OPINION: Refugee Hysteria Suggests Aussies Have Forgotten Their Own Ancestors

YOU can always tell when Australia has entered election mode. Suddenly the really big issues come to the fore - issues that affect the economy, national security, indeed Australia's very survival. Issues like the occasional arrival of a handful of desperate boat people from Afghanistan, Iraq or Sri Lanka via Indonesia.

On Sunday, March 28, Rupert Murdoch's tabloids across Australia ran the front-page story of a mass invasion of asylum seekers. In Brisbane, the headline was THEY'RE HERE.

And who were they? The paper reported that 2000 asylum seekers had made it to Christmas Island, while 425 people were being housed on the mainland. But the real nightmare was seven adults and three children going shopping in Brisbane. They spent an hour and a quarter in a shopping centre, the paper howled.

The group returned with two shopping trolleys loaded with grocery bags. Their purchases included Home Brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith's potato chips and cartons of Coca-Cola.

How selfish of seven adults to share pizza, chips and soft drink. And to think these people claim to be desperate refugees!

Anyway, back to the world of sanity. Readers with even a basic knowledge of Australian history will find the current immigration hysteria ironic. For some reason, non-European illegal immigrants seem to bring out the worst indignation in white Australia. It's as if Aussies have forgotten their own ancestors came here from mother England on boats. And many were here as a result of being sentenced for the kinds of offences for which our migration laws today would bar them from leaving Sydney airport.

Australians are all too quick to forget the key historical role people from Afghanistan played during the mid-19th century. For 60 years, these men and their camels were the only transportation available through the centre of Australia, servicing distant mines and sheep stations as well as being involved in Australia's first overland telegraph line.

With troops fighting in Afghanistan, Australia has an obligation under international law to restore order. Australia and its coalition and Nato partners have singularly failed to do this. Hence, when it comes to accepting Afghan refugees, Australia has a major responsibility. Sadly it is the conservatives, self-declared protectors of Australia's Christian heritage, who show the least Christian attitude towards refugees.

The prejudice in Australia's popular media toward anyone deemed a Middle Eastern migrant is so endemic that one can only hope God in his good sense doesn't send the Son of Man to Australia for the Second Coming.

IN AUGUST last year, on an ABC television chat show, Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop reminded viewers of the perils posed to Australia by an increase in the number of people arriving by boat.

She shared the panel with conservative American humorist P J O'Rourke. He found all this hysteria about boat people in Australia and some parts of the EU rather amusing.

You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean, 36,000 you said in Italy? We laugh. That's a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know ...

Ms Bishop tried to rescue her conservative credentials after being showed up by O'Rourke. She recited the usual Liberal Party mantra about people smugglers.

O'Rourke's response?

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You know, if you open your borders, you don't have people smugglers ...

These people are assets. One or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later. Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.

The Rudd Labor Government is not much better. Australia's immigration minister recently announced that the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan would be suspended. The government says circumstances have changed in both countries such that it is now safe enough for asylum applicants to return.

That being the case, one can expect Australian troops in Afghanistan to prepare for their imminent return. Yet the reality is that the US is getting ready to send 17,000 more troops into the country and has requested its allies (including Australia) to increase their troop presence. Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay has told Nato and other allies that the military alliance cannot take its foot off the gas in Afghanistan, simply because the US is about to send 17,000 more troops.

And so we have all this fuss over 4500 boat people. Meanwhile, there is little fuss over 50,000 illegal immigrants from Britain and the US.

In the Australian psyche, illegal immigrants must necessarily be non-European and non-white. Either that or some illegal immigrants are more illegal than others.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer and writer. This article was first published in the Dominion-Post in Wellington, New Zealand.

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OPINION: Rising trend of fearmongering on refugees and passports ...

Coalition rhetoric now appears to slipping back to the worst practices of the Howard era, IRFAN YUSUF writes ...

Tony Abbott wasn’t exactly born into the Liberal establishment. His political mentor was none other than Bob Santamaria, the ultraconservative Catholic activist who founded the National Civic Council and who was more concerned with ridding trade unions of communism than supporting what he described as Menzies’ "party of capital".

