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Terrorism on the march
Najmuddin A Shaikh
What should one make of the attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore? Theoretically, the team was being given the level of security normally reserved for heads of state. This was apparently one of the incentives the Pakistan Cricket Board had, with government approval, offered to its Sri Lankan counterpart to persuade it to send the team to Pakistan.
That this high level of security failed to prevent the attack is perhaps understandable. Sadly, even the best security agencies in the world with the most advanced technologies concede that attacks by determined terrorists who are prepared to sacrifice their lives can very rarely be prevented. Such attacks are thwarted for the most part by human intelligence by penetrating terrorist cells and getting information about the planned attack before it is launched. Clearly, our agencies had not been able to infiltrate the homegrown terrorist organisation that carried out this attack.
What is not understandable is why of this motley group of 12 or 13 people operating in the heart of Lahore, not one could be captured despite the fact that the attack lasted, by all accounts, for more than 30 minutes, and despite the fact that apart from the security squad of the Sri Lankan team, a whole phalanx of police officials was available in Gaddafi Stadium within hailing distance of the site of the incident.
The incident has been compared to the November 2008 Mumbai attack. There, the Indian authorities were lambasted for the poor security that had allowed the multiple-target attack to go forward. Ajmal Kasab and his colleague could wreak havoc at the Railway station because guarding the station were poorly armed, poorly trained and totally unprepared railway police officials Limited or no security was available at the other venues attacked by the terrorists.
The principal targets of the terrorists were Indian as the shoot-up at the railway station and the hospital showed, even though the assailants at the hotels and the Jewish centre did try to focus on foreigners. Kasab was captured and his colleague killed after they continued their rampage through the streets of Mumbai. All the points attacked were soft targets.
Indian security could not prevent the Mumbai carnage from continuing over a 72-hour period but ultimately they killed all the identified terrorists and captured one. Question marks serious ones remain about the part played by so far unidentified local accomplices and about other matters. Indias image as a country safe for tourists and for investment was dented but not very seriously. It was able to portray itself as a victim of foreign terrorism and as a country that was determined to create the security apparatus needed to prevent a recurrence of such attacks.
Lahore was very different. In Lahores Liberty Square, the dozen assailants hit a hard well-protected target. We had trained security squads presumably well equipped and well placed to call upon reinforcements if needed. Yet the assailants all escaped after shooting up, over a 30-minute period, the Sri Lankan teams convoy and killing many of the police escort.
If Indias lax security deserves condemnation, what should one say about Pakistans security apparatus?
In Lahore, the targets were not Pakistanis, even though the fatalities flowing from the attack were all Pakistanis. This was a deliberate assault on foreigners who had, as a gesture of friendship, chosen to ignore security concerns to foster cricketing ties between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and to show a measure of South Asian solidarity. It was primarily designed to reinforce Pakistans image as a country that was too dangerous to visit and as a country that had become the centre of terrorism in the region.
To say that Pakistans already tarnished international image has been further damaged is a statement of the obvious. The Sri Lankan team has departed. The New Zealanders have cancelled their proposed tour. The International Cricket Council has called into question the original plan to have Pakistan co-host the World Cup in 2011. World over, travel advisories have or will be issued warning against visiting not only already identified troubled areas of our country but now also what was hitherto, relatively, the safest city in Pakistan.
But there is a second consequence. It has brought home to the residents of Lahore how easily the chaos and anarchy of the Swat valley can, in the absence of resolute action, come to prevail in their beloved city, the cultural capital of Pakistan. To say that it has shaken irrevocably the trust Lahorites have in the citys and the countrys security apparatus and made them apprehensive of what the future holds may be somewhat exaggerated. But is it?
The IG Punjab announced after the attack that caches of arms usually employed by terrorists rocket launchers, suicide jackets, hand grenades, time bombs etc were recovered from 14 different locations in the city. Surely these were not all related to the Liberty Square incident. Surely these point to preparations for a whole series of other attacks that are now in the planning stages by organisations that are both professional and determined.
We can speculate all we want about foreign involvement and learned commentators can point to the fact that the Indians had warned the Sri Lankans against undertaking the sort of tour that the Indians themselves had cancelled, and that the Indians are seeking to retaliate for the Mumbai attack. Statements that verge on gloating have come from New Delhi and helped foster this sort of thinking.
But if we want to face reality, we must accept that this was a homegrown attack. If it had foreign financing and perhaps some foreign planning, the finger should point not only towards our eastern border but also to the north of our own country. It is there that those who found shelter now find themselves under pressure, which can best be relieved if their sympathisers in Punjab and there are plenty of those can be motivated to create chaos and anarchy in the capital of the countrys largest province.
Nobody will want to see a linkage between Swat and Liberty Square. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is force in the argument that extremist groups in our country have differing ideologies and different objectives and there exists no organic linkage between them. This is not a view I share. There are linkages if only because those recruited and trained by one group but then found operationally ineffective have no option, given their limited employability, but to join another such group.
But even if no links exist, we must recognise that the situation in Swat and the tribal areas which foreign and central Punjab militants helped create was for all extremists an indication of what a determined and ruthless minority could with the right connections achieve even against the most recalcitrant ethnic group in Pakistan.
For the moderates, it has been a clear indication of the failure of state authority, prompting as it has always done over the centuries in the Indus Valley a desire to find an accommodation with the invader, be the invasion physical or ideological.
Do we recognise this? Do we see Liberty Square as the first effort to drop the next domino after Swat? If we do, can we muster the will to establish the unity of purpose among all power centres that is a prerequisite for fighting this threat? Let us hope we do.
