Like the bombings in Brussels, the Easter day attack in Lahore that claimed at least 72 lives and injured 300 may well have been largely an attempt to respond to the authorities' claims that they are having success inflicting serious damage on Islamist terror groups.
We are still here, Taliban offshoot Jamaat-e-Ahrar is saying. It claimed the attack had two purposes – to kill Christians, long-persecuted in the region, and to “give a message to government that it cannot deter us even in their stronghold, Lahore”. It has said it is at war against an “unbeliever state”. Most of those killed and wounded in the public park were Muslims; many were children.
The capital of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous region, Lahore is the home town and political stronghold of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who recently claimed that he has the Taliban on the run. But there has been much criticism of his government's half-hearted crackdown, particularly in the Punjab where the powerful state intelligence service, the ISI, had notoriously close links with the Taliban.
Sunday also saw the end of the period of mourning for the police guard Mumtaz Qadri, executed for the murder of the former governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, who had complained that the country's blasphemy laws were being used to persecute religious minorities. Tens of thousands of Islamists who considered Qadri a hero have been on the streets in recent weeks demonstrating against his execution while more than 100,000 attended his funeral .
In the wake of the bombing, police and intelligence agents have arrested some 5,000 suspected militants as earnest of the government’s intentions to crack down.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, associated with the ultra- conservative Deobandi strand of Islam, has styled itself the "real" Pakistan Taliban and has been working to undermine a strategy of negotiations adopted by the Taliban movement's official leadership in the wake of a major assault on its strongholds launched in 2014. Sadly, it is a narrative that is all too familiar.