In his book Battlelines, published shortly before his accession to the Liberal leadership, Abbott affectionately refers to his mentor as "Santa". He admits that Santamaria (who died in 1998) had some concerns about the young Abbott joining the Liberals. Santamaria apparently had a

... prejudice that serious Catholics couldn’t advance in the Liberal Party.

In recent times, followers of other non-Protestant faiths must be wondering whether the same applies to them. Recent comments about asylum seekers, burqas and passport forgeries must surely make us wonder whether the Australian electorate would be ready for "Captain Catholic" to rule over a country where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are the fastest growing faiths.

Many wondered during the mid-1990s whether John Howard, the man who suggested that Asian migrants may not make a neat cultural fit, could one day become prime minister of a country located closer to Kuala Lumpur than London.

Coalition rhetoric on these issues today seems a mere continuation of the worst of the Howard era. Former Liberal prime minister (and now former party member) Malcolm Fraser described the party as being more about"fear and reaction".

The recent "real action" advertisement shows the origin of illegal immigrants to Australia. Five red arrows are shown emerging from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia respectively. The words "Stop illegals now" are shown in the top left corner of the screen.



No red arrow was shown emerging from Britain, even though it provides one of the largest proportions of illegal immigrants in Australia, certainly larger than any of the five Asian and Middle Eastern nations shown in the Liberal advertisement.

Presumably the Coalition strategists regard white-skinned English-speaking Brits as less scary than dark-skinned English-speaking Tamils or olive-complexioned Iraqi Christians.

The Coalition has also announced a return to some form of Pacific solution. This will involve the offshore processing of any asylum seekers arriving “illegally”. We will also see a return to Temporary Protection Visas under a future Coalition government. Yet, as Bernard Keane notes in Crikey, there was "a 50 per cent surge in asylum seekers coming by boat after TPVs were introduced in 1999" by the Howard government.

Furthermore, most TPV holders were eventually granted refugee status. The TPV regime is hardly incentive for “illegals” to avoid boats altogether. Hence the Liberals could once again become the people smugglers’ best friends.

Yet the irony is that so much of the fear-mongering runs directly contrary to Australia’s best interests, let alone liberal and/or conservative fundamentals and common sense. At times, the Howard government showed a complete disdain for Australian citizenship, all the while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns encouraging permanent residents to take up citizenship.

The complete disdain Howard and his ministers showed to Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, unlawfully detained by the United States, was just one example of how fear-mongering was used to evade the government’s responsibilities to its own citizens.

Recent comments by Julie Bishop show an even greater disdain for the rights of Australian citizens whose passports have been fraudulently used to carry out a terrorist act. Some may baulk at the suggestion that the murder of a Hamas leader could be deemed a terrorist act given that the deceased was himself responsible for acts of terror. Hamas, they will say, was a murderous organisation with a history of bloody retaliation.

And now Hamas will have a large number of Australian passport holders on their retaliation list.

To make matters worse, Bishop indicated (and hastily retracted) that Australian governments had forged other countries’ passports for use by our intelligence services.

One wonders whether Bishop was part of such a government and privy to such a decision, or, if such forgeries existed, whether they were used in assassinations or other forms of terrorism.

Indeed, can Abbott promise that a future Coalition government will not forge overseas passports, including those of permanent residents and citizens? Will he be prepared to put this in writing?

The Coalition has again been caught out placing the interests of foreign countries (albeit allies) above the safety and security of Australian citizens. In government they allowed two Australian citizens to languish in an illegal US prison camp in Cuba at the insistence of the US. Now, in Opposition, the Coalition is showing effective disdain to the security of Australian citizens to protect the sentiments of a nuclear-powered Middle Eastern government that used Australian passports to carry out an assassination.

And to think Bishop was accusing her opponents of appeasing an overseas lobby.

■ Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, a former federal Liberal candidate and author of Once Were Radicals. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 28 May 2010.

UPDATE I: Neil James of the self-styled Australian Defence Association wrote this delightful letter to the newspaper.

In what again seems to skate closely to an apologia for Islamist terrorism, and among other polemical claims too numerous to refute, Irfan Yusuf ("Rising trend of fear-mongering on refugees and passports," May 28, p13) incorrectly claims that David Hicks was "unlawfully detained by the United States'' in an "illegal prison camp".

