By IANS
Sydney : Australian security experts feel that it would be virtually impossible to protect their cricket team in Pakistan if it a suicide bomber targets them.
An attack on the sportsmen would make a huge statement, according to one academic, who said extremist groups were no longer shying away from attacking innocents.
Cricket Australia is yet to decide if a seven-week tour, starting in mid-March, goes ahead after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Michael McKinley, senior strategy lecturer at the Australian National University, said the Australian cricket team was a “definite possible target” for terrorists.
“If we use the precedents, they are in danger. There is no doubt about that,” McKinley said.
“The people who’d attack an Australian cricket team don’t care too much for cricket. They regard it as something Western, which is undesirable.
“If you were doing a risk-analysis for the Australian cricket team, you would have to say either the grounds, the spectators, or the team itself is on a target list.”
Greg Barton, a Monash University expert on terrorism and Islamic movements, said an attack on cricketers would make an extremist group “odious in the eyes of ordinary Pakistanis”, but could not be ruled out.
“Extremists may very well decide that attacking a visiting cricket team would be a catalyst for violence that would destabilise the Pakistani Government. They would use that to their advantage,” Barton said.
Cricket Australia (CA) will send a delegation to Pakistan next month to assess security.
Barton said the assassination was “the sort of threat that was very hard to fight”.
“Benazir Bhutto was exactly the sort of person the terrorists didn’t want to see succeed. A cricket team is a very different thing.
“Clearly, in attacking Benazir Bhutto, they figured the chaos would be beneficial.
“I think if they attacked a cricket team, there wouldn’t be such a clear advantage.”
Barton said Pakistan’s general election was more than a month away (Feb 18) and the political climate could change dramatically.
McKinley said extremists still viewed Australia as “effectively a cipher for the US”.
“This is probably one of the more risky ventures that the Australian cricket team has undertaken in recent times,” he said.
“My advice would certainly be they need to take an extremely cold, rational, clinical view of it.”