THE device that went off at the Lahore railway station on Tuesday evening killed three people, but the sense of fear that followed was accompanied by a feeling that the attack, carried out at a public place apparently without any specific target, could have been much worse. Such kinds of attacks are not so common, with most local terrorist groups generally attacking security installations or places like girls’ schools and religious shrines whose very ethos is diametrically opposed to their own views on societal values. Attacks like the one carried out on Tuesday are aimed more at creating terror and anarchy than following an ideological agenda. But the feeling remains: whatever the motive, had the explosive device been planted in the middle of the crowd a few yards away from the site where the bomb actually went off, the number of casualties could have been much higher.

That the improvised device was packed with ball bearings which have in the recent past been used to maximise the effect of the blow doesn’t really help identify the hands behind this act of terrorism. Terrorist networks like the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been using similar devices but there is no bar on others applying the same formula for their own attempts at disruption, especially in places where security arrangements are poor. It is disturbing that despite countless incidents of terror in the country the security at a crowded place like a railway station should be so lax. Even if attacks on public places, which the terrorists ostensibly have no reason to strike, have been relatively rare, we have not yet emerged from the fearsome tunnel of terror. Mercifully, some CCTV cameras have now been ordered and security tightened generally.

There is again talk about a foreign hand being involved in the blast. For whatever it was actually worth, the presenters of this theory had more takers in the past when home-grown terrorists were not so conspicuous. Although it is difficult at this point to identify the terrorists, the explanation doesn’t sell so easily now. Attempts at deflecting the blame anger more than they pacify, while people are fed up with the routine where the governments in Islamabad and Lahore unabashedly point fingers at each other over security lapses. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s polite reminder that a rail station is the federal government’s jurisdiction harbours the most dangerous demons. He is absolutely right when he says the governments and the people have to fight the menace jointly. Had this been actually under way, the return of terrorism to Lahore might have been avoided.