Under the Geneva Convention, as a Taliban combatant captured by the opposite side in a war he chose to fight in, David Hicks was not detained illegally for a single minute at least, perhaps, until his later separate criminal trial and prison sentence by US Military Commission. He was only detained by the US for so long because the war continued, and our then inadequate treachery laws meant he could not be released on prison of war-type parole for criminal trial in Australia (as the US was willing to do).

Fortunately this long-standing and disgraceful legal loophole has been closed so a future Wilfred Burchett or David Hicks can have his day in court. Rightly, since the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits treason if he or she (among other things):

*intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

*intentionally assists, by ''any means whatsoever'', another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or

*forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

In a liberal democracy ruled by law we owe no less to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. Irfan Yusuf should be prepared to acknowledge this.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

What can I say? Unlike you, Mr James, I don't consider myself an expert in public international law. But I find your suggestion that our men and women overseas are fighting and dying so that our liberties can be curtailed by draconian laws you and the small minority of similar mind boast of to be utterly ridiculous and an insult to our armed forces.

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CRIKEY: The difference between a terrorist and a terrorist ...

What’s the difference between a terrorist and a terrorist? And when is a terrorist deemed a genuine refugee who doesn’t pose any threat to Australia?

Victor Rajakulendran, secretary of the Australian Federation of Tamil Associations, provides some clues. He acknowledges that there are members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam aboard the Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking, landing in Indonesia with its cargo of 78 asylum seekers.

Rajakulendan was quoted in The Australian as saying:

The ex-combatants are in danger in Sri Lanka so they will have to flee somewhere. They have to be rehabilitated. They are not going to be fighters here. They were fighting for a cause, even if some of the tactics are unacceptable, they were fighting for a cause. They are not going to fight for a cause here. They are not like Islamic terrorists.

Did you spot the difference? You can be an ex-combatant who may be fighting for a legitimate cause. You may have used tactics that could be described as unacceptable. For instance, you may have been part of an organisation that has undertaken more suicide terrorist attacks than any organisation on the planet. You may have been part of an organisation that taught groups such as Hamas and Taliban how to use the suicide vest. Your victims may have included a large number of heads of state, politicians, etc.

But as long as you are not an Islamic terrorist, you pose absolutely no risk to the country. You may have fought for an organisation that taught Islamic terrorists just about everything they needed to know about how effective suicide terrorism is. But so long as you aren’t deemed to belong to the wrong religion, you’re fine in Dr Rajakulendran’s books.

Indeed, Rajakulendran doesn’t regard the LTTE as a terrorist organisation at all. Instead, he describes it as being “involved in a bloody armed struggle for more than two decades to liberate the Tamil-speaking people living in the north-east of the island from the oppressive Sri Lankan Singhalese-dominated governments”.

Crikey spoke to Rajakulendran this morning. He confirmed he didn’t regard the LTTE as terrorists and claimed most Tamils agreed with him. He said he didn’t believe senior LTTE leaders would be on the boat but rather youths. He also said that the LTTE were different to “Islamic terrorists” because the LTTE had established a state and showed the ability to govern in the interests of Tamils.

I put to him that some “Islamic terrorists” (e.g. Hamas, Hezbollah and Taliban) made similar claims. He said that these groups were in this respect similar to the LTTE though some had “gone too far” and “lost their way”. I asked what he proposed should happen to young Afghan asylum seekers who were found to be Taliban fighters at some stage.

It depends. If the local Afghan community can work with the government to rehabilitate these people, why not let them in?

It’s true that many former LTTE fighters may not have been terrorists. They may have been forcibly recruited or press-ganged into military service. The Taliban did the same thing in Afghanistan and continues to do it on both sides of what has become known as the “AfPak” border. Even armies carrying the legitimacy of a democratic state can force young men to fight. Sometimes these men are forced to use terror against persons they are told are terrorists. That’s the nature of war.

Anyone who can flee from this kind of madness and has the guts to jump on a boat and risk their lives crossing the ocean deserves to go through the usual refugee application processes. Whether they’re Tamil or Islamic or Callithumpian is irrelevant. But if they pose a threat to Australian citizens, they’re best not settled here. Again, whether they’re Tamil or Islamic or Callithumpian should be irrelevant.

