One of the main problems in facing up to the terror threat in Bangladesh has been to get a significant segment of the population to actually acknowledge that there is even a threat that needs facing up to. Part of the problem can be neatly summed up by Upton Sinclair's aphorism that: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

But now, for all those whose salaries and livelihoods and political futures and personal philosophies depend on their not understanding that there is a terrorist threat in Bangladesh, one hopes that the events of the past week have had the effect of finally concentrating their minds on the enormity of the menace and the need to address it head on.

Now, even if their salary or something else depends on them not understanding it, their life and the life of everyone in the country and the country itself depends on their understanding that the extremists mean business and that continuing to ignore or to minimize the rising threat is no longer an option.

There can be little doubt that the terrorists are merely getting warmed up and that the coming months will see further escalation in terms of attacks.

The attack on the AL rally last August 21 and the assassinations of Ahsanullah Master and SAMS Kibria sent the message that no one is immune to being targeted.

The serial bombings of August 17 sent the message that the terrorists possess the manpower, sophistication, and organizational capacity to strike anywhere in the country and at any time.

And the suicide bombings of this week have sent the message that there are no barriers to how far the terrorists are willing to go in order to succeed in their mission.

So is this the beginning of the end for the Bangladesh of our Liberation War dreams? Is the curtain about to fall on our way of life if we do not unite to confront this threat?

Ever since I started writing this column some two years ago, I have had people suggest to me that I am being unnecessarily alarmist with respect to the extent of the extremist threat to the country.

In fact, I have heard this argument made again and again over the years, and not merely about my column, but about the extensive reporting and editorial commentary that The Daily Star has devoted to informing the public about the extremist menace.

Earlier this week, not three days before the twin suicide strikes on the court premises in Chittagong and Gazipur, no less an eminence than a former minister, who has held multiple portfolios in the service of different administrations, suggested to me that some newspapers were trying to destroy the country with their sky-is-falling reporting about the extremists.

In this, he was merely echoing what a number of current ministers and the PM herself are on record as saying about the media's role in creating the spectre of the extremist menace.

It never fails to astonish me that even in the wake of massive arms hauls and repeated terrorist attacks that people could continue to believe that the media is blowing things out of proportion, but this is what happens when people are willing to subjugate common sense and the national interest to partisan politics.

One hopes that the twin suicide bombings on the court premises of Chittagong and Gazipur that killed nine and injured over eighty on Tuesday and the suicide bombing in front of the Gazipur deputy commissioner's office yesterday will once and for all bring home to the entire country the enormity of the threat that we are facing and the consequent danger of minimizing it for political reasons.

In fact, it seems to me that the terror threat is so great today as to render all other debate about the direction of the country more or less meaningless.

The fact that the attackers were suicide bombings is extremely significant. These are the first such attacks on Bangladeshi soil and signal a dramatic escalation in the destructive tactics employed by the extremists.

Some might argue that in absolute terms the number of extremists is very small and that even their wider circle of supporters is by no means extensive enough to constitute any kind of a threat to the country as a whole.

However, this argument is misguided. In the first place, even though the network of extremists and supporters may be small in absolute terms, no one knows what their actual numbers are. In the second place, their numbers, however small, are augmented significantly by the number of enablers that the extremists evidently have in place in key positions within the administration and government services. Numbers are not nearly as important as access to influential positions in the corridors of power.

Finally, we would do well to remember that if the people as a whole, due to either indifference or intimidation, sit idle and inactive in the face of acts of terror and carnage, that it might take only a relatively small number of determined, ruthless, and unprincipled militants to throw the nation into utter chaos.

This is not to suggest that Bangladesh today stands at the brink of an imminent take-over by the extremists or that we have reached anywhere close to the point of no return. However, if one is to err, it is better to err on the side of caution, and I want to make clear that the comforting bromides we tell ourselves about the moderation of the population and the unpopularity of the militants, so as not to have to face up to the fact that the core of the nation is being threatened, are keeping us from taking the steps we need to take in order to get to grips with this crisis.

So what needs to be done?

The first step is to focus on the reality and immediacy of the crisis at hand, and to stop worrying about the image of the country or what people outside of Bangladesh might think, which, I am sorry to say, appears to have been the principle consideration governing internal discussion of the issue, and to begin to engage in what we have still to initiate -- an honest and forthright national discussion on the terrorist threat.

We need to understand that right now this is the sole issue that we should be focusing on as a nation. The discussion of the terrorist threat -- and by extension discussion of what steps need to be taken to counter the threat -- is still dominated by the voices of those who, for purposes of political expediency or ideological conviction or perhaps just common or garden idiocy, refuse to see the truth of what is staring them in the face.

The first step towards healing is always acceptance. And it is only when we accept where we are as a nation and how we got here that we can have a meaningful and purposeful discussion of how to pull ourselves back from the edge of the precipice.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.