Attack on Sri Lankan Cricketers: Conflicting Motives

Were they really trying to take the Sri Lankan team as hostages? Were the perpetrators of the attack trying to deliberately plant an identical attack to throw India off the Mumbai terror attack trail? Was it sympathy, empathy, or simply cold blooded hypocrisy?

ferveez maharoof

One has to wonder what the terrorists were trying to achieve sabotaging their own country’s image and undermining the Pakistan authority’s claims that Pakistan was a safe country to tour and that teams in the past were wrong not to come to tour, such as India who called off their tour at the beginning of the year.

Was this simply a heinous, senseless crime or was it even more sinister – an attempt to throw India off the scent with an attack that borders on similarity in so far as the fact that the terrorists came armed, in western clothes with back packs that contained raisins and dry fruits?

While many of the earlier reports stated that the intent was to hold the Sri Lankan cricketers hostage, although it is unclear about the authority of the reports given that apparently all the perpetrators got away, it appears unlikely given that there were unexploded grenades under the team coach and that the terrorists carried rocket launchers, for God alone knows what!

While some are asking disconcerting questions about why only Sri Lankan cricketers and not Pakistan cricketers were targeted, the answer appears as simple as it sounds dreadful, the damage done to a foreign entity will carry a stronger statement than inflicting on one’s own in a country that does not quite know whom to trust amongst themselves.

It appears a stupid move given that Sri Lanka had obliged Pakistan at a time when India wanted strong answers of the Pakistan government over the attacks in Mumbai. Now they have lost the goodwill of the Sri Lankans, not that one expects these terrorists to understand the language of reason.

If there were doubts that cricketers could have been targeted as well given that the Champions League Twenty20 teams were set in arrive in Mumbai a day after the terrorists threw the city out of gear, there is no two ways about. Cricket is no longer exempt, no matter if the likes of Imran Khan and Javed Miandad assured one and all before. Will they be stand by their words? Worse still, can they even talk positively about the situation in their own country while condemning other nations for holding onto their perceptions, not to mention apprehensions?

How can one talk of hosting the 2011 World Cup when there is no security of life first?

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