Dr Rajakulendran admitted that his selectivity in ethnically and religiously identifying terrorists may offend some. Sadly, at a time when all asylum seekers need a fair hearing, his comments make him sound like Andrew Bolt, but without bringing Bolt’s ilk on side and perhaps providing them with additional ammunition.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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COMMENT: Border Insecurity ...

The letters section of the Daily Telegraph of Friday 24 April 2009 has two typical examples of uninformed hysteria concerning the issue of "border security" and asylum seekers. I'm in no way suggesting the Tele shouldn'y be publishing these letters. Everyone's voice should be heard, and it's useful to know just what some people are thinking about such sensitive issues.

The first letter is from one P Cummins. It starts like this ...

The reason we now have a swag of boat people trying to get into Australia is because the Rudd Government last year loosened our border security laws ...

This might possibly be true in the case of Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers, but the fact is that the conflict in Sri Lanka has only recently escalated to the extent that many Tamil civilians are fleeing directly from Sri Lanka as opposed to via Indonesia.

They need to be tightened for the protection of the citizens of this country, an obligation the Government has to its people.

So Australian citizens need to be protected from weak malnourished asylum seekers fleeing persecution. And what will these poor people bring with them? WMD? Nuclear weapons?

One has to ask why all of these asylum seekers come down to Australia? There are dozens of Muslim countries near Iraq and Afghanistan that are wealthy and not at war, where other Muslims and their families would fit right in and be comfortable.

There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Syria, which is struggling to accommodate them. Syria is itself not a terribly wealthy nation. Hazara Afghans fleeing the Taliban would hardly want to stick around in Pakistan where elements of the same Taliban have taken over large areas of the country. And using your reasoning, I'm not sure which Muslim-majority country Tamil Sri Lankans will go to given that they're a mixture of Hindu and Christian. In any event, it isn't just about religion. People's identities are not limited to religion. If our identity was solely determined by religion, we should have seen Kevin Rudd and/or Malcolm Turnbull and not John Safran being nailed to a cross in the Philippines. After all, the Philippines is a Catholic country, and both Rudd and Turnbull are Catholic.

So why come many thousands of miles down to Australia, a basically British culture and a Christian country? These are the questions we should be asking.

In that case, I'm sure quite a few of these people would happily convert to Christianity if it meant they and their families would be safe. After all, quite a few asylum seekers such as Kashmiri Peter Qasim converted to Christianity. However, that didn't stop him from being kept in detention by the Howard government even though it drove him into severe depression. And I guess we shouldn't have any problem accepting Tamil Christian asylum seekers. As for being British, I don't think indogenous Aussies were eating with knives and forks 40,000 years ago. Then again, neither were the Poms for that matter.

But why should we be asking such questions? After all, our immigration system does not discriminate on the basis of religion. And anyway, how can we really tell what religion a person subscribes to? Or is it someone we determine based on their racial background? So we assume that an Iraqi must be Muslim because he is Iraqi and has an Arabic-sounding name, even if he could well be a Chaldean or Yazidi or Assyrian Orthodox?

Then there is a letter from one Lynne Cole whose arguments make a similar degree of (non)sense.

The recent boatload of asylum seekers were all male, presumably some of them are or were married, perhaps with children. So they left family behind to cope with the Taliban on their own.

Your point being? That these men just callously left their families behind and left without so much as a goodbye? That their families had no say in the matter? That their family members don't wish to see even one person flee to safety? Or are you saying that their families are all in Afghanistan or Pakistan and not in Indonesia? That the Taliban have made it to Jakarta?

How will the families of the five dead survive?

Are you suggesting you're really concerned about their welfare and would support their migrating to Australia?

Why aren't these brave men standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our young soldiers who are in Afghanistan trying to improve the lot of the Afghan people?

Maybe for the same reason the vast majority of young Australian men and women aren't there - they're not professional soldiers. And maybe because it isn't nice staying in a place where you could be kicked out of your property and/or be murdered at anytime and where you've already seen family members slaughtered. And from a strategic perspective, the last thing Coalition forces and the Afghan National Army needs is severely traumatised people fighting on their side.

