Safety for sports

Sri Lanka is the one country, above any other, which has the moral authority to refuse to send sports teams to Pakistan. It was only four years ago that its cricket team was attacked by militants as it made its way to Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Since then, Pakistan has essentially become a sporting pariah, with very few countries willing to play here. A proposed cricket Twenty20 league was postponed and will likely end up being cancelled because there simply aren’t enough international cricketers willing to take the risk of playing in Pakistan. Now, the Sri Lankan throwball team has cancelled its visit to Pakistan due to the violence in Karachi, which is a combination of both militant violence as well as that between political parties.

Instead of bemoaning how international teams do not want to play in Pakistan, we should be trying to reform ourselves. Building hotels inside stadiums may get the occasional team to play here but it is no long-term solution. Ultimately, this will require making Pakistan a safe enough country to visit. This means defeating the militant menace. The one country that we can use as an example is, ironically, Sri Lanka itself. Tamil Tiger violence led many teams to cancel tours to the country and, on at least two occasions, an abrupt end to a cricket series after a bombing. Now, Sri Lanka, after a long and bloody military campaign, is no longer a centre of political violence. We cannot risk a foreign team visiting Pakistan to be targeted or caught up in a militant attack. Were that to happen again, international sports in the country may never recover. It is better for us to accept the unlikelihood of countries sending their sports persons here and understand that winning back the trust of the international community will require many years. Militants have repeatedly shown in their attacks on cricketers, the military and politicians that there is no such thing as foolproof security. We cannot, in good conscience, expect foreigners to feel safe here, especially when we live in such a permanent state of insecurity ourselves.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2013.