The writer is a former foreign secretary
Najmuddin A Shaikh
What should one make of the attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore? Theoretically, the team was being given the level of security normally reserved for heads of state. This was apparently one of the incentives the Pakistan Cricket Board had, with government approval, offered to its Sri Lankan counterpart to persuade it to send the team to Pakistan.
That this high level of security failed to prevent the attack is perhaps understandable. Sadly, even the best security agencies in the world with the most advanced technologies concede that attacks by determined terrorists who are prepared to sacrifice their lives can very rarely be prevented. Such attacks are thwarted for the most part by human intelligence by penetrating terrorist cells and getting information about the planned attack before it is launched. Clearly, our agencies had not been able to infiltrate the homegrown terrorist organisation that carried out this attack.
What is not understandable is why of this motley group of 12 or 13 people operating in the heart of Lahore, not one could be captured despite the fact that the attack lasted, by all accounts, for more than 30 minutes, and despite the fact that apart from the security squad of the Sri Lankan team, a whole phalanx of police officials was available in Gaddafi Stadium within hailing distance of the site of the incident.
The incident has been compared to the November 2008 Mumbai attack. There, the Indian authorities were lambasted for the poor security that had allowed the multiple-target attack to go forward. Ajmal Kasab and his colleague could wreak havoc at the Railway station because guarding the station were poorly armed, poorly trained and totally unprepared railway police officials Limited or no security was available at the other venues attacked by the terrorists.
The principal targets of the terrorists were Indian as the shoot-up at the railway station and the hospital showed, even though the assailants at the hotels and the Jewish centre did try to focus on foreigners. Kasab was captured and his colleague killed after they continued their rampage through the streets of Mumbai. All the points attacked were soft targets.
Indian security could not prevent the Mumbai carnage from continuing over a 72-hour period but ultimately they killed all the identified terrorists and captured one. Question marks serious ones remain about the part played by so far unidentified local accomplices and about other matters. Indias image as a country safe for tourists and for investment was dented but not very seriously. It was able to portray itself as a victim of foreign terrorism and as a country that was determined to create the security apparatus needed to prevent a recurrence of such attacks.
Lahore was very different. In Lahores Liberty Square, the dozen assailants hit a hard well-protected target. We had trained security squads presumably well equipped and well placed to call upon reinforcements if needed. Yet the assailants all escaped after shooting up, over a 30-minute period, the Sri Lankan teams convoy and killing many of the police escort.
If Indias lax security deserves condemnation, what should one say about Pakistans security apparatus?
In Lahore, the targets were not Pakistanis, even though the fatalities flowing from the attack were all Pakistanis. This was a deliberate assault on foreigners who had, as a gesture of friendship, chosen to ignore security concerns to foster cricketing ties between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and to show a measure of South Asian solidarity. It was primarily designed to reinforce Pakistans image as a country that was too dangerous to visit and as a country that had become the centre of terrorism in the region.
To say that Pakistans already tarnished international image has been further damaged is a statement of the obvious. The Sri Lankan team has departed. The New Zealanders have cancelled their proposed tour. The International Cricket Council has called into question the original plan to have Pakistan co-host the World Cup in 2011. World over, travel advisories have or will be issued warning against visiting not only already identified troubled areas of our country but now also what was hitherto, relatively, the safest city in Pakistan.
But there is a second consequence. It has brought home to the residents of Lahore how easily the chaos and anarchy of the Swat valley can, in the absence of resolute action, come to prevail in their beloved city, the cultural capital of Pakistan. To say that it has shaken irrevocably the trust Lahorites have in the citys and the countrys security apparatus and made them apprehensive of what the future holds may be somewhat exaggerated. But is it?
The IG Punjab announced after the attack that caches of arms usually employed by terrorists rocket launchers, suicide jackets, hand grenades, time bombs etc were recovered from 14 different locations in the city. Surely these were not all related to the Liberty Square incident. Surely these point to preparations for a whole series of other attacks that are now in the planning stages by organisations that are both professional and determined.
We can speculate all we want about foreign involvement and learned commentators can point to the fact that the Indians had warned the Sri Lankans against undertaking the sort of tour that the Indians themselves had cancelled, and that the Indians are seeking to retaliate for the Mumbai attack. Statements that verge on gloating have come from New Delhi and helped foster this sort of thinking.
But if we want to face reality, we must accept that this was a homegrown attack. If it had foreign financing and perhaps some foreign planning, the finger should point not only towards our eastern border but also to the north of our own country. It is there that those who found shelter now find themselves under pressure, which can best be relieved if their sympathisers in Punjab and there are plenty of those can be motivated to create chaos and anarchy in the capital of the countrys largest province.
Nobody will want to see a linkage between Swat and Liberty Square. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is force in the argument that extremist groups in our country have differing ideologies and different objectives and there exists no organic linkage between them. This is not a view I share. There are linkages if only because those recruited and trained by one group but then found operationally ineffective have no option, given their limited employability, but to join another such group.
But even if no links exist, we must recognise that the situation in Swat and the tribal areas which foreign and central Punjab militants helped create was for all extremists an indication of what a determined and ruthless minority could with the right connections achieve even against the most recalcitrant ethnic group in Pakistan.
For the moderates, it has been a clear indication of the failure of state authority, prompting as it has always done over the centuries in the Indus Valley a desire to find an accommodation with the invader, be the invasion physical or ideological.
Do we recognise this? Do we see Liberty Square as the first effort to drop the next domino after Swat? If we do, can we muster the will to establish the unity of purpose among all power centres that is a prerequisite for fighting this threat? Let us hope we do.
The writer is a former foreign secretary
