The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team was not the worst Pakistan has suffered -- but it might be the most emblematic, writes Graham Usher in Lahore There's a growing view among Pakistanis and many others that while their country is not yet a failed state a la Afghanistan or Somalia, it's getting there. The ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team in downtown Lahore at the height of the rush hour on 3 March may have left only seven dead and eight injured -- small stuff in a country that has seen 1,600 killed from political violence in the last year or so, including a former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. But the method of the ambush, its replay on global network television and, above all, its quarries -- international sportsmen who, in the cricketing world, are household names -- has raised to a pitch the question that had only been whispered in Washington, London, Delhi and Kabul: is nuclear-armed Pakistan about to go under as a functional state? The ambush was an audacious, commando-like operation, similar in style, if not in carnage, to the gun-and-grenade attacks that killed 173 people in the Indian city of Mumbai in November. According to security officials at Lahore's Liberty Square -- where the ambush happened -- two cars blockaded the Sri Lankan team coach as it circled the square on route to the cricket stadium. A rocket-propelled grenade was fired -- either as a diversion or a miss -- while a dozen or so gunmen sprayed the coach and police escort vans with grenades and automatic fire. Five policemen, a driver and a passer-by were killed; the Sri Lankan cricketers barely survived. "We all dived to the floor to take cover," said team captain Mahela Jayawardene. An amateur video caught the gunmen in full flow. They wore masks, wheeled backwards in guerrilla formation and pumped round after round into the crush of vehicles. Like the Mumbai attackers, they were young, wore backpacks stuffed to the brim and were methodical in their intention to kill as many people as possible. CCTV footage also captured them leaving the square, unmolested by a single police officer. In one sequence three gunmen climb onto a motorbike while a police van drives past, oblivious or indifferent. The lack of protection was palpable. "We were promised high-level security and in our hour of need that security vanished." The police "had gone, left the scene, and left us to be sitting ducks," said match referee Chris Broad, on 4 March. Pakistanis were also angry -- and ashamed. Sri Lanka was the first international cricket team in more than a year to tour this cricket-obsessed but very dangerous country. The team had replaced India who called off their tour last year after Pakistanis were implicated in the Mumbai attacks. "Pakistan supported us in the past. We will not forget our friends," said Sri Lankan Sport Minister Gamini Lokuge in February. But Sri Lanka won't be touring Pakistan again in a hurry. Neither will anyone else. There's been no claim of responsibility. In the immediate aftermath the usual Pakistani chorus of pundits and retired army generals said India, Afghanistan or even the Tamil Tigers could have been behind the attack in "a conspiracy to defame Pakistan internationally". Investigators said there was not a shred of evidence to back the claim. Likelier suspects include the Pakistan Taliban, responsible for most of the violence in Pakistan in the last year, including, says the Pakistani army and CIA, Bhutto's murder. Al-Qaeda has also declared war on the Pakistani state, claiming high-profile attacks like the bombings of the Danish Embassy last June and Islamabad's Marriott hotel in September, where more than 50 were killed. But investigators say Lahore's main suspect is Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group India says was behind the Mumbai attacks. In recent weeks -- faced with incontrovertible evidence of Lashkar's involvement in Mumbai -- Pakistan has arrested key Lashkar commanders: some were facing trial on 3 March. The Lahore ambush may have been Lashkar's retaliation for the arrests, say sources. If so, it's bad news for the Pakistani government. Lashkar -- though active in Indian-occupied Kashmir -- has never before carried out attacks inside Pakistan. And, unlike the Taliban, it is very strong in the Punjab, including Lahore. Lashkar has denied any connection to the Lahore attack, as it has to Mumbai. Pakistan President Asif Zardari has promised an investigation "so that the perpetrators are identified and their motives exposed". If this happens, it will be a first. There have been dozens of investigations into attacks in Pakistan in the last few years, including Bhutto's. Not a single perpetrator has been exposed. This is perhaps why there's such a sense of helplessness in Pakistan just now. At the time of the Lahore attack the government was negotiating a peace agreement with pro-Taliban Islamists in Swat in North West Pakistan that, among other things, may mean a ban on music, and compulsory prayers five times a day. On 5 March a 17th century Sufi shrine was blown up near Peshawar. "No ban had been imposed on women visiting the shrine," explained a local Taliban. Over the last week Liberty Square has seen the creation of another shrine. Men, women, boys and schoolgirls have laid a hill of floral wreaths. Partly they are mourning the loss of six policemen and a driver who sacrificed their lives to save a foreign cricket team. They are also mourning the loss of a game that all Pakistanis -- across ethnic, class, gender and religious divides -- adore. But most of all they are grieving the loss of a homeland many no longer recognise.
