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| Our perpetual denial mode |
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Thursday, March 05, 2009
Apparently, the security reservations by the Australian and Indian cricket teams were not all unfounded regarding playing cricket in Pakistan. After their refusal to play, to save Pakistan cricket the valiant Sri Lankans volunteered and agreed to play despite the known and hostile presence of all kinds of Kasabs (a derivative of Ajmal Kasab of Mumbai fame) in Pakistan. And this is how they are rewarded. Cricket is like a second religion in South Asia. The people of South Asia get hypnotised when a cricket series is played there. For the Pakistani nation cricket is the one thing that doesn’t create divisions -- in fact it unites us all. And now this has been taken away from us.
Over the past twenty odd years, Pakistan has become a country living in a state of denial. The most handy scapegoat is India’s RAW. Our ruling class (read the military) wants us to believe that everything that goes wrong in the country is because of either RAW or -- the next preferred scapegoat -- the Jewish lobby. Now as the investigations are launched into this incident, we are sure to see a finger pointed at an Indian hand in the incident -- this in fact has already begun. And this will be taken well in public, of course, so as to settle the score for Mumbai.
If we could come out of our perpetual denial mode, we would see why it is people from among us who go around beheading others and burning girls’ schools. We should also realise that the targeting of the country’s most popular sport is going to benefit the jihadis in a big way because the youth can then be more easily recruited by militant outfits. So the attack on a foreign cricket team may have had this sinister purpose as well.
The people of Pakistan need to realise that the enemy is from within and if they don’t then they will be behaving like ostriches and such an attitude which ignores the clear extremist and militant tendencies found inside Pakistan will not help at all. We see rallies taken out against US drone attacks but when will we ever see large public rallies against such attacks? There is only so much that the government can do -- people also need to play a part, and the most important is to understand who the real enemy is.
Bahadar Ali Khan
Markham, ON, Canada
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ISSN 1563-9479 
