The Pakistani Taliban mostly hail from the Pashtun ethnic group in Pakistan's northwest, though they do have some tiny fringe Punjabi associates, such as the Lashkar-i Tayyiba. Their attempt to impress on the Pakistani military and public that they are still capable of fighting back through such bombings of soft targets will likely backfire in a major way. As long as the TTP was primarily attacking NATO and US troops or the Afghan National Army across the border in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military and public could largely ignore them, or even configure them as a generally anti-imperialist force that admittedly was a little extreme.

But if they are going to blow up Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, the TTP is going to have to be finished off. Punjabis are 55 percent of Pakistan, and the wealthiest and most powerful part. They are 80% of the army. Now, editorials are widely and bitterly complaining that the government has not dismantled the 'infrastructure of hate.' Some Karachi observers are calling on Punjabis to wake up to the threat. The subtext here is that Punjabi officers and politicians in the 1980s and 1990s fostered the Mujahidin and then the Taliban and small terrorist groups in hopes of using them to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the Indians out of Kashmir. But relationships change, and Punjabis are in fact likely to wake up.