THE American operation in Abbottabad has put the role of Pakistan’s security apparatus in question in world capitals causing the latter to ask whether it knew about Osama’s hiding place in the city.

The CIA chief pronounced a harsh verdict on Pakistan for being an accomplice or incompetent, though Washington has not directly implicated the country.

What should be done to take Pakistan out of the morass of diplomatic embarrassment given the acute trust deficit that has defined US-Pakistan relations for several years now? For one thing, there is more to it than the procedural matter of the exchange of information between the two intelligence agencies at the two ends of the spectrum before and after the Abbottabad operation.

There are hard-core substantive issues revolving around the priorities of Pakistan’s foreign policy that need to be re-evaluated and possibly revised. There is a lack of direction in the domestic, regional and global strategies that often contradict one another.

The security apparatus is selective about hitting the Taliban. Some Taliban hit Pakistan. They are the targets of the counterterrorism operation. Others hit Afghanistan, such as those in North Waziristan. They are off the radar of the security establishment. That has rendered Islamabad’s commitment against terror suspect in the eyes of the world.

The controversy about the 2008 Mumbai attacks refuses to go away. Pakistan’s diplomatic stance of insufficient data provided by India has been taken with a pinch of salt. The relative freedom of action ostensibly enjoyed by the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba, especially after Lashkar operative David Headley’s plea bargain in Chicago, along with the related court cases going nowhere, has put the country in a tight corner in the diplomatic world.

One of the standard justifications of Pakistan’s sincerity of purpose has been the human loss in the war against terror, running into thousands of dead military officers and soldiers along with policemen and the general public. Unfortunately, this has been wearing thin, because it has been counter-balanced by allegations of duplicity of Pakistan’s security apparatus emerging from western sources in general.

The contradiction between the US and Pakistani responses to the CIA operation against Osama bin Laden reflects the grim situation on the ground. American lawmakers, intelligence personnel and media have been asking questions about Pakistan’s complicity in hiding Osama close to the military academy.

At home, politicians and the media have been asking the opposite question about the inability of the security apparatus to safeguard the country’s sovereignty.

The US and Pakistani public are poles apart in terms of their respective positions on this issue. According to the western profile of Pakistan’s foreign policy, the country wants to put the Taliban in Kabul in any post-Nato arrangement.

It supports the operations of armed non-combatants in Afghanistan and India. It abets the militant discourse of jihadi parties through education and media within Pakistan. It continues to operate as a place for the training of potential terrorists abroad.

This ugly profile has cast its grim shadow on several aspects of national life. First, it has dried up foreign investment that has brought down the rate of growth to less than two per cent in recent years. Second, it has isolated the country. Major western airlines have withdrawn from Pakistan. The diplomatic community is under siege in Islamabad, which has rendered Pakistan a non-family station. The image of a ‘failed state’ has stuck to Pakistan despite the best efforts of diplomats, scholars and media persons.

Third, the country has suffered from religious and sectarian cleavages. It has become a battleground for rival ambitions of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Finally, and most gruesomely, Pakistan is understood as an exporter of terrorism. Both India and Afghanistan have been critical of Pakistan on this count, with Iran occasionally incensed. China came down heavily on its Islamic insurgents who were allegedly supported by elements from Pakistan.

The current foreign policy has failed. There is a need to revamp our foreign policy objectives and the means to achieve them.

The predominant current of thought in the country understands the whole issue in terms of the dichotomy between Islam and the West underscored by the spirit of the Crusades and concerns about national sovereignty, Indian designs in Afghanistan and the US-India nuclear alliance.

What is required is a change in evaluation of the country’s national interest along realistic lines. The state must shun reliance on non-state combatants in pursuit of its policy.

The option succeeded in the 1980s in Afghanistan because one superpower defeated the other. It failed in the 1990s in Kashmir because there was no superpower support for it. Indeed, the presence of thousands of well-trained and well-armed non-state combatants within the borders of the state can only be disastrous for any political system. They can turn their guns any time in the direction of their sponsors.

Previously, there was a role for Pakistan in three triangles: US- Pakistan-China, China-Pakistan-India and US-Pakistan-India.

Over time, Pakistan lost its crucial role in all the three triangles, as the other two protagonists in each triangle opened up to one another by way of trade, diplomacy or strategic relations.

Across the Gulf, the Saudis have not been forthcoming either in recent years. In this way, the three traditional pillars of Pakistan’s foreign policy — Washington, Beijing and Riyadh — have been shaken. Already, Obama’s plan to visit Pakistan seems to have run into difficulties. One likes to believe that there is scope for neutralising the hostility of India and Afghanistan, and removing the possible sources of alienation for Iran and China. Pakistan needs to grow out of its extreme insularity in order to cultivate acceptance and accommodation of its legitimate interests by the US, the EU and regional countries.

It needs to recast its national goals commensurate with its status as a responsible power. It must move forward from an overly ideological and conspiratorial worldview to a rational, pragmatic and result-oriented foreign policy.

The writer is a professor at LUMS.