No one can fault the lawyers for feeling threatened because they have been the worst victims of the violence recently perpetrated by the Islamic terrorists, who seem to believe that by taking on the judiciary they can bring about Sharia law in the country. The members of the judiciary have given an ultimatum to the government to ensure their safety; failure to do so, according to them, would invoke actions on their part that might paralyse the judicial system. The members of the judiciary are well within their rights to seek the protection of the state, like any other citizen of the country. But when, as a member of an institution, they think it prudent to relinquish their responsibility in the face of threats, they are playing exactly into the hands of the terrorists.

Nothing will give the terrorists more satisfaction and comfort than to see their plans paying off and the targeted group actually doing as they had anticipated their actions would make them do. This is what they actually want to happen, a complete collapse of a vital organ of the state. The purpose of the terrorist violence, so far as we can make out, is a tactical expedient where violence is being perpetrated as a tool of terror to modulate our actions that would ultimately cause the issue to move in their favour. Giving in to threats is therefore not an option.

The way of combating the terrorists is not by ultimatum or by providing gunmen or flak jackets or issuing tax-free vehicles. These, if employed at all, can be temporary expedients at best. One must also understand that what has taken years to germinate cannot be taken out overnight. The utterances of not only the judges but also comments from various political parties seem to give one the impression that terrorism is like any other law and order problem, which can be solved by the deployment of additional police or other law enforcement agencies.

Regrettably, neither the public nor the administration has yet fathomed the profundity and the complexity of the issue that demands a well thought out approach. But the public cannot be blamed for its impatience, having faced nothing like this ever before. And if the government has been caught unawares, it is only the government that is to be blamed, because the media and some of the government agencies had been providing it with more than enough information to form a definitive impression of the rise of the Islamic extremists in Bangladesh.

Thus the government should not waste time in finding out the credentials of the groups that are involved in the so-called fight to establish Islamic law in Bangladesh. The recent expose of some ruling party MPs lends credence to the accusation that there is a link between some in the ruling alliance and the terrorists that have allowed them time and space to gain roots in the country. Their call to disassociate with the Victory Day, and instead revert to August 14 as Independence Day should indicate the orientation of these elements. There is perhaps a need for the BNP to study very closely the manifesto of its major alliance partner and see whether there is a fusion of views between these two! The government need not also waste time in trying to fathom out the political agenda of this group, or whether there are actually fundamentalist elements in the country as the State Minister for Home was inclined to think not very long ago.

The matter of concern is that these elements, having been fostered by some in the ruling alliance, have grown both in size and capacity. And seeing that their agenda cannot be achieved by those that they had put up to conduct the open platform politics, the extremists have now resorted to violence to fulfill their political agenda. As their graduated scale of action suggests, they have moved beyond the need to assert their presence to a more precipitative course of action that involves suicide missions.

It has grown far beyond the manageable limits of their cohorts in open politics to restrain them.

The important question is how does one go about rendering the religious extremists inoperative?

First, it is imperative that the major partner in the ruling alliance listens to the voices from within. Some BNP MPs have thought it fit, belatedly though, to go public, not only about their apprehensions of the nexus, they have gone even further by identifying those that have played their part in the rise of the Islamic terrorists in Bangladesh also. This was common knowledge all along but to which the government had turned a deaf ear. A serious probe into the alleged links must be launched to ferret out these elements, and to determine the external linkage, about which there can be no doubt. Such an action by the government, one feels, would reinvest some credibility on the administration's commitment to fight these extremists. Credibility and trust in the government action lends strength to counter-terrorist actions.

Second, there is the propensity on the part of the state to base all counter-terrorist actions on force. As an analyst very cogently suggests, the first effect of terrorism on the administration is the "militarisation of thoughts." This occurs particularly when a quick result is expected and when lack of progress in rounding up the terrorists is seen as lack of action on the part of the government. Thus, there is a call for more robust physical action against the terrorists and more proactive reactions rather than reactive response. While there can be no doubt that use of force at some level is inescapable, the thing to remember is that too much reliance on it will lead to inflexibility in the actions of those that are engaged in countering the terrorists. This is a limit that the state would do well to avoid, because this is exactly the reaction from the state the terrorists are trying to evoke.

There has to be two-pronged action taken, by the government and the people, in the fight against terrorism. The government must under no circumstance allow public confidence in it, and indeed public morale, to sap. Only by taking concrete actions can it prevent these two things from happening. On the part of the public, there must be no surrender to the terrorists. We must carry on with our usual life and without abdicating our responsibilities.

This is a battle that the terrorists would want to win in their "war" against the state but must never be allowed to succeed.

The author is Editor, Defence and Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.