Our young men are killed or injured while these people choose to try for an easy life in Australia.

It's so easy being away from one's family and only hearing their voices on the other end of a phone (presuming you can even contact them). It's a piece of cake surviving in a new country where you aren't allowed to work and cannot access any social security and are forced to rely on charity to make some kind of a living. And on top of that, having to deal with the trauma of having just survived life in a warzone and mourning alone over your dead relatives, presuming that you even know that they are dead.

Those we have already admitted no doubt tell those back home that what a soft touch we are.

Pfft. Are you suggesting, Lynne, that we start behaving like al-Qaeda and Taliban and LTTE and the Sri Lankan Army just so that you feel protected from nasty dark-skinned refugees? I'm glad we are a soft touch. If you want to experience a not-so-soft touch, feel free to go join our brave men and women fighting in Afghanistan.

COMMENT: More on the Lahore attacks ...

Pakistan was meant to co-host the 2011 World Cup along with India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Yet according to a report by the Press Trust of India, it seems that at least Indian cricket official would like Pakistan dropped off the list of countries. Still, it's unlikely Pakistan will be be a co-host given the security lapses arising from the Lahore attack. I think the Pakistani cricket officials need to be a bit more realistic. At least one official has been quoted as saying:

We were expecting some words of support from the Indian Board even though we know that realistically speaking World Cup matches are unlikely to be held in Pakistan following the unfortunate incident ... We would think that since the tournament is to be hosted in four countries in the same continent, the ICC and its member boards can wait for another six months to see how the security situation improves in Pakistan before taking a final decision on the matches in Pakistan.

A ban on international games being hosted in Pakistan would be perhaps the most effective way to make ordinary Pakistanis feel isolated. Pakistan is cricket-crazy, and many Pakistanis will feel they are being boycotted in the same manner as apartheid South Africa was once the subject to a sporting boycott. Except that in Pakistan's case, there is no apartheid in place.

The Sri Lankan players have said that they were able to respond as effectively as they did to the attacks because they have become accustomed to terrorism. The Economic Times of India quoted captain Mahela Jayawardene on 5 March as saying:

We have been brought up in a background of terrorist activities. We are used to hearing, seeing these things — firing , bombings. So we ducked under our seats when the firing began. It was like natural instinct ...

The attack took place about 500 metres from the Gaddafi ground (in Lahore) by unidentified gunmen who attacked the bus in which we were travelling. During the attack every player took shelter by ducking inside the bus. The security vehicle for the players was also attacked , besides the bus ...

We wish to forget this incident, put it behind us and look forward and concentrate on our future matches. We were lucky to come out of the attack ...

We were not aware of security lapses. It’s an unfortunate incident. In hindsight, this could have happened anywhere in the world.

Omar Waraich writes in Time about some responses by ordinary people in Lahore, where a makeshift memorial has been set up to remember the police officers who died in the attack.

Near the edge of the grassy roundabout in Liberty Square where gunmen attacked the tourists' bus, activists, lawyers, policemen and ordinary citizens arrived to lay flowers by a sign saluting the bravery of Tanveer Iqbal, one of the six Pakistani policemen slain in the raid. Some raised their cupped hands in prayer, others solemnly held up candles. A large banner expressed solidarity with the "heroes of Sri Lanka." ...

"I have come here to pay tribute to my martyred colleagues," says Anjum Akhtar, a Lahore-based policeman, as he lays a bouquet of roses by the memorial. Akhtar laments that terrorist attacks have become "routine." "It's something we sadly share with the people of Sri Lanka, they suffer terrorist attacks, too," he says. But Tuesday's attack on the Sri Lankan team was different, the stocky policeman believes. "This time they attacked our country and our guests." ...

Even as Pakistan's vicious wave of militancy has spread eastwards from the Afghan border areas in recent years, sporting events have remained largely immune. The sole exception was a 2002 suicide attack outside the Karachi hotel where a visiting New Zealand cricket team were staying. Zafar Khan, the bus driver killed in Tuesday's attack, had driven for the Kiwis, too.

