The curtain falls

When you work as a cricket blogger you don't expect to get intensive training in geopolitics. But in the last week I have learnt more about Pakistan, the country, as opposed to the famously predictable group of eleven who wear the country's colours, than I have ever previously known. It seems that the country is currently in a deadly, globally destabilising internal conflict - an undeclared civil war between radicalised Islamist factions, and a barely competent government. The divide seems to be religious, political, ethnic, social, geographic and generational. It also seems largely irresolvable, which should make everybody reading this blog contemplate the world we are bringing our children into.

That sounds like fear-mongering, but it is based on a week-long immersion programme. Last weekend I had been writing my previous blog. I made a statement in my first draft that I questioned on re-reading. I realised after ten minutes' research that what I thought I knew about Pakistan (Karachi - a crazy megalopolis barely holding it together; Baluchistan - nasty wild west type place; Punjab - Westernised, intellectual; Peshawar - nice city, but don't head out of town; Kashmir - pretty, peaceful except near the "border" with India; Tribal Areas - full of US drones, caves and angry mullahs) was either plain wrong, or drastically altering.

So I decided to get to know Pakistan a little better. It is hugely ironic, considering the attack on Sri Lankan cricketers and match officials the next day, that I opened a book, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book called Ghost Wars, on Monday morning. I read about an attack on the US embassy in Islamabad in 1979, and a discussion of the tolerance and even active support the government of General Zia gave to radical versions of Islam, and the complicity of the sectors of the Pakistani Intelligence Agency in terrorism.

Then Tuesday night occurred and truly things will no longer be the same, certainly for Pakistan cricket, and probably for Pakistan. But in global terms, thank goodness the plan to systematically murder the team and match officials failed. The horrorism of that is barely conceivable. To be without Jayawardene, Murali, Mendis, Sangakkara, Taufel, Broad and all the others would be too great a sadness, cricket's 9/11.

I know one of the Sri Lankan team quite well: we went to a party together and spent the night drinking whiskey and talking about cricket history, of which he had an intricate knowledge. This guy could describe the innings Bradman played in Ceylon thirty years before he was born - because he had listened wide-eyed as a boy to the eyewitnesses telling their memories of the Don, just like I remember my father telling me about seeing O'Reilly and Hammond. He invited me to stay at his home in Colombo if I ever travelled there.

Thank goodness he was fine. Yet a driver, bystanders, and policemen were killed, an umpire critically wounded and there will be people feeling the grief that I avoided, just as my friend avoided the bullets and others didn't.

Pakistan felt the impact of every one of those bullets. The 2011 World Cup must now be regarded as an impossibility. A touring team will probably not tour there for some time now, and people are talking decades rather than years. Where that leaves Pakistani cricket in the future, with kids growing up in a vacuum without their national sport, I don't know, but surely other activities and devotions will attract, including the catechism of the madrassas.

And it leaves the Pakistani government in suspension. This brilliant article by William Dalrymple deals with this very plainly. Action is needed and it may need to be worldwide action, from the Punjab to Pennsylvania Ave. And cricket lovers can only hope that the passion for the leather and willow in Pakistan survives the awesome and awful wrestle, and that cricketers are never targeted in such a cynical way again.

Picture: Reuters

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Peter J   #1   10:40 am Mar 17 2009

Great post this. I Recently read a superb article called "The Rise of the British Jihad" which highlights the dangers of radical Islam to all people who believe in "civilised" values. Although I fervently believe in tolerance, we cannot accomodate these people, because they will not accomodate us. Ultimately when there are enough outrages, we will all realise this, and accept that we may have to fight the barbarians to protect what is important to us. The weirdest thing is that they think the same way - that they are protecting their values and that we are the barbarians.

And when you look at some aspects of our culture, they may have a point! But I still prefer the mainifestations of our culture to one that denies progress, rights to women, and tolerance to people of other religions.

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