Pakistan’s Siege Within

A day after the Lahore terror attack, Pakistan, nay the entire Asian sub-continent where cricket is a religion, is still in a state of shock. Even for a country that has got accustomed to the daily horror of extremist violence, the outrage of targeting a visiting cricket team has come as a debilitating shock.

As is always the case with such mindless acts of violence, fingers are being pointed at everyone, from Lashkar-e-Taiba to Taleban and from Tamil Tigers to Pakistan’s own infamous ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). Some in Pakistan have even accused Indian agencies of planning the whole thing as a retaliatory measure for the Mumbai attacks of November, suspected to have been perpetrated by Lashkar.

But the theory about Indian hand is rather farfetched. India wants Pakistan to join hands with it to take on the extremists. It wouldn’t add fuel to the fires already raging in Pakistan.

New Delhi has enough of its own problems to poke its nose in neighbours’ affairs. Besides, if Pakistan is destabilised, it will only add to India’s woes along its Western borders. The attack on Lahore, in its smart execution and style, looks more like Mumbai II. So it’s more likely that the same folks who targeted Mumbai’s landmarks in November could have been behind Lahore’s Tuesday horror.

But regardless of who planned and executed the highly skilled and choreographed attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket squad, they sought to completely destroy the South Asian country’s already battered image and standing around the world. As former captain Imran Khan simply put it, the target was Pakistan.

Notwithstanding its myriad problems, Pakistan has always been associated with and seen as a practitioner of world class cricket. They are after all former world champs. In spite of their team’s recent indifferent performance, Pakistanis rightly take pride in their contribution to cricket. The Lahore attack dealt a deathly blow to that image of Pakistan and the pride of ordinary Pakistanis. No wonder the International Cricket Council is reviewing its plans to hold 2011 World cup. There’s a strong possibility that none of these matches will be held in Pakistan or even in the entire sub-continent.

This is unfortunate for a sport that brings billions of people from at least four continents together. But then this has never been about cricket or sports. Pakistan has been caught in a vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence. It’s paying a price for being in the forefront of America’s endless war on terror.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, it played a crucial role as a frontline state in the global jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was a war that Pakistan willingly joined as it was led by the United States and largely supported by Arab and Muslim countries.

But it didn’t have the luxury of choice when the US decided to bring down the Taleban regime in Kabul after 9/11 attacks. Islamabad had to go along after President Bush issued his ‘with-us-or-against-us’ ultimatum. It recruited itself in the war against the groups it once patronised and supported.

That support to the US war and subsequent backlash from its vast tribal belt and groups like Al Qaeda and Lashkar is unravelling Pakistan today. It’s time Pakistan paused and pondered how it can persuade the monster it helped unleashed years ago to go back into the bottle. However, Pakistan can’t do it on its own. It needs help, especially from the United States.