It would be hard to overstate the shock felt all over South East Asia at the terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Pakistan on Tuesday. It would be as if the Dallas Cowboys were attacked while in Italy or Spain for a game with the local professional football team. Cricket, in most of South East Asia, is the equivalent of soccer in Brazil, Football in the U.S., baseball in South and Central America. The news in the U.S. has been pinned to the probably drowning of three NFL players off the Florida Coast. Imagine if a whole team had come under AK-47 fire.

Much is being speculated upon — from the perpetrators being Laskar e-Taiba, the source of the Mumbai attacks, to the Tamil Tigers which have long been at war with the government of Sri Lanka. Most high Pakistan officials are biting their tongues until some actual data is gathered, but what everyone is aware of is the danger posed to Pakistan itself — which is the likely motive of the attack, rather than for example a religious motive against the likely mostly Buddhist Sri Lankan team.

Pakistan is well used to militant violence but the country’s historic cultural centre of Lahore in the east, while it has seen its share of bomb attacks, feels much safer than violence-plagued areas in the northwest, near the Afghan border.

The Dawn, Pakistan

Whether the attackers had an economic motive, as attacks on tourists in Egypt and Algeria have had, or a more specific anti-this-Pakistan-government motive, or, as Tariq Ali speculates, a message to send to the U.S. — Pakistan is ungovernable– is unknown for now. The actual effect is certain to add stresses and strains to a society and government already stressed to the limit –with, no one needs reminding, an arsenal of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

A deadly attack on Sri Lankan cricketers proved Pakistan faced a militant threat to its very existence and not just along its troubled Afghanistan border, Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said on Wednesday.

Reuters

At least one reporter has found some sentiment in Pakistan that the attacks could backfire on the militants, creating a back-lash against the growing extremism in many parts of the country, which would dare to attack a sport that has the emotional position of a religion to many.

It’s not clear yet if the gunmen came from the ranks of home-grown militant outfits. But if they did, the ambivalence in the security forces and among Pakistanis more broadly about vilifying some of these groups – whose targets also include India and poor local governance – could be diminished.

“If [authorities] genuinely investigate it, and they do find evidence that this was the work of internal militant groups, then I’m sure it will help contribute to the people being mobilized against the terrorists and militants,” says Lt. Gen. Talat Masood (ret.).

Attacks Backfire?

Pakistani bloggers are are uniformly distraught.

The attackers are numbered at 12, and were apparently well trained, firing in pairs from different parts of the area, dressed causally so as not to arouse suspicion. They were able to continue their fusilade for 25 minutes or so, despite the Sri Lankan bus being escorted by a phalanx of Pakistan policemen, 8 of whom are reported as having died. None of the Sri Lankans died, though several were wounded.