Speech by Director General of INSSSL at the Inaugural Session of the Conference on "Preventing Terrorism and Countering Violent Extremism in South Asia"

“We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”  Jo Cox
 
On behalf of the premiere national security think tank INSS I would like to welcome our Chief guest Eng.Karunasena Hettiarachchi Chairman INSS, Director CSAS Nepal Dr.Pandey, Founder of COSATT Maj.Gen, Banerjee, Director KAS,distinguished scholars from regional think tanks, research staff of INSS, Media, ladies and gentleman.
 
It was last year 2016 August when INSS had its first event after its establishment by His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena President of INSS. The event was a roundtable discussion with the same audience present here today. We were happy that our inaugural event was focused specially on regional issues. As a region, South Asia has many challenges and COSATT is a unique group with eminent scholars discussing timely topics of national importance. Since ancient history, Sri Lanka has played a pivotal role regionally and internationally by bringing many scholars to our ancient kingdom which is one of the richest civilizations to this day.
 
My first affiliation with COSATT was when I was heading the Kadirgamar Institute several years ago. Identifying the importance of COSATT, I managed to partner with them at that time to bring in  a regional dimension to our foreign policy agenda. Today in the same manner we will be brining regional Security challenges to the forefront. We will discuss it in the context of a topic that is of extreme relevance to Sri Lanka and the region, that of “Preventing terrorism and countering violent extremism”.
 
On the issue of preventing terrorism, Sri Lanka has much to share, as far as its unique experience in defeating one of the most ruthless terrorist outfits in the world - the LTTE. Our valiant soldiers have proven that with the will power and combat skill any terrorist outfit can be defeated. This multi-pronged approach used to defeat terrorism in Sri Lanka is a research area that INSS has expertise in and has specialized in.
 
Terrorism and violent extremism have devastated our social fabric. A few days ago, we clearly witnessed the atrocities of terrorism in London. INSS invited a scholar from Britain, to discuss this same subject, focusing on women in terrorism, just last week.
 
In addition, on the 27th of February COSATT got together in Nepal to discuss the issue of "Countering Youth Radicalization in South Asia”, which I had the opportunity to present on, from a  Sri Lankan perspective. Sri Lanka experienced the radicalization of the LTTE youth as well as the radicalization of the Southern JVP extremist youth. While suffering as a Nation from the scourge of terrorism for nearly 3 decades, our President has become a shining example of reconciliation, forgiving his own suicide bomber Sivaraja Jenivan. South Asia has suffered immensely from terrorism and violent extremism. Sri Lanka alone has more than 40,000 war widows due to terrorism. We have successfully reintegrated the LTTE combatants into our society. In a short time our successful Rehabilitation, Reintegration and Reconstruction of the war ravaged areas is an example to the entire world. Sri Lanka could share its experience in this regard.
 
Turning to the issue of violent extremism, it is important to note that you can’t justify any form of extremism in a society. However, we must also acknowledge that it does not arise in a vacuum and that in reality narratives of grievance, injustice, human rights violations, lack of good governance and the curbing of public aspirations are the factors conducive to extremism. A few days ago I gave a lecture on taming corruption and showed that there is a connection between weak state institutions which leads to corruption and worsening economic conditions which could trigger violent extremism. Sri Lanka has a 27% poverty rate and many other South Asian countries have worse poverty rates, which leads to an easy breeding ground for terrorist outfits who wish to take advantage of such conditions. This is the reason our President declared this year as the year to eradicate poverty.
 
Violent extremists recruited over 30,000 foreign terrorist fighters from over 100 Member States to travel to the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq, as well as to Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen. These statistics show that certain counter-terrorism measures have not been sufficient in preventing the spread of violent extremism.
In fact, the UN resolution 2178 (2014), the Security Council makes explicit the link between violent extremism and terrorism, thereby underscoring the importance of measures being in line with international norms and recognizing the need for prevention. The resolution states that: “violent extremism, which can be conducive to terrorism”, requires collective efforts, “including preventing radicalization, recruitment and mobilization of individuals into terrorist groups and becoming foreign terrorist fighters”.
 
Given the aforementioned issues of terrorism and violent extremism, I believe the scholars gathered here today from the South Asian think tanks could provide us with some important recommendations for policy makers to adopt in this regard.
 
Let me end with a quote from Jo Cox who was my fellow Young Global Leader, member of British Parliament who was fatally shot and stabbed last year. His death marked the first killing of a sitting British MP since the death of Conservative MP Ian Gow, who was murdered in the IRA attack in 1990.
She says :“We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”. Today we embody this sentiment by coming together as regional scholars, united as one group of thinkers and advocating solutions for countering terrorism and countering violent extremism.