New fault lines within the pro-Taliban terror groups may be one of the reasons behind the attack on Sri Lankan cricketers.
New fault lines within the pro-Taliban terror groups may be one of the reasons behind the attack on Sri Lankan cricketers.
Many within the establishment are beginning to ask if the attacks have any link to the resentment among terrorists from Punjab against the large hearted peace deal that Pakistan government struck with the Pashtun groups in Swat Valley recently.
Some of the old time LTTE watchers are not willing to rule out completely the Tamil group, though it has in the past made clear that it wouldn’t attack sportsmen or events.
Pakistan watchers in the establishment say that over the past several months reports have been appearing of Taliban elements sneaking into Punjab province and its capital Lahore in significant numbers.
“We have been seeing a noticeable spread of Taliban forces within Pakistan, even into Lahore,” a senior official said. So the agencies are not fully surprised, but the audacity of the attack and the target chosen has got them to further analyse the attack.
One of the analysts in the establishment pointed out that Taliban has a pronounced anti-Buddhist ideology — they destroyed the Bamyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan — and that could be one of the factors behind targeting the cricketers from a Buddhist majority state.
“But the attacks are much more than that. It is a direct challenge to the very credibility of Pakistan state, and a notice that nothing is outside the target ambit of terrorists,” he said.
The agencies also believe that there are very pronounced divisions emerging between terrorists from Punjab etc and the Pashtun terror groups, who swung a peace deal in Swat Valley with the Pakistan establishment. The attack in Lahore could be the handiwork of the local Punabi terrorists to warn the state that they are capable of destruction even in the most protected city.
Those who have been closely watching the onslaught of Sri Lankan military against the LTTE are not willing to completely rule out an LTTE role in the attack on the cricketers.
Though LTTE has a policy not to attack sportsmen and events, “the times are very difficult for them,” points out an LTTE watcher. He says that it is possible that some of LTTE cadres have landed in Pakistan as cricket fans, or LTTE has used its old ties to Pakistani terrorist groups to carry out the attacks.
For India it is also a sign that the terror threats it is facing is much more complex than just Lashkar-e-Toiba-- which is one of the possible suspects in today’s attacks-- and other Kashmiri groups. Lahore attack is the latest and most vivid example of the complicated terrorist scenario in South Asia.
So next time when an attack takes place in India, the investigators may not find it so easy as it was after Mumbai attacks to pin-point blame on a particular group.