From the NYT on Friday:

Pakistan Attacks Show Tighter Militant Links – NYTimes.com

The assaults in Lahore, coming after a 20-hour siege at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend, showed the deepening reach of the militant network, as well as its rising sophistication and inside knowledge of the security forces, officials and analysts said.
….
But the style of the attacks also revealed the closer ties between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and what are known as jihadi groups, which operate out of southern Punjab, the country’s largest province, analysts said. The cooperation has made the militant threat to Pakistan more potent and insidious than ever, they said.
….
In Washington, senior intelligence officials said the multiple coordinated attacks were a characteristic of operations influenced by Al Qaeda. But the officials said they were still sifting through intelligence reports to determine whether the attacks indeed marked an attempt by Al Qaeda to assert more influence over the Pakistani Taliban’s operations.

I’ve addressed this issue earlier: Is AQ Behind the Strengthening of the Insurgency in Afghanistan. I just don’t know if there is more to the analysis here, but I worry that we are now in the habit of assuming that any simultaneous attacks reflect some sort of AQ initiative.  I mean, back in 1970 the PFLP hijacked four airplanes simultaneously.  Unless there is actual evidence of AQ involvement, I see no reason to assume that the Pakistani Taliban needed advice from UBL or Zawahiri on how to carry out simultaneous attacks.

This is actually a significant issue because if we choose to insist believe that everything bad that happens in Af/Pak has AQ roots, it is likely to lead to misguided policies.

At this juncture, I think the weight of the evidence suggests that AQ is a marginal force.  Still dangerous perhaps, but increasingly out of step with the local focus on most Islamist movements.  For a period, I think the strategy of focusing on the “far enemy” appealed to a lot of Islamist movements frustrated with lack of progress at home, but I think it is increasingly seen as a dead end.

The failure of AQI, the renunciation of AQ affiliation by by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the apparent lack of funds available to AQ all suggest that UBL’s focus on attacking the United States is seen by many as a distraction.