Naheed Janjua
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Ikram Sehgal |
A bomb blast in May 2002 targeting the French naval technicians in a bus outside the Sheraton and Pearl Continental Hotels in Karachi where New Zealand’s cricket team was staying caused the Kiwis to terminate their tour.
Five years later Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination led to Australia canceling their tour of March 2008, the Champions Trophy was then shifted from Pakistan to South Africa in 2008. The 2008 Mumbai attacks gave a pretext to India to increase our isolation by terminating our mutual sporting ties, calling off their scheduled cricket tour in 2009.
Attack on Sri Lankan cricket team
To offset this vacuum Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) invited Sri Lanka (SL). We have enough experience with the Indians to have been prepared for the blowback.
On March 3, 2009, the morning of the third day of the Second Test match in Lahore, a dozen armed gunmen ambushed the Sri Lankan team’s bus near Liberty Market.
India has quite successfully isolated us in cricket in particular and sports in general.
The assault was meticulously planned, the militants firing to first deflate the tyres of the vehicle, then spraying bullets through the windows, but aiming high so that only six Sri Lankan players received minor injuries, mostly from glass and ricochets.
The quick thinking bus driver, Mohammad Khalil, feted afterwards as a hero in Sri Lanka, held his nerves and sped away while the second police escort vehicle giving covering fire (the first vehicle had all its policemen killed in the first burst of automatic fire).
Read more: PSL in Lahore: Ego or rationality to go ahead with the game?
Eight Pakistani security personnel and civilians were killed in total, including the bus driver of the vehicle following carrying the umpires. Evacuated by helicopter from Qaddafi Stadium, the Sri Lankans returned to Colombo by a special flight.
Given the amount of food and water in their backpacks, then fire pattern aiming high showed that the attackers’ primary aim was not to kill but to hold the cricketers hostage, but for what ransom?
RAW’s involvement, LTTE involvement?
India’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) had given birth to and trained the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Elam (LTTE). At that time the LTTE Chief, Prabhakharan, alongwith remnants of the terror group, was finally cornered by the Sri Lankan Army at Killonochi.
India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had desperately tried for weeks to persuade the Sri Lankans to let Prabhakharan go. Were the timing and target just an amazing coincidence?
The commissioning of this “false flag operation” being outsourced to local terrorists had a dual purpose (1) to free Prabhakharan in exchange for the Sri Lankan cricketers and (2) to isolate Pakistan in sports.
Read more: FICA and the “Extensive” security measures for PSL
This “outsourcing” had RAW’s trademark all over it. My comments on TV than were drowned out by “skeptics” of the kind who still do not believe that the “Ganga” incident was engineered by RAW in 1971 to stop overflights between East and West Pakistan.
To read full story: PSL final: Pakistanis will be the real victors
A bomb blast in May 2002 targeting the French naval technicians in a bus outside the Sheraton and Pearl Continental Hotels in Karachi where New Zealand’s cricket team was staying caused the Kiwis to terminate their tour.
Five years later Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination led to Australia canceling their tour of March 2008, the Champions Trophy was then shifted from Pakistan to South Africa in 2008. The 2008 Mumbai attacks gave a pretext to India to increase our isolation by terminating our mutual sporting ties, calling off their scheduled cricket tour in 2009.
Attack on Sri Lankan cricket team
To offset this vacuum Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) invited Sri Lanka (SL). We have enough experience with the Indians to have been prepared for the blowback.
On March 3, 2009, the morning of the third day of the Second Test match in Lahore, a dozen armed gunmen ambushed the Sri Lankan team’s bus near Liberty Market.
India has quite successfully isolated us in cricket in particular and sports in general.
The assault was meticulously planned, the militants firing to first deflate the tyres of the vehicle, then spraying bullets through the windows, but aiming high so that only six Sri Lankan players received minor injuries, mostly from glass and ricochets.
The quick thinking bus driver, Mohammad Khalil, feted afterwards as a hero in Sri Lanka, held his nerves and sped away while the second police escort vehicle giving covering fire (the first vehicle had all its policemen killed in the first burst of automatic fire).
Read more: PSL in Lahore: Ego or rationality to go ahead with the game?
Eight Pakistani security personnel and civilians were killed in total, including the bus driver of the vehicle following carrying the umpires. Evacuated by helicopter from Qaddafi Stadium, the Sri Lankans returned to Colombo by a special flight.
Given the amount of food and water in their backpacks, then fire pattern aiming high showed that the attackers’ primary aim was not to kill but to hold the cricketers hostage, but for what ransom?
RAW’s involvement, LTTE involvement?
India’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) had given birth to and trained the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Elam (LTTE). At that time the LTTE Chief, Prabhakharan, alongwith remnants of the terror group, was finally cornered by the Sri Lankan Army at Killonochi.
India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had desperately tried for weeks to persuade the Sri Lankans to let Prabhakharan go. Were the timing and target just an amazing coincidence?
The commissioning of this “false flag operation” being outsourced to local terrorists had a dual purpose (1) to free Prabhakharan in exchange for the Sri Lankan cricketers and (2) to isolate Pakistan in sports.
Read more: FICA and the “Extensive” security measures for PSL
This “outsourcing” had RAW’s trademark all over it. My comments on TV than were drowned out by “skeptics” of the kind who still do not believe that the “Ganga” incident was engineered by RAW in 1971 to stop overflights between East and West Pakistan.
To read full story: PSL final: Pakistanis will be the real victors
