War and peace

War and peace
Mar 07, 2009

A tale of two visions in Pakistan
The blood of the slain policemen had not even dried before allegations began to fill the air in Pakistan that India had mounted the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore. It was left to one courageous journalist to observe, sarcastically, that “Given how late the Sri Lankan team decided to play the Test in Lahore, and the logistics and other requirements for mounting such an operation, the Indians didn’t have much time to put this together — in which case, if these analysts are to be believed, India seems to have done an impressive job”. The worst thing that could happen, he concluded, was for a state is to go into denial. “How long will we deny that we have groups that have run amok and whose obvious agenda involves destroying Pakistan as a nation-state?”

It is not only Pakistan that is in denial. President Obama condemned the attack as an “attempt to damage Pakistan’s relations with Sri Lanka”. He could not have been further off the mark. The attack had nothing to do with Sri Lanka — a New Zealand or West Indies team would have served the terrorists’ purpose equally well. Their real target was Pakistan’s tottering democracy and it’s seriously endangered civil society. Their purpose was not to isolate Pakistan from the world of international Cricket but from the world itself. For most of the past three decades Pakistan’s cricket team has been among the three best in the world. Cricket has therefore become the talisman of Pakistan’s success as a nation, and almost the sole focus of its national pride. Killing Pakistani cricket is therefore a surrogate for killing the modern nation-state that Pakistan yearns to become.


By far the most puzzling feature of Pakistan’s descent into chaos is that it is happening with the acquiescence of its armed forces. The Pakistan army has 650,000 soldiers and 528,000 reservists. Yet barely sixteen months after it started a ‘major offensive’ against the Taliban in Swat, Mullah Fazlullah’s rag tag, murderous militia, which numbers barely 2,500, has it on the run. The army command ascribes this, and its other failures in the tribal areas, to the fact that its army is trained for high intensity combat against India and cannot therefore be retrained and redeployed to the west until all possibility of a war with India has been eliminated. This argument is absurd. When a living organism faces both an immediate and a distant threat to its existence, the instinct for self preservation forces it to confront the former. But Pakistan’s army has still to move one significant unit from the Indian border.

After hinting initially that India may be behind the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan on Thursday ruled out India’s involvement in the audacious attack.

Investigators have not found any evidence of India's involvement in the attack, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters at the National Assembly in Islamabad. Sketches issued by Pakistani police of suspects

He also rejected speculation about the possible involvement of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Pakistani authorities have identified those responsible for the attack, according to Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.

“We have made arrests,” he said. The government later announced the arrest of two people — Faisal Nawaz and Khurram Nawaz — from Lahore.

Local media reports said some men were also picked up by police from Bahawalpur, Karachi and Faislabad.

They are suspected to be of Afghan origin.

The preliminary report of the investigation will be ready today, according to Malik.

The Pakistan government has come under severe criticism after fresh TV footage showed two of the gunmen strolling away from the attack to a waiting bike, and then riding past a police van.