While fundamentalist clerics have issued fatwas against yoga in Indonesia and against the Indian tennis star, Sania Mirza, some Pakistanis hasten to point out that no equivalent edict has been voiced against cricket in Pakistan. "There are two pastimes that the Taliban really like," says Hameedullah Khan, a journalist from the Swat valley. "Playing cricket and drinking Mountain Dew."

Many in Pakistan are critical of the government. As in most democracies, when all else fails, locals prefer to lay all blame on the government. In this case, their arguments perhaps aren't without foundation.

Like many in the Liberty Square area, Ahmed is also critical of the government's failure to provide the Sri Lankan team with sufficient protection. "The team was here as our guests, but they left frightened and injured," Ahmed says, his voice thick with emotion. "It was our responsibility to protect them. Our government is so useless that they couldn't take care of the Sri Lankans. There is now a big threat to our national game. If Sri Lanka was able to play and leave safely, others would have been encouraged to come over here and play also. Now no one will come. Our image has been damaged across the world, and our national team is left useless, with no one to play."

Outside the landmark red-brick Gaddafi stadium renamed after the Libyan leader in 1974, marketing agent Tariq Mahmood sits forlornly with the morning's newspaper. He was meant to have spent the day watching the third day of the test match with Pakistan. Instead, he casts his eyes over the headlines and photographs with despair.

Living in Lahore, Mahmood has also heard large bombs explode outside the High Court and at the Navy College, both on The Mall road. Yet he insists that there is "a big difference between previous incidents and this one". "Think of Pakistan as a body," he says. "Sometimes the terrorists cut off a finger, sometimes an ear. This time, they've cut off our feet. This is a historic tragedy. They wanted to destroy our very base, our foundation. The Sri Lankan team came after so much difficulty. We begged and begged them to come. India had boycott us. New Zealand were stopped from coming. And what did we do with the trust that the Sri Lankans put in our hands? We broke our promises of security."

More to come.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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PAKISTAN: Some comments on the recent Lahore blasts ...

Before I start, here are a few admissions.

I haven't been to Pakistan since 1994/95. During that trip, I travelled only to Karachi and Lahore. I speak Urdu (the national language of Pakistan) but I don't read it fluently and hence don't have access to Urdu-language Pakistani newspapers. I have access to three Pakistani satellite news channels, including the public=owned PTV and the private channels of Aaj and Geo TV. I have been following reports and updates on all three channels. Suffice it to say that all three have devoted their broadcasts to this latest example of what Urdu speakers call dehshat-gardi (spreading of terror i.e. terrorism).

Pakistan may describe itself as an Islamic republic, but the real religion which unites all Pakistanis is cricket. This is a cricket-mad country. I remember being in Pakistan when an overseas team was touring, and seeing crowded city streets become almost deserted and shops open but with shop keepers having their eyes glued to the TV sets.

During the early 1990's, one Pakistani mufti became a laughing stock after delivering a fatwa that cricket was haraam (forbidden under religious law). His reasons? He claimed people who watched cricket rarely took time out to perform their nemaaz (the worship Muslims are required to perform at five set times a day). And that Pakistani women would get excited by watching Pakistani bowlers like Imran Khan rub the ball in a certain place as he walked back to start his run-up.

Perhaps the shock of the Marriot Hotel blasts in Islamabad shocked people in the middle and upper classes. However, cricket is something Pakistanis of all classes enjoy. Cricket is played in both slums and on the turf pitches of posh Pakistani private schools. Cricketers, be they Pakistani or foreign, are like the revered saints of this secular religion. Umpires (except when they are deemed to have made the wrong decision) are like the high priests.

Here is an excerpt from a report in The Age:

At least eight people were killed and seven Sri Lankan cricketers were wounded when a masked gang armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades attacked the team bus and its security escort in Lahore. Six of those who died in the attack were police officers ...

The attack happened about 9am local time as the team was heading to Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium for the third day's play in the second Test ...

Witnesses said Lahore's Liberty Square district, home to designer boutiques and offices, became a battlefield as gunmen hiding behind trees opened fire. Television footage showed the assailants running through the streets carrying machine-guns and with rucksacks on their backs. Some had reportedly arrived on auto-rickshaws.

Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardene said the gunmen first shot at the tyres, then at the bus itself.

"We all dived to the floor to take cover," he said.

Most of the injuries to team members were minor, but Lahore police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said it could have been much worse — the attackers fired a rocket that missed the bus, then threw grenades underneath which failed to explode.

"The plan was apparently to kill the Sri Lankan team but the police came in the way," he said.

Australian freelance cameraman Tony Bennett said explosions and gunfire could be heard from the stadium.

"Next thing we knew, the Sri Lankan team bus rolls up being sprayed by bullets," he said.

Pakistani air force helicopters later evacuated the team, including two on stretchers, from the middle of the stadium. The players were to leave for Sri Lanka later on a specially chartered plane.

Last night, the gunmen remained at large, and no group had claimed responsibility.

India showed its sympathy for Pakistan as it faced yet another terrorist attack.

India denounced as "hopelessly inadequate" Pakistani security after the attack and cited Islamabad's failure to crush militant groups on its soil.

India, of course, has absolutely no problem with curbing extremism on its side of the border. It's not as if religious fanatics in India are threateneing minorities. And to suggest that architects of theocratic terror could be elected to the highest posts in the land is clearly wrong. Only partisan extremists like this person could make such claims.

(Then again, quite a few Pakistani pundits on the TV channels I saw were also saying that the Pakistani police and intelligence services had failed dismally in failing to protect the touring Sri Lankan cricket team. And indeed many Indian pundits severely criticised Indian police and intelligence for the Bombay attacks.)

Who is responsible? Muslim extremists? Tamil Tigers? The Governor of Punjab has already decided who is to blame. The Australian reports on Wednesday 4 March 2009:

Punjabi Governor Salman Tahseer said the 12 masked and heavily armed gunmen who attacked the cricket convoy as it approached the Gaddafi stadium were not ordinary terrorists, but highly trained.

While last night no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, Mr Tahseer said the terrorists appeared to follow the same modus operandi as the Mumbai gunmen, who have been linked to the Pakistani Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

"I want to say it's the same pattern, the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai," Mr Tahseer said.

Certainly Tahseer's claims point to the most likely explanation.

More to come.

UPDATE I: Already Sri Lankan Tamils are getting nervous at the possibility of Tamil Tigers' involvement in the Lahore attacks. Here is what Hamish McDonald, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, has picked up from discussions on Sri Lankan media websites:

Take this exchange on the popular website www.lankanewspapers.com within a few hours of the team being attacked in Lahore.

A posting by "Pacha" noted that Tamil star bowler Muttiah Muralitharan was not among the reported victims: "Murali not injured suld have known this attack before."

"Lankaputha" chimed in with a reference to alternate captain Tillakaratne Dilshan, a recent convert to the majority Buddhism from the island's Muslim minority: "Interesting … And not even Dilshan, a Muslim."

A bitter voice of dissent came from "Derorak": "Yea, go ahead, blame that lone Tamil. Man! The Sinhalese must blame everything on Tamil. That is the extent of anti Tamil hatred of Sinhala racism. Poor guy, Sinhalayass gonna kill him."

Given Sri Lanka's bitter history of ethnic-based warfare, it's little wonder minorities are becoming worried. McDonald continues:

After 25 years of civil war and 70,000 deaths, ethnic sensitivities are inflamed among Sri Lanka's 21 million people.

Should any evidence emerge that the Tigers carried out the Lahore attack, the potential for attacks by the Sinhalese majority against Sri Lanka's Tamils is very high. It was a virtual pogrom against them in 1983 that launched the civil war to create a separate Tamil homeland or Eelam in the island's north and north-east ...

... the attack also has the hallmarks and desperation of the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan, now pressed into a tiny pocket of the island's north-east jungles by a force of 50,000 government troops.

The attack would strike a final blow at hopes of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that a military victory will end the conflict. It would also punish Pakistan for providing the Colombo government with much of its army's powerful new weaponry.

Many Pakistanis are already saying the attack was the work of Muslim extremists. I'm sure many Tamils in Sri Lanka will be hoping and praying this is the case. I can hardly blame them. It's not easy being part of a minority community in a South Asian country.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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