SETTING aside the threat of war, it is instructive and not a little inspiring to consider the courage and skill of the fighters who are challenging the might of the Indian army and air force along the cruel heights of Drass and Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir. Risking a battle in which the chances of death outweigh those of remaining alive requires motivation of a high order. Whatever the Indian side may say, these fighters have a better right than most to call themselves mujahideen, those who fight in the way of Allah.

Whether any or most of these fighters acquired their combat skills in Afghanistan is a matter of detail. What is important is that their spiritual outlook has been shaped by the Afghan experience which they, and a goodly part of the religious and military establishment in Pakistan, considers to have been a true jehad. It was the spirit of jehad which drove the Soviet army from Afghanistan. It is the spirit of jehad which can drive the Indian army from Kashmir. The various schools who subscribe to this thinking consider it an article of faith that the seeds of the break-up of the Soviet Union were sown in Afghanistan. Might not the same happen in Kashmir with similar consequences for India?

It is true that the CIA and the then head of the agency, William Casey - both somewhat removed from anything resembling Islamic fervour - had a great deal to do with the success of the Afghan jehad. At the height of the fighting the mujahideen were getting nearly a billion dollars of covert US assistance every year, including the Stinger missiles which so effectively neutralized the Soviet advantage in helicopter gunships. But it is also true that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan helped awaken a genuine spirit of Islamic revivalism in Afghanistan, across the Arab world and in religious seminaries in Pakistan. The CIA was only the means, jehad the end, not only in Afghanistan but in other Muslim countries defiled by corrupt leaderships.Afghanistan today may lie in ruins and one of the foremost objectives before the CIA may be to contain and destroy the very forces of fundamentalist fervour it had helped put together and ignite in the first place. But these powerful ironies are lost upon the veterans of the Afghan jehad whose memories are sustained by their past triumphs and who fervently believe that if the same spirit was rekindled the experience of Afghanistan could be replicated in Kashmir. If anything, Pakistan's nuclear tests have given a fillip to this thinking. The country's defence having been made impregnable (a favourite expression), the circumstances are right for liberating Kashmir from Indian occupation. In the Jang of June 8 General Hamid Gul puts across this viewpoint with considerable eloquence.

The Afghan war left its deepest imprint upon three sections of Pakistani society. Firstly, the religious schools and seminaries which have flourished since General Zia-ul-Haq's time. Secondly, the religious political parties which make up in fervour what they lack in popular support. From both these sources a stream of volunteers went forth to fight in Afghanistan. Thirdly, those army circles, especially in the ISI, which for logistic and training purposes were closely connected with the fighting in Afghanistan. It is in these sections of society that the passionate belief is to be found that the example of Afghanistan can be reproduced in Kashmir.

The majority of the people of Pakistan, however, may not subscribe to this thinking. For most of them the legacy of the Afghan war lives on in the form of drugs, kalashnikovs, refugees and a worsening law and order situation. But the government of Mian Nawaz Sharif is clueless and the people, by an extension of this circumstance, uninvolved in higher decision-making which continues to be made in circles where the Afghan war remains an important point of reference.

With all this as background, now to the Kargil operation. Who can tell it may turn out to be a signal success. If it does not lead to anything wider - that is, if the Indian army does not launch a diversionary or flanking blow elsewhere along the Line of Control - the boldness and indeed audacity of its planning will have been justified. The courage and skill of the fighters ranged against the Indian army will not go in vain. But is the Kargil operation just a summer furlough or part of a wider strategy? If the latter, how long can it be sustained? There is a deafening silence on this score.

In any event, the real danger is not that the present low-intensity fighting in Kashmir will lead to outright war between Pakistan and India. On current evidence it probably will not. The real danger lies in something altogether different. The spirit of jehad so magnificently exemplified by the fighters of Kargil and Drass is at odds with the nature of Pakistan's polity, the reality of its power structure. Right from the Afghan war till now in Kashmir, volunteers for jehad (or whatever else the finicky may call it) have come from social classes far removed and indeed alienated from this structure. How many people from the intelligentsia or the newspaper-reading classes fought in Afghanistan? How many of them are fighting in Kashmir? These causes have drawn active (as opposed to rhetorical) support from a narrow section of the Pakistani right wing.

This certainly does not mean that these causes are unjust. How can the liberation of Kashmir by force of arms be considered an unjust cause? But it does mean that if we are to sustain this policy it must become the common property not only of madrassa students, great as their contribution is, but of all Pakistanis, including those from the affluent classes. Why must only the poor go to Kargil? Why not others? Who provides the volunteers for such organizations as Lashkar-I-Tayyaba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, etc? Is mainstream Pakistan represented in them? If not, this represents a serious fissure in society, a divide which has affected our polity already - by weakening the foundations of democracy and giving free rein to social extremism and bigotry - and which can be expected to affect it more as time passes.

There is another contradiction brought to the fore by the spirit of jehad in Kashmir. Can righteous wars be waged by corrupt emperors? Let us liberate Kashmir by all means but let us first look within ourselves a bit. Blundering leaders have taken the country to disaster before. The people of Pakistan deserve better than to be led into further disasters by a ruling coterie which does not pay taxes, defaults on loans, amasses flats in London and uses power for personal enrichment.

Let us, therefore, have the sense to decide what we want. If a liberation war in Kashmir, so be it. But let us break our begging bowl first. Kow-towing to the IMF is not a mark of dignity or a sign of preparing for war. When the North Vietnamese went about liberating the south they had all too vivid a sense of the hard road before them. But convinced of the righteousness of their cause, they were undeterred by the consequences and lived to see their dream fulfilled. Are we ready for similar sacrifices? Not if we look at the grasping ways of our present rulers and indeed of the governing classes as a whole. What kind of a war of liberation then are we thinking of?