Accepting our weakness and bowing to the inevitable is one thing. But can we please stop pretending that by acting the way we have done in this Afghan crisis we have somehow rescued Pakistan's defences?

Last week General Musharraf said Pakistan's stance on Afghanistan had been vindicated by events. If this is vindication, what would defeat look like? This week he says, "Pakistan's importance in relation to Afghanistan is a matter of geography, which cannot be changed." If our importance is so self-evident, why are we proclaiming it from the housetops? Why are we protesting so much about how, by becoming bag-carriers of the United States, we have protected our 'core' interests. If this is the way to protect 'core' interests, every beggar would be a king.

Thanks to Afghanistan, General Zia ul Haq enjoyed nine years in the sun, General Musharraf a mere two months. This is no reflection on Musharraf's person, only an indication of the different circumstances then and now, the rout of the Taliban having dramatically altered our frontline status.

Our name is mud both in Kabul and Kandahar. This is what military wizards past and present have managed to achieve by playing the great game in Afghanistan - a game warranted neither by strength nor pressing necessity but driven entirely by a misguided ambition.

Given this record of unrelieved failure anyone in our place would draw a curtain of forgetfulness around Afghanistan, letting the pieces fall where they will and letting a new equilibrium arise in that war-torn land. But old habits die hard. We persist in talking of our importance in relation to Afghanistan.

A little humility would teach us a different lesson. We who are taking no small pride in the defeat of the Taliban as a vindication of our stance, choose to forget that whereas the Taliban have taken nearly two months of the most ferocious punishment imaginable, without surrendering or deserting, we succumbed before a single telephone call from Colin Powell. He himself has said as much in an interview with the New York Times, saying that he delivered a virtual ultimatum to General Musharraf: "Mr President, you have a choice to make." We made the choice there and then and ratified it a mere 24 hours later.

As we mock the rout of the Taliban we forget that whereas the Taliban are still holding out, defiant to the last, our vaunted army laid down its arms in East Pakistan in 1971 without so much as a decent fight in an encounter that lasted no more than a fortnight. Here and there junior officers and soldiers upheld the honour of their arms. But the army command as a whole covered itself in shame. Unmindful of this record, any number of clucking pundits are joining in the chorus of denouncing the Taliban and glorifying the superiority of American firepower.

If this were to become the prevailing wisdom, resistance of any sort would disappear from the face of the planet. The US has hinted darkly at taking the so-called war on terror to Sudan and Somalia. President Bush has openly threatened Iraq. Lebanon is also on the list of states incurring American displeasure because of the government's refusal there to freeze the assets of Hezbollah. What should all these countries do? And what should the great commonwealth of Islamic countries be doing?

This has not been the Ummah's proudest hour but if the Muslim kings, despots and assorted dictators who make up this commonwealth still do not wake up, there will be no stopping the American steamroller set in motion by the September 11 attacks.

Apart from tiny Lebanon, in the entire Muslim world about the only leader to show some guts has been Mahathir Muhammad of Malaysia. He opposed the American air strikes on Afghanistan when they started and has since said that the so-called war on terror seemed to be directed only against Muslim countries. All other leaders, even when they have voiced reservations, have done so indirectly and ever so discreetly. As for us, we have succeeded in protecting our 'core' interests. Isn't that bravery enough?

Malaysia (or Lebanon for that matter) does not have a Kahuta, an A. Q. Khan or a collection of atom bombs. No 'strategic assets' whatsoever, at least none of the kind covered by our understanding of the term. But because it is a country which stands on its feet, does not pay too much attention to what western leaders say and has a strong leader who can speak up when the need arises, it can dare tell even the unpleasant truth.

Since September 11, Pakistan's ruling circles, supported by the country's 'moderates', have become the world's leading exponents of pragmatism. Their mantra: Pakistan had no choice. It either had to join the American coalition or invite American wrath. Had we hesitated the Americans would have clobbered our military and 'strategic' assets. By siding with the Americans Pakistan has been saved from American anger and its own extremists. It has also been able to break out of its isolation and rejoin the international mainstream.

No one cares to answer a simple question. What would we have lost if we had chosen to negotiate the fine print of our cooperation with the US? Even America's European allies - with the exception, of course, of Britain - took some time to make up their minds before rushing in with offers of help. Would we have been declared international terrorists if we had negotiated with some toughness instead of being dazzled by the sudden attention we started getting? Now that the euphoria has gone what do we have to show for our caving in? Musharraf got his exclusive dinner with Bush in New York. Beyond that, what?

Now of course all the rage in Pakistan is for settling matters with the 'extremists'. In a TV interview Musharraf has said that the extremists stood exposed and now was the time to move against them. By extremists he means the religious parties which rallied to the support of the Taliban when the American bombing of Afghanistan started. What is the guilt of these parties? At a critical moment they expressed a point of view which represented the views of a wide section of public opinion in Pakistan. They did not take up arms against the state or plant bombs anywhere. If anything, being faithful to their professed beliefs, they showed more spirit and determination than General Musharraf's so-called 'silent majority'.

There is no cause to move against them except if the aim be to rock the foundations of the Pakistani state. The religious right is part of our landscape. It has always existed and will always exist and while it certainly does not speak for the majority, to move against it is to move against a limb (even if, at times, an awkward one) of Pakistan. While it is possible to disagree with the Jamaat-I-Islami and the JUI, these and other religious parties add to the richness of whatever political discourse exists in this country. For 20 years these parties were in the vanguard of official ideology. Now that under the threat of American retribution, Pakistan's official ideology has undergone a complete somersault - the military jehadis of yesterday becoming the secularists of today - the religious parties are being spoken of as some kind of outcasts.

Not too long ago this government showed every sign of being scared of that religious mountebank from Chakwal, Maulana Akram Awan (into which part of the woods has he disappeared?). Now it has begun thundering against the religious tribe as a whole. We are extremists in everything. Let us at least be moderate in our inconsistencies.

And in any case the answer to the nostrums of the religious parties is not suppression or the bravado at which the interior minister, General Haider, has come to excel, but in better governance and the spread of social justice. The religious madressahs cater for the poorest of the poor. Let the state provide universal education, and a glass of milk for every poor child in Pakistan, before inveighing against the madressahs. Before threatening to move against the religious parties let the state legitimize itself by acting on the great Omar's ringing cry that even if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates, God would hold him, the commander-of-the-faithful, accountable on the Day of Judgment.

Let us also beware of the example of the Arab countries such as Algeria and Egypt where repression and the strangulation of democracy have led to the birth of radical Islam. Do we want the same to happen here?

Riding a favourable wind, General Musharraf is all set to perpetuate his presidency. But pray God the experiment on which he is now embarked does not degenerate into what we have seen happening in places as far afield as Nigeria and Indonesia.