Six players of the Sri Lankan cricket team, which had arrived on a visit toPakistan, are reported to have been injured and four policemen killed when 10 ormore persons wielding hand-held weapons, including hand-grenades, attacked a busin which the team was going to the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore on the morning ofMarch 3, 2009.
The attack has been recorded on closed circuit TV and should enable thePakistani authorities to identify the terrorists and the organisation to whichthey belong. The Sri Lankan Government is reported to have advised the team tocancel the visit and return to Sri Lanka.
While it is too early to assess as to who might have been responsible for theattack and why, one has to recall past instances of contacts of the LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM--known before1997 as the Harkat-ul-Ansar), a member of the International Islamic Front(IIF) of Al Qaeda and the role played by the commercial ships of the LTTE in the1990s in facilitating heroin smugglimg from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
In 1993, the Indian Coast Guard had intercepted an LTTE ship in which Kittu, aleader of the LTTE, was travelling from Karachi to the Wanni region of NorthernSri Lanka. When cornered by the Coast Guard, the LTTE cadres on board the shipset fire to it and it sank. Kittu chose to go down with the ship in orderto avoid falling into the hands of the Coast Guard. Some members of the crew jumped from the sinking ship and were arrested and interrogated. The subsequentinvestigation brought out that the ship was carrying a consignment of arms andammunition, which was loaded by the HUM cadres at Karachi, in the presence ofsome officers of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Navy.
Reports received in 1994-95 had indicated that the LTTE had helped the HUMin smuggling arms and ammunition in its ships to jihadi elements in SouthernPhilippines and that in return for this the HUM and the ISI had gifted someanti-aircraft weapons and ammunition and surface-to-air missiles to the LTTE.
Since 9/11, this source for clandestine arms procurement and heroinsmuggling for the LTTE has dried up due to the deployment of NATO ships offPakistan to prevent any shipping activity in support of Al Qaeda. The HUMcontinues to have an active presence in the Southern Philippines and theHarkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) in the Arakan area of Myanmar and in SouthernThailand. One cannot rule out the possibility of the HUM---and possibly even theHUJI-- maintaining fraternal ties with the LTTE despite its Hindu/Christianbackground and past anti-Muslim policies in the areas controlled by it.
These are opportunistic alliances to assist each other and the fact that theLTTE had followed an anti-Muslim policy should not come in their way. In my pastarticles, I had mentioned that the ISI's arms gifts to the LTTE despite itsanti-Muslim policies started after its assassination of Rajiv Gandhiin May,1991.
Against this background, a possible line of enquiry should be whether theHUM or any of its allies in the IIF is repaying a debt to the LTTE for its pastassistance by attacking the Sri Lankan cricket team.
Relevant extracts from my past articles having a bearing on this are annexed.