The frequency of terrorist events in Pakistan has increased considerably in the past several years. These events are frequent and not random, making it important to identify useful patterns in their occurrences to assist counterterrorism organizations. In this paper, we conducted such an analytical activity for the first time in Pakistan. We acquired data of terrorist events from reliable online sources and applied data preprocessing techniques followed by cluster analysis. Based on statistical correlation, we discovered clusters over the following combinations: (1) "Event of Terrorism-Target of Terrorism"; and (2) "Event of Terrorism-Method of Terrorism". A more significant clustering is one which groups distinct combinations into separate clusters. We analyzed these clusters along three dimensions: (1) Annually for the time period 1988-2012; (2) for each Pakistani province; and (3) for different types of terrorist events. We also proposed a statistic for gauging the intensity of terrorism and analyzed it along the same three dimensions. Our results were extensive, but generally indicated significant Event-Target and Event-Method clusters, as well as increasing and decreasing trends in terrorism intensity. These can assist counterterrorism authorities in thwarting future attacks and arresting the responsible criminals.

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Over the past couple of decades, Pakistan has witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of terrorist events across its major provinces. These events are not random, and to date, there exists no concrete analysis which can help us in identifying important patterns in the occurrences of these events, and provide valuable assistance to counterterrorism authorities. Our work presents the first effort in this direction. We obtain a reliable database of terrorist events and implement cluster analysis with the CLOPE algorithm. We analyze clusters related to two combinations, i.e., "Terrorism Event -Terrorism Target", and "Terrorism Event -Terrorism Method". We annually analyze the number and content of the clusters, effectively from 2001 to 2012 and separately for each of the four major Pakistani provinces. Our work is divided in two papers. In this paper, we present some results related to the analysis of Event -Target combinations, which reveals an increase in the frequency of these combinations from 2006 onwards, particularly for the Khyber Pakhtunkhaa province. In the companion paper, we present our remaining Event-Target analyses along with the complete EventMethod analysis.