Analysis by Beena Sarwar
KARACHI, Mar 4 (IPS) – South Asia seems to be caught in a vortex of violence as the countries that form this region – from Sri Lanka at the southern-most tip, Bangladesh to the east, Nepal crowning the north, Pakistan along the west and India in the middle – deal with internal nightmares that their governments routinely blame on neighbours.
Wednesday’s armed attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the historic city of Lahore in Pakistan has sent shockwaves through a country already racked by regular suicide and other attacks.
Eight Pakistani policemen died and several were injured saving the Sri Lankan cricketers, six of whom were wounded in the attack.
At the other end of the sub-continent, Bangladesh is still reeling from the shock of a border guards’ mutiny over pay and working conditions, resulting in soldiers massacring over 70 officers, including some of their wives.
Some analysts fear that the horrific incident might elicit copycat responses elsewhere too, where soldiers are unhappy with the tasks they are made to do.
Meanwhile, India has yet to recover from the horror of the attacks in Mumbai that claimed some 180 lives. New Delhi had, as a direct result of the attacks, called off participation of the Indian cricket team in the Pakistan tests.
Sri Lanka, in the last stages of a heavy-handed army operation against the Tamil separatists who have been fighting a guerrilla war against the state for over two decades, could hardly have imagined that its cricket team would come under fire in Pakistan, a friendly country.