This is in keeping with the militants’ strategy of waging a savage war, yes, but not widening it to include indiscriminate attacks against the general population. The norm, therefore, has been to attack the state and its allies, foreign and local, real and imagined, and sectarian targets. But yesterday’s attack has no obvious, or hitherto known, target; it appears to have been indiscriminate and meant to sow terror generally.

Could another state have planned it to put pressure on Pakistan? There is an unfortunate tendency to blame ‘foreign’ actors for every act of terrorism inside Pakistan, but setting aside the wildest of such conspiracy theories, there is a very real history of such attacks.

In the 1980s, Pakistan was frequently the target of terrorist attacks and topped the world in such incidents — this as the state here was embroiled in fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In the 1990s, too, a spate of such indiscriminate attacks occurred, and it was no coincidence that the attacks coincided with the height of the ‘jihad’ being fought in Indian-administered Kashmir and cross-border disputes between India and Pakistan.

With the terrible mess that has been created by a misguided zeal for militancy by some elements in the state apparatus here over the years, it is sometimes forgotten that Pakistan exists in a very tough security environment — and that not all the problems and threats the country faces are of the state’s own making or indeed its fault. Militancy tops the national agenda, and rightly so because it is a threat to the internal sovereignty of Pakistan today. But linked to the militancy issue and also existing separately alongside it are other threats and unresolved regional disputes.

In the world of realpolitik, one which is not necessarily in step with moral principles, power games based on national security and national interests continue to be played out in the region. The government must determine if the Peshawar bombing is in any way linked to those other issues.