As the deadliest year in Pakistan’s recent history unfolds, calls for separating sports from safety concerns overlook the urgent realities facing the nation
Global Terrorism Index 2024 reports that Pakistan had the highest recorded terror attacks of any country in the world. 490 attacks were formally recorded with spiralling instances in the fourth successive year of increased deaths and terror incidents. The US Department of State currently maps the situation at “level 3” i.e., warning its citizens to “Reconsider Travel”. Similarly, British authorities “advises against all travels to parts of Pakistan” and note bluntly, “No travel can be guaranteed safe”.
There are two dedicated Pakistani Army Divisions deployed to secure Chinese personnel and assets of the various Chinese-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) imperatives in Pakistan, yet the same gets targeted with seeming impunity and deadly consequences. Even royals from various Arab sheikdoms who used to descend into the Pakistani hinterland for the annual Houbara hunting season have desisted from the same, given the acute security concerns prevailing. Whereas India has rightfully slammed Pakistan for being the “world’s terrorism factory” for its nefarious record in fanning religious extremism and armed insurgency on Indian soil, since independence.
Stating that there is a grave security concern in Pakistan is not a political statement but a statement of fact. The fact that it was featured prominently in the Grey List of the global anti-terror watchdog agency, Financial Action Task Force (FATF) till very recently, is also a fact. Amidst this undeniable security landscape in Pakistan, Pakistani authorities pooh-pooh concerns of the Indian Cricket Board, i.e., BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), to avoid sending the Indian Cricket Team to play in Pakistan owing to security concerns, is not political one-upmanship but the expected concern of any board towards the safety and welfare of its team. That several India-facing terror groups are thriving on Pakistani soil is a very old story that needs no reiteration, and that itself makes the threat to the Indian team especially severe. The official breakdown and downgrading of diplomatic ties between Delhi and Islamabad since 2019, do not help mend popular mood or perceptions about India or Indians in Pakistan (or vice versa), either.
While it is certainly true that sporting ties between the two restive nations were always given to political ‘point-scoring’ and even positive leverage in the form of ‘cricket diplomacy’ (to thaw bilateral freeze) – this time the security situation in Pakistan has deteriorated to such levels, that to suggest that it is the usual ‘point-scoring’ diplomacy is to live under a rock. The reality of the situation is even beyond the intellectual debate of allowing or disallowing sports between two ‘enemy’ countries. Sometime back, India did choose to conflate sports with other bilateral engagements owing to Pakistan’s established role in sponsoring terrorism in India, but even if one were to delink the two, the security situation in Pakistan itself warrants a cautionary note from the Indian side.
Understandably the Pakistanis are miffed and embarrassed about what they perceive as a deliberate Indian affront, but deep down they know better given that 2024 has emerged as the deadliest year ever, from the perspective of terrorism in Pakistan. However, coming from its imagined nemesis i.e., India, it is a bitter pill to swallow openly. Given that Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, also double-hats as the Chairman of the Pakistani Cricket Board (PCB) – the Pakistani reaction to BCCI concern assumes a political reaction. He has cavalierly downplayed the ‘Hybrid Option’ (wherein India plays its matches in a neutral venue, while others can play in Pakistan) by countering, “one of the options the government is mulling is that of asking the PCB to ensure Pakistan don’t participate in the Champions Trophy”, as a political face-saving comeback. He also fumed that the PCB ought not to be expected to “carry on with their good gestures” of playing in India, as Pakistanis did earlier. This wounded statement misses the point of contrasting the security situation existing in India, vis-à-vis Pakistan, currently.
The Pakistani Government may be tempted to ‘retaliate’ optically and go as far as asking its team to desist from playing against India in any of the ICC or Asian Cricket Council tournaments, to negate the perceived sleight. Currently, the heavily invested narrative of a perennial ‘enemy’ in India leads to an instinctive ostrich-like head in the soil, and denials by Pakistan. Situational irony is magnified by the chairing of the global body of cricketing governance i.e., the ICC, by the son of India’s Home Minister (equivalent of Interior Minister in Pakistan), Jay Shah.
Pakistani social media is agog with memes of Kathik-calling-Karthik allusions and its questionable neutrality in handling the current situation. Fair as that concern might be from a Pakistani perspective in normal times, it still does not take away from the genuineness of security concerns in Pakistan. For Pakistan to give examples of the security cover afforded to India’s Foreign Minister on a recent visit to Pakistan as an example of its preparedness to host matches with tens of thousands of spectators and other accompanying circumstances, is contrived and grossly stretched logic. Pakistan is in the midst of an undeniable and complex security crisis and will only be able to resume events with Indian participation, once the ground security situation changes. For now, it is clearly beyond political one-upmanship.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry; the views expressed are personal)
