Source — AITW Ep018 — Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in the Wake of the Sri Lanka Attacks¶
Episode Metadata¶
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Episode number | 18 |
| Title | Ep. 18: Terrorism and counter-terrorism in the wake of the Sri Lanka attacks |
| Publication date | 2019-05-05 |
| Guests | None (Darren and Allan only) |
| Allan present | Yes |
| Format | Single-focus episode; terrorism/CT throughout; reading segment at close |
Summary¶
A single-topic episode prompted by the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka (21 April 2019, 250+ killed). Allan provides historical context on Sri Lanka in Australian foreign policy imagination, traces IS's transformation from territorial state to diffuse network, and sets out Australia's counter-terrorism architecture. The episode's most important policy arguments concern foreign fighters: Allan makes an ethical and strategic case that Australia should take responsibility for its own citizens rather than exporting problems. He also discusses the AFR interview in which he described a "passive conspiracy" between the major parties to avoid serious foreign policy debate during elections. The reading segment confirms Allan as a self-described "non-techie" without Foxtel access.
Key Quotations¶
Sri Lanka's long place in Australia's international imagination¶
"Colombo has been part of Australia's international imagination for a long time, really, from European settlement here, because it was one of Britain's own string of pearls linking Australia and New Zealand back to the heart of empire through Singapore and Mumbai and Aden and Suez. It was also one of our earliest diplomatic posts. We set up a high commission there in 1947 when Ceylon, as it then was, became independent. And we know it, of course, as the site of one of the earliest major Australian diplomatic initiatives, the Colombo Plan, which lives on nowadays as the New Colombo Plan."
— [00:03:10.040 --> 00:05:53.560]
Allan situates the attack within a historical and institutional frame before discussing it as a current event. The imperial geography (string of pearls; Singapore, Mumbai, Aden, Suez) is deployed from memory. Connecting this to a "string of pearls" — the same phrase used in Ep017 to describe Chinese port strategy — may or may not be deliberate.
LTTE and the origins of modern suicide bombing¶
"The Tamil resistance included the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, LTTE, which was a terrorist group which actually pioneered the modern use of suicide bombings."
— [00:03:10.040 --> 00:05:53.560]
Historical precision as analytical grounding: before discussing Islamist suicide bombing, Allan establishes that the technique was pioneered by a non-Islamic group. This is characteristic — he resists the conflation of a method with a religion.
The cognitive difficulty of the attacks¶
"When I first heard about this bombing, I had to sort of work to get my mind around the fact that this was a Muslim attack on Christians."
— [00:03:10.040 --> 00:05:53.560]
Unusual moment of disclosed cognitive dissonance. Allan had mentally mapped Sri Lanka as a Buddhist-Hindu (Sinhalese-Tamil) conflict zone; the Easter Sunday attacks required him to reorient that map. This is honest self-reporting of how mental models shape first responses.
Iraq invasion as root of IS¶
"On this particular IS attack, I do think we always need to remind ourselves of the catastrophic consequences of the Bush administration's decision to respond to the 9-11 attacks by invading Iraq and how these still ripple outwards."
— [00:08:43.680 --> 00:10:20.720]
The word "catastrophic" is unambiguous. Allan does not soften the judgment. "Still ripple outwards" is a structural claim: the consequences of the Iraq invasion are not historical — they are present-tense.
IS's territorial defeat as strategic opportunity¶
"IS seems to have managed, for the time being anyway, to have turned what might have been seen as a fatal setback as it was driven out of the huge swathe of territory it held in Iraq and Syria. It seems to have transformed this into an opportunity to spread its activities into other parts of the world."
— [00:08:43.680 --> 00:10:20.720]
Allan resists triumphalism over IS's defeat on the ground. The hedges — "seems to have managed," "for the time being anyway" — are not vacillation; they are epistemic honesty about an evolving situation.
