Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Attacks on SriLanka Cricket Players-- Please Dont Isolate Pakistan

The attacks on the Sri Lanka cricket player while they were on their way to resume the third day of a test match is really unfortunate and is very rightly drawing a lot of international attention in condemning this act of terror.

I am pretty sure that no one in this world (except for the terrorists themselves) would have expected that there could be a terror strike on the cricket players, even in Pakistan;
because in Pakistan and in the sub-continent cricket is like a parallel religion and cricket player, irrespective of their nationality are treated like demi-gods.

So if cricket and cricketers are not safe in Pakistan then who is...

The cricket world is all but scared and future cricket-tours to Pakistan have been cancelled. Pakistan as a joint host of the 2011 world cup is very doubtful. It unlikely that any team can be convinced to tour Pakistan in near future. This is so unfortunate as with this tour of Sri-lankan team cricket barely resumed and this act of shame happened.

A lot of words have been and will be written about the yet another lapse in security and why not even after such an attack the gunmen managed to escape, making a full mockery of the security in Pakistan. It is obvious that given the circumstances, Sri-Lankan team should have been given a top-class security. Note that Sri-lankans traveled to Pakistan, despite the advice of not traveling to Pakistan. Sri-lankans showed their solidarity by traveling what did they get in return... Former cricketer Imran Khan noted that some irrelevant ministers have better security than the Sri-Lankan team.

The effects of this particular terror strike certainly will go beyond cricket for instance the stock-exchanges in Pakistan crashed fearing that all investments will dry up. The economy which is already in shambles will completely crash.

After this particular strike the opinion is converging to isolate Pakistan and declare is a terrorist state. My biggest fear is that once Pakistan might even be quarantined.

I dont know who planned and executed the terror strike (and it doesnt really matter), but I am sure they are not stupid that they cannot predict that the attack on visiting cricketers would result in a complete isolation of Pakistan on the international stage. If they still went ahead and executed the strikes,
indicates that terror outfits want Pakistan to be isolated from outside influence. Perhaps an isolated Pakistan would be easier to tame into the fundamentalistic mentality of the terrorists outfits.

Pakistan is a country full of brave and talented people with a great deal of knowledge about the latest technology of all sorts. Leaving such a pool of knowledge and talented population in hands of the terrorists would only strengthen the terrorists and they will pose challenges of bigger surprise factor and magnitude would become more frequent.

After the shameful terror strikes if the we would leave Pakistan alone, then we will commit a crime of bigger magnitude.
This is a time when Pakistan needs genuine support.

This support should not be in the form of money to the government but it should be provided in the form of intelligence and logistics support. When a country cannot provide proper security to a visiting cricket team, it means that basic concept of security is somehow messed up in the system. So the world should come forward to provide necessary training and equipments to the security personnel in Pakistan.

At the same time there should be more pressure on the so called democratic government to enforce the law from the United Nations, US or other countries including India. The government in Pakistan should evaluate the fear of the fundamentalist forces more seriously and rise above the short-term gains of retaining power and protect the freedom and honor of Pakistan.

My sincere hope is that Pakistan government will take this one instance of terror strikes seriously and the rest of the world will behave in a more responsible way and support Pakistan in controlling the terrorists organizations and we will see among other things, cricket resuming in the country.

No comments: