Right in the heart of the capital of Punjab province, Lahore, a suicide blast rang out on Tuesday early afternoon near the Police Lines Qilla Gujjar Singh. At the time of writing these lines, reports suggest that as many as 11 people may have died and many more injured, some critically. Jamaatul Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has claimed responsibility for the attack, citing it as revenge for the military operation being conducted in the tribal areas and the hangings the country embarked upon of convicted terrorists in the wake of the Peshawar school attack. This is of little surprise but the audacity with which militants can reach the very centre of our urban areas and unleash a tidal wave of fear and terror is a shock, every single time. It is being reported that the suicide bomber was unable to penetrate the heavy security at the Police Lines and so he blew himself up when he reached as close as he could get, to create panic, chaos and mayhem. This is in keeping with the fact that no matter how tight the security and how beefed up the protective measures, once a suicide bomber has been deployed they are almost impossible to stop. This is what the National Action Plan (NAP) needs to tackle. Yesterday’s attack on Lahore is a sign that, if anything, the militants are resorting to relentless attacks against soft targets: just last Friday, Taliban militants stormed an imambargah in Peshawar killing as many as 21 Shia worshippers. Before that it was an imambargah in Shikarpur, killing more than 60 people. Civilians are fair game in this war and it seems the militants are one step ahead of us when it comes to impact and results. This is a fact that the government of Nawaz Sharif has to consider now that NAP has been presented to a terrified people as the panacea for their worries. It is not enough to speak at length about the measures the government will take while the country burns all around them; it is time to get serious about reforms and equipping our intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies with the necessary tools and know-how in dealing with these enemies of the state. Peshawar, Shikarpur, Lahore — these will be a few in the long lineup of targets the militants have lined up. It is imperative that the government and agencies enforce NAP full throttle if we are to lessen the ease with which the terrorists strike at our very core. *