Pakistan’s security installations have been a frequent target of terrorist attacks. Sunday night’s horrific attack on the police training academy in Quetta was one such instance, in which at least 61 cadets lost their lives. In the past, many valuable lives of security officials, both civilian and military, have been lost due to these attacks. In 2008, twin suicide attacks claimed the lives of 64 people in the country’s main arms factory at Wah. In 2011, two suicide attacks killed 98 people at a police training centre in Charsadda. In the same year, militants killed five people in an attack on the Mehran airbase in Karachi. Even the children of the country’s armed forces were not spared by militants, when in 2014, in what was the most barbaric terrorist attack in the history of Pakistan, Taliban insurgents mercilessly killed 154 people in the military run Army Public School in Peshawar. Most of these were students at the school, belonging to both civilian and military parents, and it showed the complete inhumanity of the attackers. All of these attacks show the constant state of fear with which security officials live in Pakistan, and if security officials of the country have to experience this then how can they be expected to protect the lives of others? Unfortunately, such a high level of casualties from terrorist attacks reveals the ineffectual security apparatus at place to protect these buildings. The police academy in Quetta that was attacked on Sunday night was also attacked by militants in 2006 and 2008. Still, there was just one man placed at the sentry tower, and terrorists were able to successfully infiltrate the building. While some sensitive buildings are heavily guarded, the security needs of many others are ignored, making them easy targets for bombers. It is true that hospitals and schools are difficult to guard because of the public nature of these buildings, but buildings in which security officials work is one place in which effective entry-exit controls, complete surveillance, barricading, and fool proof fencing is possible. Resource constraint is one reason why all of this is not implemented, but it must be realised that ensuring the safety of the lives of security officials is imperative both from a moral and an operational point of view in the fight against terrorism. Those who risk their lives for the safety of the people of this country should be and must be made to feel safe in the places where they work. The resulting increasing securitisation of Pakistan’s public spaces is one cost that the public would have to pay until the menace of terrorism is completely eliminated. There is no doubt that the loss of lives, both civilian and military, due to terrorism is immensely tragic, and there could be no bigger travesty of justice than the killing of innocent lives. However, in Pakistan a new culture of using the slogan of martyrdom to both act as a palliative for the loss of lives of innocent bystanders and to stir up patriotic sentiment has taken root. These victims, who merely by being at the wrong place at the wrong time, did not ask to be killed by these terrorists. In all likelihood, they were people who wanted to live full lives, and who in their last breaths were downright terrified. Instead of using the slogan of martyrdom to mask its own failings at protecting the lives of its people, government should call such attacks what they really are: gruesome massacres of innocent people. Terrorism cannot be eliminated if government continues to evade its responsibility by glorifying the death of innocent victims. It needs a comprehensive and sustained effort, one that even in the public discourse must be conscious of the tragedy of the loss lives. *