Pakistan Wrestles With TerrorThe city of Lahore was once the seat of an enviable Muslim civilization. Ravaged now by the twin poxes of Pakistan's civic meltdown and a virulent, seemingly ineradicable Islamism, it was witness Tuesday to the first terrorist attack on sportsmen--athletes--since the Munich Olympics in 1972.
The targets were a team of cricket players from Sri Lanka. They were in Pakistan to play a series of matches that had been hastily arranged after the Indian cricket team (which had been scheduled to tour the country) canceled its plans late last year in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The Indian government (rightly and presciently) deemed a tour to Pakistan by its finest sportsmen to be much too dangerous. The Sri Lankans, whose cricketing finances do not allow them to be overly choosy about travel--and whose own experience of Tamil terrorism has hardened them to risk--stepped into the breach. How they must regret doing so.
The targets were a team of cricket players from Sri Lanka. They were in Pakistan to play a series of matches that had been hastily arranged after the Indian cricket team (which had been scheduled to tour the country) canceled its plans late last year in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The Indian government (rightly and presciently) deemed a tour to Pakistan by its finest sportsmen to be much too dangerous. The Sri Lankans, whose cricketing finances do not allow them to be overly choosy about travel--and whose own experience of Tamil terrorism has hardened them to risk--stepped into the breach. How they must regret doing so.
Although no cricket players died in the attack--carried out by the same breed of AK-47-wielding, backpack-toting young jihadis who marauded in November through Mumbai--six soldiers in their bus convoy were killed. We mourn their deaths in the line of duty. Six of the players, too, were injured, none severely. For that, we must give thanks to the divine forces that stand guard over cricket players. And give thanks, too, that those cricket players were not Indian, for an assault of this kind on Indian cricketers, so soon after Mumbai, would have reduced to rubble--if not something much worse--relations between India and Pakistan.
What are we to make of this latest terrorist atrocity? First, that Pakistan has operating within its borders terrorist groups that are beyond the control of the Pakistani state and its instruments of law and order. As the invasion of Mumbai demonstrated only too well, these groups use Pakistan as a base for attacks on India. But as the attacks on the Sri Lankan sportsmen have just shown, these groups have no love, no respect for Pakistan--or, put another way, no love for the idea of Pakistan as a Muslim democracy capable of cohabiting with a wider world.
These groups seek not merely the destruction of India, the death of infidels (be they Hindus, Jews or Christians) and the forcible departure from Afghanistan of Western troops. They seek, effectively, the destruction of Pakistan and its reconstitution as an Islamist state in which the steel of shariah comes down hard on the necks of unbelievers, in which secular practice is anathematized, in which women are subjugated to an extent even greater than their present unhappy state and in which nuclear weapons are--finally, by the grace of god--in the hands of true believers.
Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan's finest novelist, wrote a book recently called The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nice phrase, that--catchy, and poignant. But Pakistan today is a land where fundamentalism is not reluctant. The men who murdered in Mumbai, who sprayed innocent sportsmen with gunfire, are Ardent Fundamentalists. Blazing fundamentalists. Vehement fundamentalists; fundamentalists now beyond the reach of reason.
Pakistan still has a decent, humane core. Its civilization, as originally conceived by the country's founder--Jinnah--still survives in the minds of enough men and women to give us some brittle, nerve-wracked heart. Pakistan, make no mistake, is at a tipping point. It stands, precarious, on the edge of infinite darkness.
What are we to make of this latest terrorist atrocity? First, that Pakistan has operating within its borders terrorist groups that are beyond the control of the Pakistani state and its instruments of law and order. As the invasion of Mumbai demonstrated only too well, these groups use Pakistan as a base for attacks on India. But as the attacks on the Sri Lankan sportsmen have just shown, these groups have no love, no respect for Pakistan--or, put another way, no love for the idea of Pakistan as a Muslim democracy capable of cohabiting with a wider world.
These groups seek not merely the destruction of India, the death of infidels (be they Hindus, Jews or Christians) and the forcible departure from Afghanistan of Western troops. They seek, effectively, the destruction of Pakistan and its reconstitution as an Islamist state in which the steel of shariah comes down hard on the necks of unbelievers, in which secular practice is anathematized, in which women are subjugated to an extent even greater than their present unhappy state and in which nuclear weapons are--finally, by the grace of god--in the hands of true believers.
Mohsin Hamid, Pakistan's finest novelist, wrote a book recently called The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nice phrase, that--catchy, and poignant. But Pakistan today is a land where fundamentalism is not reluctant. The men who murdered in Mumbai, who sprayed innocent sportsmen with gunfire, are Ardent Fundamentalists. Blazing fundamentalists. Vehement fundamentalists; fundamentalists now beyond the reach of reason.
Pakistan still has a decent, humane core. Its civilization, as originally conceived by the country's founder--Jinnah--still survives in the minds of enough men and women to give us some brittle, nerve-wracked heart. Pakistan, make no mistake, is at a tipping point. It stands, precarious, on the edge of infinite darkness.
Related report: Pak has to dismantle terror infrastructure
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