KARACHI - South Asia is caught in a vortex of violence as the countries that
form this region - from Sri Lanka at its southern-most tip, Bangladesh to the
east, Nepal crowning the north, Pakistan along the west and India in the middle
- deal with internal nightmares.
Wednesday's armed attack on a convoy carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in
the historic city of Lahore in Pakistan has sent shockwaves through a country
already a victim of regular suicide and other attacks. Six Pakistani policemen
died and several were injured saving the Sri Lankan cricketers, six of whom
were wounded in the attack.
At the other end of the sub-continent, Bangladesh is still reeling
from the shock of a Border Guards' mutiny over pay and working conditions,
resulting in soldiers massacring over 140 officers, including some of their
wives. Some analysts fear that the horrific incident might elicit copycat
responses elsewhere where soldiers are unhappy with the tasks they are made to
do.
India has yet to recover from the horror of the attacks in Mumbai on November
26, 2008, which claimed some 180 lives. New Delhi had, as a direct result of
the attacks, called off participation of the Indian cricket team in the
Pakistan tests.
Sri Lanka, in the last stages of a heavy-handed army operation against Tamil
separatists who have been fighting a guerrilla war against the state for over
two decades, could hardly have imagined that its cricket team would come under
fire in Pakistan, a friendly country.
Still, as the Sri Lankans told journalists after the Lahore attack, they had
come here "well aware of the risks".
Analysts point out that Tamil separatists are unlikely to be responsible for
the attack, given the back foot from which they are operating.
The Sri Lankan team, in Lahore for a five-day Test match of which they had
already played the first two days, was en route from their hotel to the stadium
early in the morning on March 3 when the gunmen attacked.
The firing reportedly began from three directions as their van slowed down near
a roundabout close to the Gaddafi cricket stadium. Shaky television footage has
showed men with guns and backpacks taking position and firing. Their first
target was the police escort.
According to the van driver, one of them flung a hand grenade which rolled
under the van without damaging it. He said that the cricketers flung themselves
to the floor of the van as he accelerated to escape the gunfire, managing to
get the bullet-riddled van with the cricketers to the stadium.
There is universal condemnation for the terrorist act, which many believe is an
attempt to further discredit and isolate Pakistan. Many are praying for the
quick recovery of the injured cricketers who have been airlifted home to Sri
Lanka.
"They were our guests, they came to Pakistan when most people were not willing
to come," one man in Peshawar told a television journalist.
"We are a friendly and cricket-loving nation," said another passer-by. "Now no
cricket team will want to play here."
The incident has more or less put paid to Pakistan's aspirations of hosting the
next World Cup in 2011, say observers.
New Zealand said on Wednesday that it would call off its November tour of
Pakistan, and the International Cricket Council raised doubts over whether the
country could still co-host the World Cup.
"I don't think any international team will be going to Pakistan in the
foreseeable future," New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan told
Agence-France Press.
The Age newspaper in Australia said: "The Sri Lankan team airlifted out of the
Gaddafi stadium is likely to be the last to tour Pakistan for a generation."
The attackers struck at a sport that is hugely popular across South Asia, a
throwback to a common colonial past for all the countries, except Nepal, which
was never under British rule. The colonial legacy includes the English
language, administrative systems and railways.
In normal times, when India and Pakistan's cricket teams meet on the pitch the
fans often see it as a battlefield. A Pakistan-India game is referred to in
parts of India as Qayamat (doomsday). Despite the keen rivalry, however,
love of the sport is a unifying factor. "Cricket diplomacy" has featured among
the permissible people-to-people contacts that have grown immensely over the
past decade or so.
"Cricket is not the bone of discord between the two countries," Gul Hameed
Bhatti, sports editor of the country's largest media group, Jang, told Inter
Press Service. "Basically, the problem is the tensions between both countries,
and cricket has become a casualty. This incident has thrown cricket and other
sports back into the dark ages. I don't see anyone agreeing to come and play
here now."
Bhatti added that he had long "feared that this was a disaster waiting to
happen, because the situation in the rest of the country is so volatile. It was
unrealistic to think that sportsmen could remain isolated from it''.
Nor, say analysts, can other areas of society, like culture. In early November,
explosions on the penultimate night of a major international performing arts
festival in Lahore caused panic. There were no casualties, although some people
sustained minor injuries. Artists, foreign and local, defiantly rallied around
to make the festival's last day a resounding success.
