On Sunday, 27 March 2016, a suicide attack by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s JamaatulAhrar wing claimed the lives of 72 people and injured 300 in Gulshan-i-Iqbal Park in Lahore. The motive behind the attack, it appears, was to assert the group’s presence in Lahore and to discourage Christians from celebrating Easter.
In Pakistan, militants have too often used soft targets such as shopping centers, public recreational spaces, transportation sites and parks, to inflict damage on the nations psyche. While the state’s security apparatus, for the most part, successfully protects hard targets like military bases, embassies, government buildings and nuclear power plants, terrorists have stepped up efforts to attack easy to access public places. The Lahore blast is yet another reminder of the difficulty the state faces in protecting against such soft target attacks. Unlike a terror attack on an embassy or a military base, which requires extensive planning due to it being highly patrolled, a soft target location is an easily accessible and difficult to protect area used by ordinary citizens.
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