Analysis: Sri Lanka attacks show that the Salafi-jihadist threat continues to cast a global shadow

Sri Lankan officials said on Monday that they suspect a local radical jihadist group, the National Thoweed Jama'ath (NTJ), was behind the massive coordinated terror attacks that targeted churches and hotels killing at least 290 people on Easter Sunday. 

The wave of attacks is stark reminder of the fact that the danger posed to international security by terrorist cells, motivated by extremist Salafi-jihadist ideology, has not passed. 

Authorities in Sri Lanka also suspect that the seven NTJ suicide bombers may have received help from international terrorist elements overseas. 

The nature of the targets picked by the terrorist network in Sri Lanka suggests a copying of global jihadist tactics. 

The Islamic State's branch in Egypt, for example, has systematically targeted Christian Coptic worshippers and churches for deadly attack, while also seeking to harm Egypt's tourism industry – the same combination of targets hit by the terrorists in Sri Lanka. 

Between 2016 to 2018, jihadist suicide attacks on churches in Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile Delta have killed at least 100 people. 

A bomb attack on a tourist bus near the Giza pyramids site in December 2018 killed four tourists. A month before that, ISIS gunmen opened fire on two buses carrying Coptic Christian pilgrims, murdering seven and wounding sixteen. 

In Iraq, ISIS gunmen and bombers have repeatedly targeted Christians for slaughter in churches.  

Closer to Sri Lanka, ISIS maintains an active branch in the Philippines, via the Abu Sayyaf organization, which pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014. 

In January this year, the organization launched a terror attack on a Roman Catholic church in the southern Philippines, killing 23 people and wounding 110.

In December 2017, ISIS announced the establishment of a branch in Kashmir, as part of its larger objective of creating a radical state on the Indian subcontinent. Several other radical Islamic organizations are also active in the Kashmir region.  

Many victims of these radical organizations have been Muslims themselves, who reject the Salafi-jihadist ideology, thereby becoming targets.   

This pattern represents a clear warning to the security of the international community: ISIS's caliphate in the Middle East may have been destroyed, but the Salafi-jihadist concept, even if damaged, lives on, motivating cells around the world to continue to try and strike.

The threat posed by this ideology to the security of Muslim and non-Muslim states alike continues to cast a shadow. 

The horrific results of the Sri Lanka attacks are, unfortunately, likely to motivate other Salafi-jihadists to try their own attacks, and security agencies around the world will need to pool their resources and intelligence, as well as their technological know-how, to prevent that from happening. 

Security and intelligence agencies have made considerable progress in preventing such attacks, and sharing this experience is critical. 

As part of this international cooperation, vigilance, and rejecting the idea that the threat has passed, will be important. 

At the end of March, the Meir Amit Center for Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center -- an Israeli research institute based in Gelilot, north of Tel Aviv -- released a study in which it warned that "ISIS has been weakened but despite the blows it suffered, it has not been defeated. It still possesses strategic assets which will enable it to rehabilitate itself and continue to pose a threat to the international community."

The report contains important conclusions about the ongoing threat posed by Salafi-jihadists to the West, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. 

"The ISIS brand has eroded to a certain extent but the organization and the ideology behind it continue to attract young Muslims in Iraq and Syria, other countries in the Middle East and around the globe," it said. 

"ISIS will position itself as a global guerrilla terrorist organization operating in many arenas, decentralized and not bound by a territorial framework and not taking upon itself the burden of a population."

This means that the Salafi-jihadist ideology, which is based on the goal of "restoring" what it views as Islam's golden age in the 7th century, is not going to vanish any time soon. 

According to this radical ideology and its variants, jihad -- a holy war to target those perceived to be standing in the way of the core vision, including governments of Muslim-majority states -- must be launched around the world.

ISIS is not alone in holding this ideology. Al-Qaeda, and local terror organizations like Sri Lanka's NTJ, continue to be guided and motivated by variations of this worldview.

Many more years of international cooperation and determined counter-terrorism efforts will be needed to deal with the global jihadist threat.