Dalbir Ahlawat, a lecturer at Macquarie University’s department of security studies and criminology in Australia, said the attacks “appear to be more an intelligence operational failure than the state’s capacity to contain such threats.”
“Four years back the NTJ started vandalising statues and even attacking Buddhist monks. However, the government, fearing a backlash, took limited or no action. Even a 25-page report submitted to the government received limited attention.”
“Even ten days before these ghastly attacks, Sri Lanka’s Police Chief Pujuth Jayasundara issued a nation-wide intelligence alert that ‘prominent churches’ may be targeted by the suicide bombers. However, not much in the way of operational sensitivities were demonstrated by the enforcement agencies in a coordinated way,” he said.
Ahlawat warned that the attacks raised concerns throughout the Asian-Pacific region, as the “perpetrators escaped the radar of several agencies, both domestic and regional, and this raises concerns about their links, networks, operational guidelines and broader goals.”
The article was published after the terrorist atatcks in Sri Lanka, along with other experts like
Prof Jacinta Carroll from ANU and Prof Justin Hastings from University of Sydney.
A major focus of the article was on terrorism, jihad, religion and intelligence failure.