Counter-terrorism structure: begin at home¶
"You have to begin at home. Any government needs to begin at home with the domestic security and intelligence organisations, especially ASIO and the AFP. You need to know whether there is a threat to Australians here. But you can't respond to any international problem without also engaging internationally."
— [00:11:08.440 --> 00:12:49.920]
Structural ordering: domestic before international. Not because the international doesn't matter but because situational awareness begins at home. The logic is explicit: know the threat first, then engage outward.
Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation¶
"We work very hard to build this network of information which enables us to identify the threat and where it's coming from. And we've also tried to help and I think pretty successfully to build capabilities in our region, especially in Indonesia. You've seen there the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement cooperation, which has been doing very good work for a long time now."
— [00:11:08.440 --> 00:12:49.920]
Allan cites the JCLEC as a concrete success story — not abstract "cooperation" but a named institution with a track record. This is how he typically makes arguments: specific institutions rather than general claims.
Ethical responsibility for Australian foreign fighters¶
"I strongly agree with you on this. I think that as a developed country with effective institutions, Australia has an ethical responsibility for our own citizens and even for our dual citizens... I think we have a responsibility for them rather than sending them back to places where they may be monitored less effectively."
— [00:22:01.840 --> 00:23:20.240]
Allan frames the foreign fighter question as an ethical obligation, not just a security calculation. The argument has two parts: (1) we are responsible for our citizens; (2) keeping them here means better monitoring and de-radicalisation capability than they would face elsewhere.
Saudi stripping Bin Laden's citizenship as cautionary example¶
"An interesting illustration of this was the fact that the Saudis stripped some of Bin Laden of his citizenship, but that simply fanned the al-Qaeda threat."
— [00:22:01.840 --> 00:23:20.240]
Concrete counter-example to citizenship stripping as counter-terrorism strategy. Allan does not labour the point — he offers it as an "illustration," trusting the listener to draw the implication.
Exporting problems¶
"It's incredibly resource intensive to monitor people and to try to de-radicalise them, if indeed that's possible. So it's easy to understand the temptation to just export our problems. But we should take responsibility ourselves because Australia overall will be better off for it."
— [00:22:01.840 --> 00:23:20.240]
"Export our problems" is pointed and economical. He acknowledges the temptation before rejecting it. "Australia overall will be better off for it" is a consequentialist argument to accompany the ethical one — the two reinforce each other.
NZ deportees: another form of exported responsibility¶
"I also must say that I sympathise with the Kiwis who complain that our government is sending back across the Tasman New Zealanders who've broken the law, but have lived here most of their lives."
— [00:22:01.840 --> 00:23:20.240]
Without being asked, Allan extends the foreign fighter principle to Australian deportation policy toward New Zealand — a domestic policy area that follows the same ethical logic. This connecting-of-dots is characteristic.
A "passive conspiracy" on foreign policy in elections¶
"There is a sort of passive conspiracy between the two major parties to keep an election campaign lid on mounting alarm among members of Australia's foreign policy establishment about what is happening in the big bad world."
— [00:25:02.400 --> 00:27:10.880] (Darren quoting Allan's AFR interview; Allan confirms and elaborates)
This is the phrase Allan gave to the AFR. It is sharper than his usual register — "passive conspiracy" is almost rhetorical. He moderates it slightly in the podcast explanation: both parties understand where their electoral vulnerabilities and strengths lie, so foreign policy becomes tactical rather than substantive during campaigns.
The parties' strategic calculation on foreign policy¶
"What the parties are trying to do is to highlight the differences between themselves and their opponents, where they think that will be an advantage and to minimise the differences where they think vulnerabilities might be where they might see vulnerabilities for themselves."
— [00:25:02.400 --> 00:27:10.880]
Structural analysis of electoral campaign logic. Neither cynical nor naïve — just a description of how campaigns are run.
