A few months after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, the attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan this week bears many similarities in the way it was carried out. A number of gunmen armed with grenades, assault rifles and a rocket launcher attacked the team’s bus while they travelled to the Gaddafi Stadium where a cricket test match was being played. According to a witness to the attack:
“As the Sri Lankan team was approaching the stadium for the test match this morning, about a half a kilometre away from the stadium, two cars entered the roundabout… and fired a grenade,”
“As they did this, three other gunmen ran into the roundabout, where the bus was, opened fire on a police vehicle – where a police officer was killed – and then opened fire on the bus, spraying the bus we understand with machine gun fire,”
A number of Sri Lankan players were injured in the attack, and 6 Pakistani policemen and 2 civilians. The gun battle went for about 15 minutes. The driver of the Sri Lankans’ bus is being hailed as a hero for driving the bus at speed away from the scene of the attack despite having tyres shot out and other damage, and being shot at himself. He got the team into the stadium from which they were subsequently evacuated by helicopter before returning immediately home to Sri Lanka … abandoning the game and rest of the series against Pakistan.
There are some suspicious things about this attack, including:
- apparently the route the Sri Lankans took to the ground was changed, yet the attackers knew where to intercept the bus
- all of the terrorists escaped after the attack
- the very fact that a dozen or so men with heavy weaponry were able to get into the heart of the city, with the cricketers supposedly being afforded high level security
- the Pakistan team which normally travelled at the same time as the Sri Lankans delayed its departure to the ground on the day of the attack.
I would be completely unsurprised if it emerged that elements of the Pakistan military/security forces were in cahoots with the terrorists. Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence agency has fostered Islamist militant groups in Kashmir and Afghanistan over decades, and there are suspicions that some ISI elements have links to militants inside Pakistan. This is essentially what ICC match referee Chris Broad has suggested in his comments when he returned to England.
It had been thought previously that cricket, being almost a religion in Pakistan, would be sacrosanct from attacks by terrorists – clearly this is not so. Having already had a number of teams cancel tours to their country due to security concerns, this attack means no international cricket will be played there for many years, if ever again. It is almost certain that Pakistan’s role in co-hosting the 2011 cricket World Cup will be revoked, and casts doubt over hosting the event on the subcontinent at all.
Pakistan seems to be a the root of all the Islamist extremism in the world today, or at least the Pakistan/Afghanistan border regions. Many terrorists either come from there, train there and enjoy refuge and support there. Pakistan needs to grow the backbone, and to have the international support, to stamp out the militants and their support base. To date the government there has shown little appetite for this. Pakistan will continue to be ostracised by the international community, sporting and generally, until it does tackle the insurgents in a meaningful way, which to my mind means using massive military and police force, and not coming to compromises with the Islamists like they did recently in the Swat Valley region of their country. Here they signed a ceasefire agreement with the militants allowing them to apply Sharia law in the region (and given the influence of the Taliban in the insurgency here, it will be the strict interpretation of the Sharia such as was imposed in Afghanistan under Taliban rule).
Of course, the diversion of the war on terror from the relevant fight with Al-Qaeda and their harbourers the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the somewhat less relevant war on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, has not helped. Saddam Hussein was an evil oppressor, but did not present the same threat to the world in general as the terrorists based in Afghanistan. The US and allies should have completed the mission there, rather than going on what became a bigger, misguided mission in Iraq. Perhaps proper focus on the original purposes of the war on terror may have stamped out, or at least seriously curtailed, the militants in the Afghan/Pakistan border areas. Instead, it has failed to capture or kill bin Laden, eliminate Al-Qaeda and its support base, and indeed has pushed many insurgents over the border into Pakistan, worsening things there. Not to mention that Afghanistan remains a failed state some 7 years after the Taliban were ousted from power, and shows no real signs of being able to function as something remotely like a functioning, well governed country that you might actually choose to go to, or live in. Large parts of Pakistan are in a similar state, and there is a danger that the whole country will collapse.
It seems to me that solving the problems of Islamist extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the world’s biggest security challenge. It has been for a number of years. This week’s events in Lahore perhaps serve to focus more international attention on it.
Lahore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, terrorist attack, Taliban, Afghanistan, Islamist extremism
