Sri Lanka was less than three weeks away from commemorating a decade of relative peace when the Easter Sunday bombings killed at least 321. The goal of those behind the attack – worse than any conducted by the island’s Tamil Tiger rebels in a quarter-century of war – appears brutally simple. Beyond simply bringing bloodshed, they wanted to inflame already existing communal tensions, damaging the country’s economy and further upending its politics.
Those who carried out the attack clearly drew inspiration – and almost certainly experience and support – from groups like Isis, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Wednesday. Several dozen Sri Lankans, perhaps more, are believed to have fought for the group in Syria and beyond. Certainly, the attackers knew what they were doing, detonating multiple suicide bombs almost simultaneously to inflict maximum carnage.
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