudi Wahabi Islam in the service of Uncle Sam’ Middle East Institute. Washington DC https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-wahhabi-islam-service-uncle-sam
[iv] https://thuppahis.com/2019/05/03/explosives-us-embassy-plot-in-colombo-sniffed-out-by-police-dogs/
[v] Explosives! US Embassy Plot in Colombo sniffed out by Police Dogs? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/world/middleeast/isis-baghdadi-video.html
[vi] Lebanese news outlet Alahed News run by News First Sri Lanka reported that they have obtained a top-secret document sent by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Saudi Ambassador to Sri Lanka. The letter which was sent 5 days prior to the attack seems to indicate that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was aware of the attacks. https://www.english.alahednews.com.lb/47824/269 https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/easter-massacre-mystery-tamil-travails-the-defense-of-asias-oldest-democracy/
[vii] Criminological Communication: Understanding Crime through the Media and Human Communication Giacomo Buoncompagni: Sociology and Criminology: https://www.longdom.org/open-access/criminological-communication-understanding-crime-through-the-media-and-human-communication.pdf
[viii] Phil Miller 2019 Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries who got away with War Crimes” . London. Zed Books.
[ix] Ford, Eugene 2017 Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.
[x] Bevins, Vincent 2020 The Jakarta Method: Washington’s anti-Communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped our World. New York. Public Affairs.
[xi] Mark T. Berger. The Real Cold War was Hot: The Global Struggle for the Third World” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520701798171?journalCode=fint20. See also. David Vine’s 2020 ‘The United States of War’.
[xii] For a comprehensive account of the history of the Saudi Wahhabi-Salafi project please see Askar H. Enazy 2009 Saudi Wahabi Islam in the service of Uncle Sam’ Middle East Institute. (MEI) Washington DC https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-wahhabi-islam-service-uncle-sam
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