Foreign policy as non-barbecue-stopper¶
"The differences that there are are subtle and the sort of thing that interests you and me and the listeners to this podcast, but hardly cut through — it's what John Howard would have called a barbecue stopper — for the public."
— [00:25:02.400 --> 00:27:10.880]
The phrase "barbecue stopper" (borrowed from Howard) is used here to name what foreign policy is NOT in Australian electoral politics. It's a wry self-awareness: the podcast's audience is the policy community, not the general voter.
Ambivalence about public debate on foreign policy¶
"In some ways, I would love a big national debate on these issues, but seeing what happens to subtle and informed discussion in other areas of public policy during an election campaign, maybe we're better off without it."
— [00:25:02.400 --> 00:27:10.880]
A rare moment of ambivalence about democratic deliberation. Allan wants the debate in principle but doubts that electoral campaigns generate the quality of discussion the subject deserves. The "maybe" is genuine — he has not resolved this tension.
Biographical Fragments¶
Evidence type: Confirmed - Allan is a "non-techie" — self-described: "as you know, I'm a non-techie and I need help in these areas" (Ep018). Consistent with "conscientious objector to social media" (Ep012). - Allan does not have Foxtel: "I don't have access to being a non-techie to Foxtel" — confirming he is watching Game of Thrones (mentioned in Ep017) only when released on DVD or physical media. - Gave an interview to Andrew Clarke of the AFR in mid-April 2019 in which he described the "passive conspiracy" between the major parties on foreign policy.
Style and Method Evidence¶
- Historical grounding before analysis: on Sri Lanka, begins with Colombo's place in the British imperial network, the 1947 high commission, the Colombo Plan, and the Tamil civil war before addressing the 2019 attacks. This is routine for Allan — the present only makes sense in historical depth.
- Ethical frame for security policy: the foreign fighter argument is unusual in the counter-terrorism space, where the default framing is threat reduction. Allan insists on the ethical dimension explicitly and then shows how it converges with the security argument.
- Counter-example as argument: using the Saudi/Bin Laden case to illustrate the limits of citizenship stripping is efficient and concrete.
- Disclosed first response: "I had to work to get my mind around the fact that this was a Muslim attack on Christians" — admits that his existing mental model was disrupted. Rare honesty about initial confusion.
- "Catastrophic": one of the stronger adjectives in the corpus, deployed on the Iraq invasion decision. Not hedged.
- Self-inclusion: acknowledges the AFR quote and confirms it, then elaborates its logic. He does not retreat from the phrase "passive conspiracy."
Reading, Listening and Watching¶
Allan — Hilary McGeeche, "US-China technology competition, impacting rules-based order" (US Study Centre, University of Sydney, Alliance 21 Fellow report)
"She's written a report with the, it has to be said, somewhat less than snappy title, US-China technology competition, impacting rules-based order. But ignore the title, Hilary manages the really extraordinary feat of managing, of making the international organisation for standardisation interesting."
Characteristic recommendation style: he notes the weak title while recommending strongly. The ISO being "made interesting" is a specific achievement worth citing.
Allan — Sue Halpin, "The Terrifying Potential of the 5G Network" (New Yorker)
No extended comment; paired with the McGeeche report as complementary reading on US-China tech competition.
Allan on Game of Thrones: Has no Foxtel access; will watch on DVD; requests no spoilers from Darren. "You've got to be careful Darren, I don't, as you know, I don't have access to being a non-techie to Foxtel, so I want no spoilers on Game of Thrones."
Open Questions¶
- When did Allan give the AFR interview to Andrew Clarke? Darren says "mid-April" — was this before or after the Easter Sunday attacks (21 April)? If before, "mounting alarm" refers to pre-attack concerns about the broader foreign policy landscape, not specifically terrorism.
- The "non-techie" self-description recurs. Does Allan have more to say about this across the series — does it affect how he engages with cyber policy, AI, or technology topics?
- Allan mentions the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation as a success. Does he return to this institution in later episodes as a model for regional capacity building?