KABUL, Afghanistan - I knew something was wrong the minute I took a look at the police sniffer-dogs tasked with protecting a key checkpoint just outside the walls of the presidential palace. They looked tired, they weren't interested in the cars, they had to be coaxed into sniffing around and they had sores on their hind legs. Great, I thought, that's all that's coming between me and a catastrophic explosion in Kabul: Work weary dogs and their underpaid masters.

Can you really blame the dogs or the cops though? Kabul is clogged with traffic and people and at the best of times there is no way to assure safety in this city. And it's alarming for this correspondent to hear the same line from both the Taliban and one of the city's top cops: Insurgents can hit the city anytime, anywhere.

That's not to say the Kabul Police force isn't trying. They are now talking about a double ring of security around the city and they've gotten better at enforcing it. Many cities around the world with many more resources, are having their own battle with terrorists and so in that context, the security forces here aren't doing a bad job.

Securing this capital is a crucial test not only for the city's police force, but for the whole country. They need to know they can stand on their own and sort out their own security without thousands of foreign troops turning their capital into a fortress.

Less than three years ago, foreigners could walk the streets of Kabul in relative safety and have the luxury and freedom to hail their own cabs and try out the local food. Some foreigners of course still do that, but the majority live in armed camps throughout the city, fearing both random attacks and targeted kidnappings.

I saw first hand the pictures from inside a recent attack on the Justice Ministry here. It was gruesome, stomach-churning stuff. The images of dead employees with bullets to the head and chest were bad enough, but the placid expressions of the dead Taliban fighters, some of whom had major body parts blow off, were chilling.

The Taliban claims it controls several of the main routes just outside the city and not many Afghans are willing to test that claim. Roadside bombs have tripled so far this year and then there are the "Taliban checkpoints" that are harrowing for Afghans, let alone foreigners.

The fact is, even if Kabul becomes more secure in the coming months it may remain virtually cut off from the rest of the country for some time. And then there's still the issue of how to secure the city itself with a police force of grossly underpaid officers who claim they are on the take just to survive?

When I stopped at police headquarters at District #2, the commander there showed equal amounts of hubris and humility. Of course he said, he and his officers are heroes. But how else would you describe men who willingly walk the city knowing they could be target practice for the Taliban? And all for less than $200 a month.

I would like to hear what you think of the mission in Afghanistan. Let me know.

LONDON, England - It's just hours since the attack in Lahore but on one thing most observers seem clear. The real target of the attack was not the Sri Lankan cricket team, but the Pakistani government. Terror operations like this are aimed at creating maximum international impact, and sport finds itself increasingly in the crosshairs of global terrorism. No sport is more popular in Pakistan than cricket.

A video grab shows a suspected gunman near Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday.

The only reason Sri Lanka were touring Pakistan at all was because the Indian team had pulled out of its planned tour, citing security reasons. After receiving assurances over the team's safety, Sri Lanka stepped in at the last minute. It will surely be the last team to visit the country for the foreseeable future.

That means a loss of prestige and income for Pakistani cricket, and further reinforcement overseas of the idea that Pakistan is not a safe place to visit or to do business. That's just the sort of outcome the attackers will have wanted, and just what the Pakistani government is so desperate to avoid.

The operation certainly appears to have been very well planned, if not, perhaps, entirely well executed, if reports about some of the attackers' weapons failing turn out to be correct.

It seems as though about a dozen gunmen were involved - a large number of people to coordinate in a single operation. The convoy carrying the cricketers was ambushed at a roundabout on its route from the team hotel to the stadium. It was not the opening day of the Test match, but day three - suggesting reconnaissance might have been carried out over the past two days about the route taken by the team bus.

The attackers carried an impressive arsenal of assault rifles, grenades and rocket launchers. "These people were highly trained and highly armed," said the province's governor. "The way they were holding their guns, the way they were taking aim and shooting at the police, it shows they were not ordinary people," he added.

While it appears that that some grenades failed and the rocket launcher failed to hit a target, all of the attackers appear to have escaped successfully after a gunfight with police and security lasting 15 minutes.

So who did it? It seems reasonably safe to rule out the Sri Lankan separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in this attack. The Tamil Tigers have been engaged in a bloody civil war in the north of Sri Lanka for decades. But it's suffered a series of defeats in recent months at the hands of the Sri Lankan army, and most commentators believe the group just does not have the capability to mount such a complex, well-coordinated attack like this on foreign soil.

Instead, the focus surely falls on one, or perhaps several, of the jihadist-terrorist groups based on Pakistani soil. One such group is the Tehrik-e-Taleban, the Pakistani Taliban movement led by Baitullah Mehsud from the tribal areas in the west of Pakistan. It was blamed for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. And it's been linked with the truck bomb attack on the Marriot hotel in September last year, which killed more than 50 people.

Some initial accounts lend possible support to this being the work of the same group. Lahore's police chief said the men who took part looked like Pashtuns, the ethnic group that hails from the tribal regions close to the Afghan border, the stronghold of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But some commentators question this. Sajjan Gohel, of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, points out that the Pakistani Taliban, or groups allied to it, have never struck this far from their base in the tribal areas. Taliban-linked attacks also tend to be more rudimentary in nature, and not as sophisticated as Tuesday's ambush, Gohel says.

Certainly, it's striking that this operation was not a suicide bomb attack but one instead carried out by what appear to be highly trained gunmen. It's also perhaps worth noting that they were casually dressed in jeans and jackets. Both these point to similarities with last year's attack in Mumbai, when 10 gunmen laid siege to two hotels and other locations over a period of three days.

That operation has been widely blamed on another jihadist-terrorist organisation, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), a group with links to al Qaeda. Unlike the Taliban groups, LeT has its roots not in Afghanistan but in the conflict with India over the disputed region of Kashmir. Even though it would be unusual for LeT to stage an attack within Pakistan, there are good reasons why it may wish to do so now.

Under intense international pressure after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani officials arrested a series of LeT leaders. Interior Minister Rehman Malik then made the unprecedented move of publicly acknowledging that the Mumbai operation had been in part staged from Pakistan.

Never before had Pakistan made such an admission over an attack in neighboring India, and there are some within Pakistan's military and security apparatus who will not have been pleased to hear it. Many security analysts say those are the people who believe destabilizing India is a strategic objective. They're also the people who in the past helped set up groups like LeT to fight in Kashmir.

Whoever carried out the attack, it certainly represents the most significant challenge to date from within Pakistan to the survival of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari.