IT was April. The sky was heavily overcast. Above the carpet of clouds the aircraft circled the airport at Hamburg. I awaited an announcement from the captain informing us that the plane was unable to land. Then I remembered that I was not in Pakistan, hovering over Lahore or Islamabad. The aircraft landed, the passengers filed out. The easy part was over.

At the immigration counter a young Teuton sat examining passports presented to him, an older official stood by to guide him. He removed the leather cover in which my passport is kept, and looked at what is normally the front, which in the case of our passports is blank. He gave me a strange look as he turned the book over and found on what he took to be its backside the golden endorsement and crest of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

He mumbled, "Pakistan!" He looked towards his senior, who looked me up and down. The younger man opened the passport and saw the words printed on the inside of the cover which request and require him "in the name of the President of Pakistan to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford him/her all assistance and protection of which he/she may stand in need."

Had he seen a photograph of our president, I wondered? I hoped not, recalling how Queen Silvia of Sweden, soon after Tarar had been sworn in on New Year's Day 1998, had persuaded her husband, King Gustav, to cancel their official visit to Pakistan due to take place in March.

His eyes moved to the left, then down, scanning my personal details. They stopped at 'Religion'. He looked up. "Parsi?" Then seeing the Karakul collar of my cloak, "Afghan?" "No," I said. "Muslim?" "No. I am a follower of Zarathustra, a Zarathustrian." Our passport officials are dim, for each time I put down as my 'religion' 'Zarathustrian', it is inevitably changed to 'Parsi. This is wrong. No such religion exists. (The 'religion' requirement was innovated by Zia-ul-Haq, despite the Master's dictum : "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the state." - MAJ, August 11, 1947)

The two Germans looked dubiously at each other. I hoped they would not go back five thousand years and ask where Zarathustra was born, in Balkh or Azerbaijan. They spoke, eying my beard; the one decipherable word was 'terrorist'. They found my visa, scanned it on their scanner, waited, and all being clear, stamped me in.

Thanks to the varied antics of our leaders, from Zia downwards, and thanks to the Americans and their interpretation of the word 'terrorism', a man from Pakistan is now a bomber, a missile-launcher, an armed and dangerous man fighting his own holy war.

Our leaders rebut the terrorism allegation by insisting that they neither encourage terrorism nor terrorists, but simply and only provide "moral, diplomatic and political support" to the freedom fighters on jihad. They do not specify where such support begins and ends. They cannot recognize that a terrorist is only transformed into a freedom fighter and applauded when the freedom fought for is won. It is time to face the grundnorm, the ground reality. What is needed, if the country is to be saved, is to reconstruct by reviving the economy. Broke as we are, this can only be done with foreign aid, investment and help. The world well knows that our last couple of supposed democratic leaders, Benazir and Nawaz, and their respective cohorts, were but common or garden thieves. Most investors from the West who contemplate coming to this country prefer to be guided by The Economist (London). A comment from its issue of March 18 still holds good: "Pakistan, by contrast (to India) is falling apart. Venal politicians have sucked the country hollow, leaving the void to be filled by Islamic extremists or military coup-makers, with troubling signs of alliances between the two. The economy is primitive, corrupt and weakening by the day. Pakistan badly needs foreign aid if it is not to implode. Yet its military-dominated government and its violent meddling in Kashmir make it a frustratingly hard place to help."

Kashmir cannot be won by what we are doing. William Jefferson Clinton was right: "Pakistan is paralyzed by its past." We insist on continuing to presume that the people who live in the Valley want us to interfere. Many Kashmiris of the Vale wish to follow the example of Bangladesh and be independent. They know, as everyone knows, that the Bangladeshis are far far better off in every way than they ever were when they were East Pakistanis. However, should the Kashmiri dream of independence come true, will they not wish to claim the territory of 'Azad' Kashmir which we hold in trust for them?

Reconstruct we cannot by remaining isolated. By repeatedly proclaiming that we are not isolated will not make us any less isolated than we actually are. We will not get the help needed from countries which can help us unless we get them on our side, in particular and most importantly, the United States.

China may be an ally but it is as fearful of Muslim extremism and fundamentalism as are the US and Russia, and this is now a problem afflicting its south-western front with which it deals in its own silent and subtle way. However, whether we, or anyone else for that matter, like it or not, the fact is that the US remains the sole ascending superpower. Their work ethics have boosted their economy. Working America rises at five in the morning. Nothing new. In Class One, in my day, we were taught : "He who would thrive, must rise at five...". Working Pakistan rouses itself at noon.

The US is like our legendary lion (or 'loin'): "Jungle ka badshah hai, kabhi baccha deta hai, kabhi unda deta hai." It supports sham democracies when it needs to, dictators when it needs to, generals when it needs to, even murderers of the Pol Pot mould if they serve its purpose. US- sponsored Asian dictators and generals include, but are not restricted to:

Cambodia - General Lon Nol.

Indonesia - General Suharto. The CIA brought him in and the Pentagon Defence Intelligence Agency saw him out.

Iran - the Shahanshah Aryamehr, the King of Kings of Iran, together with his SAVAK. At the end, they denied him a six-foot by two-foot plot of land for his dead body.

Laos - General Phoumi Nosavan.

Pakistan - Generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan; and then Generals Zia-ul-Haq and Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan who, when they grew too big for their boots, were eliminated.

The Philippines - Ferdinand Marcos. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush even hailed him as a democrat.

Taiwan - Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. But for American help and support and its hardworking population (today it can boast of reserves totalling US$120 billion) Taiwan would long ago have been gobbled up by China.

Thailand - Marshals Pibul Songgram, Sanit Thanarat, Praphas Charusathien, and Thanom Kittikachorn.

Vietnam - Ngo Dinh Diem (later assassinated on American orders), General Nguyen Khanh, General Nguyen Cao Ky, and General Nguyen Van Thieu. With the exception of Nawaz Sharif and his cabinet of intelligent lawyers and thinkers, from 1997 onwards the rest of us acknowledged that "force begets force". Nawaz was supported by not only his followers but by the entire mixed bag in the National Assembly in his constitutional amendments which made him seemingly impregnable. To nobody's surprise, the army eventually took over.

To nobody's surprise, Chief Justice of Pakistan Irshad Hasan Khan made the right noises from the bench that heard the constitutional petitions filed against the dismissal of the government and suspension of the assemblies. To nobody's surprise, the honourable Supreme Court has judged and on May 12, 2000, delivered yet another historic judgment upholding the army's action. To nobody's surprise, flip-flop acquiescing suspended Senate Chairman Petitioner Wasim Sajjad and my dear old suspended friend, National Assembly speaker Petitioner Ilahi Bakhsh Soomro, are happy with the verdict (Wasim, Soomro accept verdict, says a headline, May 13). Rhodes scholar Wasim has recorded: "Being an advocate I have to bow before the judgment of the Superior Court."

The West is prepared to accept Musharraf and his actions. But it is naturally very wary of the army of extremists and the self-enlisted soldiers of God who surround the general.

Rebuild, or reconstruct, we can. The territory and population are large enough. The leaders, the generals, should take themselves back to 1947, to what Mohammad Ali Jinnah said on August 11 in his speech to the Constituent Assembly, and concentrate on one sentence: "The first observation I would like to make is this: You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the state." This is the point from which they must make a start, take off, and act.