Twelve gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan team bus on its way to the stadium in Lahore today.

The killing of five policemen and two others at Liberty round about in Lahore blows the lid off the security arrangements in the city, especially at a time when the Sri Lankan team was visiting the city. Yes, the policemen fought valiantly and somehow succeeded in keeping the Sri Lankan team largely out of the harm’s way but it is still a security lapse in the sense that the intelligence network should have been able to detect and preempt such an attack.

As soon as the incident happened, the arm chair critics in Pakistan and elsewhere sprung into action blaming it on their usual suspects. While some said categorically that it is the RAW paying us in the same coin others blamed it on the jihadis from our Western borders. But a more intelligent interpretation, for the moment is that of Governor Salman Taseer who believes it is the very people who carried out attacks in Mumbai last year. That makes a lot of sense. Are we facing a common enemy?

Interestingly, there is another view which says that this whole episode has been staged by none other than the Pakistani ‘establishment’ to show to their Indian counterparts that we are also victims of the same terror outfits. Who to believe? Who or what is behind this nefarious act of terrorism wants all semblance of peace in the region to go away.

Whatever the case may be, it is going to be quite a task for the government and security agencies of Pakistan to bring the situation under control. People are shocked and scared. Like many incidents of terrorism in the past we don’t know if the perpetrators of this incident will ever be identified and brought to book.

Only a few years ago, terror attacks were largely confined to the remote tribal areas. Then the terrorists started moving towards the settled areas of NWFP; they later spilled into Islamabad and struck the army headquarters. And then there was no looking back for them.