By James Lamont, South Asia bureau chief
Today’s attacks on Lahore show that the battlefront in Pakistan’s struggle against Taliban militants has shifted south.
The militants are taking the fight to Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. This region, which borders India, is the political and economic heart of the country. It is also from where the officer corps of Pakistan’s army is largely drawn. Lahore, its capital, is regarded as Pakistan’s most cosmopolitan, tolerant and historic city.
This is the fourth wave of high profile attacks this year on a city that prided itself as far removed, almost immune, from terror. Today’s strike, like most of those before it, was a coordinated strike on military targets. Three police targets came under attack across the city during the period of an hour in an assault intended to show defiant fearlessness of the country’s most powerful institution, the army.
Attacks in Punjab province are of a completely different order than skirmishes in the far off border areas, which most Pakistani barely consider Pakistan anyway. Lahore is a city under siege. The city, redolent of Mughal era history, will lose some of its openness. A terror campaign will exacerbate the disconnect between the Punjab government, controlled by the opposition Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz and the federal government led by president Asif Ali Zardari. It will also bring under greater scrutiny the possible connections between Mr Sharif, and his brother Shabhaz, and militant leaders in Punjab.
The new front serves as an enormous challenge to the army, long prepared to fight a conventional war against India, in protecting a large civilian population from an internal terror campaign. That challenge is matched by the one faced by Lahore’s civil society. Traditionally a hospitable people, Lahoris are today confronted by a militant religious ideology trying to force entry at its gates. The choice lays before them as to whether to let it in.
Related reading:
From the FT:
Pakistan hit by fresh wave of violence: Today’s news
US focuses on Taliban’s border ‘post office’ (with video from Islamabad)
The Pakistani Military: Analysis
Elsewhere:
Without democracy in Pakistan, forget victory in Afghanistan: Opinion from Canada’s Globe and Mail
On the Taliban Youtube channel: Commentary from Foreign Policy’s Blog
For views and opinions on the European Union from Peter Spiegel, Joshua Chaffin, Alex Barker and Stanley Pignal, follow the 