Sadly, suicide bombings in Pakistan (and to a lesser extent, India) have become so commonplace that we don’t really report on ‘em much anymore. Sure there was some interesting coverage of the bomb that altered the political landscape by nearly killing Benazir Bhutto (and the fact that it may have been strapped to a 1 year old baby makes the details even more chilling). But that was just one of perhaps a half dozen bomb blasts that have rocked the country in as many months.

Given that media glory is, in many respects, exactly what the bombers are looking for, there is at least one morose advantage to this state of reportage. Most Pakistanis live quiet, peaceful, productive lives and would certainly prefer other aspects of their society get highlighted in the global media.

However, a bombing in the past few days is significant because, as with Bhutto’s attempted assassination, it has tremendous implications for the geopolitical order far outside of Pakistan. In this case, the target was a suspected nuclear weapons facility -

As the Pakistani military continues the slow push to regain control of the settled district of Swat, suicide bombers struck in two locations, one at a sensitive weapons facility near Islamabad.

…the attack at a Pakistani Air Force base in Kamra, while only injuring seven, has far more serious implications. The Kamra complex is a likely location for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. The suicide bomber targeted a bus filled with 35 children of Pakistani Air Force officers. The driver, a conductor, and five children were wounded in the strike.

…While Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombers have targeted secure military facilities over the past year, it is unclear if the suicide attack was a target of opportunity or a demonstration of the groups’ capacity to penetrate security at sensitive locations.

Back when nukes were a *really* tough thing to build, a society had to achieve a rather high degree of coordination and thus consensus to pull off construction of these beasts. As the march of globalization and technology steadily lower the cost of proliferation, expect more and more fractured societies to reach for them….