Lahore was the scene of at least three massive bomb attacks on security establishments earlier this year, but people in Pakistan’s second largest city, routinely hailed as the nation’s ‘cultural capital’, appear far more anxious about two relatively minor incidents which occurred earlier this month.

The first was on the evening of October 7, when a cluster of fruit juice parlours — which also serve as popular dating venues — in the Garhi Shahu area, not far from the railway station, was hit by three low-intensity bombs, injuring five people, of whom one died later. The next day, panic-stricken traders organised a well-publicised bonfire of videos and other allegedly pornographic material at the popular electronics bazaar on Hall Road.

The reason for the disproportionately nervous reaction to these recent incidents is not difficult to find. Unlike the earlier attacks by suicide bombers trained in the jihad factories of the Pashtun highlands to the west, the latest threat in Lahore appears to emanate from closer home, proof perhaps that just as in Bannu or in Swat in the Northwest Frontier Province, radical groups in Pakistan’s cultural capital have now begun to use violence to enforce their idea of an Islamic way of life.

In other words, the spectre of the Taliban has begun to haunt Lahore.

“People see these two incidents as quite significant, it’s having an impact on people’s psyche,” says theatre director Shahid Nadeem. “We can no longer deny the existence of extremist sects in our midst.”

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