21日の爆破テロ、日が経つにつれ、色々なことが報道される様になってきました。今までのスリランカ内戦とは明らかにターゲットが異なっていることに関し、日本時間の24日朝に更新されたBBCの記事、「Sri Lanka sttacks: IS’may be linked’, goverment says」の中の、’Targets in line with IS ideology’ で解説されていました。
The Sri Lankan government has said locals from two known groups carried out the attack. But from the start – because of the scale and sophistication of it – they have also said they thought there was an external role.
In the past, IS has sometimes claimed attacks that it was not involved in or which it simply inspired. But the details from IS would seem to back up the government’s assessment.
The choice of targets is much more in line with IS ideology than with the traditional types of communal violence seen in Sri Lanka.
There are still questions – did the local men affiliate themselves to IS or receive direct support? Did they travel to Syria or to other countries? The Sri Lankan government has said it believes some of them had spent time abroad, but how significant was that to the plot?
Answering questions like these will be important not just for Sri Lanka but other countries as they try and understand whether other relatively small, locally focused groups could be capable of transforming a threat into violence on such a massive scale.