NYT : In Britain-Pakistan Ties, Cricket's the Easy Part

In Britain-Pakistan Ties, Cricket's the Easy Part

By ALAN COWELL | August 27, 2006

THERE was a moment last week when the newspaper headlines seemed to fuse.

On one side of the page was the unfolding narrative of a plot against trans-Atlantic airliners, said to have been hatched by British Muslims, many of Pakistani descent. On the other side was the spectacle of Pakistan’s national cricket team being accused of cheating, and forfeiting its match against England.

Between the two was a photograph of young men protesting. But the reader needed to consult the caption to determine whether it was terrorism or cricket they were concerned about (it was cricket).

It might be imagined that nations initiated into the gentle mysteries of cricket would at least display a similar, superficial courtesy in the broader affairs of peace, war and mutual respect.

But that is not the case. Whatever bonding cricket might produce, it is no match for the power of shame to divide the world into winners and losers, self-anointed victims and self-promoted overlords.

In sport, as in global politics, a history of perceived slights coalesces easily into a moment of rage when pride and vengeance dictate extreme measures. That much has been clear from apartheid South Africa to the Middle East: few passions cut as deep, or demand satisfaction, as humiliation.

“The pride of the nation has been hurt,” said Inzamam-ul-Haq, the Pakistan captain, explaining the essence of his affront at the cheating accusations, and why his team stayed off the field.

The writer and commentator Kenan Malik explained the underpinnings of the controversy in The Times of London. “More than any other sport,” he wrote, “cricket has been immersed in politics, especially the politics of race, class and empire.”

But while Britons might comprehend the reasons for the cricket dispute, they have no real explanation for something that is much more serious: the tendency of some young people raised in a centuries-old democracy to conspire not just to kill others, but to kill themselves, in a terrorist attack.

It is tempting to say that the common denominator between conspiracy and cricket is Pakistan itself, and its ambiguous status as a supposed Islamic ally of the west.

Since the 1960’s, Pakistani immigrants have been drawn to Britain by a dream of prosperity only to be repelled, in some cases, by the society they find. The question of identity is fluid. Some Pakistanis commute between ethnic and adopted homes for vacations or marriages or business — or, according to the British authorities, terrorist training. For the children of those immigrants, the sense of self can be caught between the discreet Islam of their parents and the call to jihad.

Cricket itself can reflect those strains. When the Pakistan team plays in areas of northern England with large immigrant populations, young Britons of Asian descent often drape themselves in Pakistani flags. A conservative legislator, Norman Tebbit, once said such behavior betrayed the true nature of immigrant loyalty.

But for many people the mystery is why a handful of these same young Britons — with potential access to the same schools, movies, sports and setbacks as any other young person in the post-industrial era — should congregate secretly to plot terrorism and self-destruction. Three of the four bombers who killed themselves and 52 others in London on July 7, 2005, were of Pakistani descent, as were most of the 24 people seized two weeks ago in the airline investigation.

The answer to the puzzle lies partly in the British policy of multiculturalism — rather than American-style integration — which leaves people of different backgrounds to nurture their imported identities, breeding separateness and isolation. “While there have been huge benefits, there are also tensions,” Ruth Kelly, the Minister of Communities, said in a speech Thursday.

But another element feeding on this alienation and unease is the blend of faith and technology that binds jihadists to the broader world of Islamic extremism.

The Internet itself emerges in a sinister light: punch into search engines the initials of explosives favored by terrorists and the first listing is an instruction manual in how to make them. Switch on the flat-screen television, and satellite signals bring the latest carnage from Baghdad or Gaza. The images fit into the jigsaw puzzle building the perception of the umma — the global community of Islam — under siege.

“The war on terrorism is the war on us,” said Mohammed Mowaz, 29, a computer engineer interviewed outside a mosque in East London, where many of the suspects were seized Aug. 10. Terrorism, of course, is understood by the bulk of Britons with a memory of the Irish Republican Army. The baffling element is suicide, the culture — or cult — of divine glory peddled by the hidden recruiters who prowl college campuses as much as cyberspace. The suicide bombers’ success has been to shift the mind-set of a nation into a new and febrile intuition of ceaseless threat.

In the headlines, cricket nudged alongside terror, but only for a day. Cricket, after all, is a game. Terrorism is real, said Peter Clarke, London’s counterterrorism chief: “It is here. It is deadly. And it is enduring.”