PAKISTAN had been particularly pleased to be a partial host of the 2011 Cricket World Cup, with 16 matches in Pakistan, apart from whatever is also played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The 2011 World Cup was to have followed the successful hosting of a cricket World Cup in this part of the world, the 1987 event, which was the first outside England, after the first three editions of the event were held there. Since then, the cricket World Cup has rotated to Australia, England, South Africa and the West Indies, but it was due to return to the four nations of the Subcontinent in 2011. However, it seems that Pakistan is being forced to pay for the War on Terror by being isolated from world cricket, as the ICC Board voted on Friday to take the 2011 World Cup matches away from Pakistan. This is among the aftermaths of the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team at the Gaddafi Stadium in February, which has forced Pakistan to seek neutral venues for its matches, like the upcoming one-day international series against Australia. Australia is among a number of other countries that had already refused to visit Pakistan because of the security concerns, which Sri Lanka braved to make its brief tour of Pakistan. Though the organizers have not yet taken a decision, this cancellation may only be the first step in a process which might see the World Cup shift entirely. The last time around, though Sri Lanka was included for some pool matches, the teams preferred to stay away, conceding the points of these matches, because of the Tamil insurgency, which is not yet over. India also has witnessed terrorism. As an ICC spokesman noted, the entire region is unsafe. There has already been talk of shifting the World Cup entirely away from the region, possibly to South Africa. Already, the knockout competition, in the TwentyTwenty version, the Champions' Trophy, has been shifted from Pakistan to England. However, if there is to be a shift, it will have to happen quickly.