Whichever terrorist outfit carried out the bomb attack in Karachi’s busy Saddar area and whoever was the target should and will become clear as the investigation unfolds, but the first and most important fact is that terrorists were once again able to smuggle parts of an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) into one of the country’s most major cities, install it is a densely populated area, and then carry out a successful operation that left one person dead a number of people injured. That’s very troubling because, as we have come to understand, it is very problematic to get numerous components of IEDs and suicide vests into one place because of strict security at all entry and exit points; which even big cities have only a handful of. In fact, one of the central points of the National Action Plan (NAP) that was hammered out after the Peshawar school nightmare was to stress greater intel sharing between the dozens of agencies that litter our security landscape. Often one agency picks up a certain type of chatter that confirms another’s investigations, and timely info-sharing can make all the difference in terms of putting two and two together before the bad guys can strike. It seems that this fine point of NAP might have got pushed a little down the priority list in the years since the anti-insurgency operations were successful. Surely Pakistan’s security establishment, which is the only one in the world to have won against such insurgencies in such terrains, knows that complacency can never be allowed to creep in. The country once again stands at a crossroads as far as the security situation is concerned. And as we all know only too well from painful experience; it doesn’t take too long for such things to get out of control once the frequency of the bombs and bullets increases. Of course, the country’s military will never let it get to that point once again. And it knows that the time to win this war this time around is now, just when the enemy is trying to rise again. *