The festival was held in the cultural complex next to the stadium where the Sri
Lankans were headed when they were attacked.
"Most people," said Bhatti, "had become complacent, thinking they would never
target sportsmen."
They included Pakistani cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan, who shortly
after the Mumbai attacks categorically told an Indian newspaper, "There is no
problem about the security of cricketers in Pakistan. The terrorists will never
target cricketers knowing that they will then lose the battle of hearts and
minds of the people. Cricketers are safe in Pakistan."
The audacious attack in an upmarket Lahore locality is now being compared to
the Mumbai attacks, where 10 gunmen targeted symbols of national strength like
the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Police are saying that about a dozen gunmen were
involved in the Lahore attacks.
Cricket is an area in which Pakistan has traditionally shone as a global power
with a huge fan following around the world.
Security fears have, however, massively dented enjoyment of the sport as many
foreign teams have over the past years canceled tours, including India after
the Mumbai attacks that similarly cast a shadow over "India shining", raising
doubts about internal security.
Police were still hunting on Wednesday for the gunmen behind the Lahore attack,
with five people being questioned.
Pakistan, already beset by multiple political problems, has for some time been
facing a deadly threat from jihadi forces - regional players like the Taliban
(from Afghanistan and Pakistan), al-Qaeda and local militant outfits like the
banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, many of whom have roots in the
southern Punjab and links to Pakistan's intelligence agencies that nurtured
them during the Afghan war of the 1980s.
Following the events of September 11, 2001, these forces have converged, to
emerge as a greater threat than ever before, not just for Pakistan, but for
world peace, say analysts.
Their agenda is not just to enforce what they consider to be an Islamic system,
but to overrun and destabilize the state itself. Pakistanis have suffered
heavily under this agenda, paying a price for the policies of military rulers -
who have run the country for more than half its 60 years of existence - that
civilian governments have been unable to change.
These policies have included cultivating Islamic warriors to fight against the
Soviet occupation in Afghanistan during the 1980s, supporting the Taliban to
create strategic depth in Afghanistan (citing the threat of a hostile India on
the eastern border), and using some of these elements to bleed India in the
disputed region of Kashmir.
No elected government in Pakistan has ever completed its tenure. They are
routinely overthrown either by the army or dismissed by various presidents
using the powers invested in that office by the military dictator General Zia
ul-Haq, who also got himself appointed as president.
The current elected government, say analysts, is the first that is actually
serious about fighting the jihadi threat which it recognizes as endangering the
country's very existence. "But it appears that various elements within the
establishment are still bogged down in the old policies and are unwilling to
give democracy a chance," said an observer.
Just as enraged Indians had "jumped on the blame Pakistan bandwagon"
immediately following the Mumbai attacks of November, "some in Pakistan are now
blaming the Indian hand", for the cricket attack, says Bhatti.
Many see the attack on the Sri Lankan team as an Indian attempt to take
"revenge" for Mumbai and an attempt to isolate Pakistan internationally.
Lieutenant General (retired) Hameed Gul, former head of Pakistan's shadowy
Inter-Services Intelligence and a known hawk, said on television that "India
wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state". The attack on the Sri Lankan
team, he declared, "is related to that conspiracy".
The Pakistan government itself has been more circumspect, as have other
analysts, including retired army officers like Major General (retired) Jamshed
Ayaz Khan, who cautioned against such accusations "without a full
investigation".
The Sri Lankan government's response has been conciliatory. "Pakistan's cricket
team was willing to visit our country when others weren't because of security
worries," said Palitha T B Kohona, Sri Lanka's foreign secretary, "and his
government was pleased to reciprocate. The game must not be affected by a
lunatic fringe."
Media proliferation, particularly the 24-hour television news channels, has
increased the intensity and probability of such dramatic high-profile attacks.
Terrorism thrives in the media spotlight which terrorists successfully
attracted in Mumbai last November and now with the Lahore attack.
Ultimately, those who suffer the most after such incidents are ordinary people
in India and Pakistan. The Lahore attack is bound to generate further tension
between the two countries, which have still not resumed the composite dialogue
process stalled after the Mumbai attacks in November.
Rather than cooperating to solve a common problem, India and Pakistan remain
prisoners of their hostile pasts. The ultimate winners in this game, note
analysts, will only be the terrorists, whose aim is destabilization and raising
tensions around the region and the world.
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