{"id":98482,"date":"2020-01-31T15:21:26","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T22:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=98482"},"modified":"2020-01-31T15:21:26","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T22:21:26","slug":"stepping-down-as-the-director-general-insssl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/01\/31\/stepping-down-as-the-director-general-insssl\/","title":{"rendered":"Stepping down as the Director General INSSSL"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Asanga Abeyagoonasekera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>First, let me thank all of you for the tremendous support you\nhave given me during the last few years to establish the National Security\nThink Tank of Sri Lanka, (INSSSL) under the Ministry of Defence. From the first\nemail I sent to all of you from INSSSL in August 2016, it was a challenging\nuphill task. We had four Chairman\u2019s starting from 2016 and it was a challenging\nenvironment faced with numerous significant national security threats.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although establishing a national security think tank was\nconsidered as a futile effort by some, each year the importance of a security\nthink tank was felt essential when 250 lives were taken by the extremist\nterrorists in the Easter Sunday attack. This heinous crime I witnessed from my\nown eyes at the Shangri-la hotel. I am proud to say it was the National\nSecurity think tank INSSSL that forecasted the threat of growing violent\nextremism in the country from 2018 and warned multiple times that extremists\ncould even target five-star hotels at a threat lens discussion at Ministry of\nDefence and the last documentation of the extremist terrorist threat was\nwritten by INSSSL monthly threat forecast in 2019 January. Unfortunately, all\nthis went unheard and I hope in future that research and analysis conducted by\nthink tanks will be taken much more seriously by our policymakers and\ngovernment administrative staff. Most reports and observations we compiled were\nnot shared with the higher authorities and was not given enough\nattention.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the time we launched the first research journal Defence\nReview\u201d in 2017 to all the 74 successful events conducted and recognized\nregionally and ranked at the global think tank index, it was all of you who\nwere a part of the success. We have built a resource pool of 100 experts from\naround the world to support INSSSL. I thank all of you for your kind support to\nbe part of the national security think tank. I would like to acknowledge\neveryone including the distinguished military officers, senior diplomats,\nresearchers, academics to all the resource persons who contributed their time\nfor this endeavour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From 1st February&nbsp;I will step down as the Director General\nof INSSSL and handover to Admiral (Retd.) Dr. Jayanath Colombage. While I wish\nmy successor all success, I would like you to kindly support him to build this\nimportant institute to a much greater height during his tenure.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My email and mobile remain the same. Let us keep in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Best Regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asanga Abeyagoonasekera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asanga Abeyagoonasekera First, let me thank all of you for the tremendous support you have given me during the last few years to establish the National Security Think Tank of Sri Lanka, (INSSSL) under the Ministry of Defence. From the first email I sent to all of you from INSSSL in August 2016, it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asanga-abeyagoonasekera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}