REGARDING any number of issues Pakistan may be in a fix itself. Never mind. Our leadership — in power and glory for no fault of ours — is about to fix Palestine and the other problems of the Middle East. What should we admire more, our leadership’s audacity or its eternal willingness to look foolish?

A few days ago Pakistan’s soldier-president was undertaking a hectic tour of the Middle East. Last sighted, he was in Indonesia and Malaysia, trying to drum up support for something that one news agency (AFP) described as “an Islamic solution to Middle East violence”.

A long time ago at a dinner in Chairman Mao’s honour at the French embassy in Beijing (then Peking), the French ambassador spoke of ‘France’s role in Asia’ (this was after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu). Mao quietly interrupted him by saying that France had no role to play in Asia, for good measure adding that many of the artillery gunners at Dien Bien Phu were Chinese. The French ambassador became red in the face but to his credit quickly recovered and spoke of the need to turn a new leaf.

A country up to its gills with problems of its own, after 60 years of independent statehood still unable to decide which political system it should adopt — rule of the people or rule of the general staff? — trying to put on the mantle of Middle Eastern statesmanship. It’s enough to take one’s breath away.

We shouldn’t belittle ourselves but, at the same time, it makes little sense to exaggerate our importance. What credibility do we enjoy in the region? The Saudis and the Egyptians don’t think we are superior to them. Indeed, because of our economic problems we are always kowtowing to the Saudis, sometimes in a manner less than seemly.

As for the ‘radicals’ in the region — Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran — they think we are an American puppet or at least too much under American influence. They don’t take us seriously. And yet Gen Musharraf, whose boldness one must admire, is pushing for an “Islamic solution” to the raging fires in the Middle East.

If this solution is anything like his Kashmir solution — which is pleasing India enormously while confusing and demoralising the Kashmiris — expect Hamas at least to flee and take cover at the first sight of it.

Leaving the rest of the world aside for a moment, do the people of Pakistan take our leadership’s diplomatic posturing seriously? Do they await with bated breath the outcome of the soldier-president’s deft diplomatic moves? If not, and there is little to suggest their bedazzlement, what are we expecting from others?

Musharraf would do his own people and the Islamic world a favour if he could put his own house in order. It’s been more than seven years that he has been in power, a lifetime if we remember the old Harold Wilson line that a week is a long time in politics. If seven days is a long time, what do we say of seven years? More relevantly, what is there to show for them?

Our general finances are better and the economy bigger. But are the fruits of development being shared equally? Does everyone have his finger, big or small, in the national pie? Is wealth spreading or is it being further concentrated in fewer hands? Have public education and public health improved? Is law and order better? Do people feel more secure?

More housing societies for the rich are being created, the lead in this taken by defence housing authorities affiliated to the army. Indeed, defence housing authorities (for officers only, if you please) are proving to be the army’s most dynamic sector, far outstripping in merit and efficiency every other section and arm. But what about the rest of the population?

Do Pakistanis feel confident about themselves and their country’s future? That is the litmus test, the feel-good factor. Are they happy with the way the country is being run, happy with the military’s dominance of politics, the situation in Balochistan and the tribal areas? Do they have any confidence in the present leadership’s ability to handle these crises?

The Yanks are interested in Pakistan not for its culture or its culinary delights but its strategic location. In the Cold War they valued Pakistan as an ally, or a client state, because we were part of their communism containment strategy. When Cold War passions subsided, so did our value in American eyes.

When the Soviets blundered into Afghanistan, we again became important to the US because only from Pakistan could it wage proxy war against the Soviet Union. When the Soviets, defeated, left Afghanistan, the Americans were no longer interested in Afghanistan and no longer interested in us. They had other things to worry about. That was the time, after the signing of the Geneva Accords on Afghanistan, when every last sanction Congress could think of was slapped on Pakistan.

Now thanks to Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ we are once more useful to the Americans. For the services we are rendering, we are being paid, Pakistan today being the third highest recipient of American largesse, after Israel and Egypt.

How long or short this phase lasts is not the issue. We should be candid enough to accept the fact that our only importance as a country which we have been able to trade, peddle or recycle on the international stage over and over again, arises only from an accident of geography. In sixty years of existence what other achievement can we boast of, apart of, course, from making the best footballs in the world? For this the credit goes to Allama Iqbal’s hometown, Sialkot.

There is nothing uplifting about this line of interrogation because it makes us feel small. There should be limits to national masochism and we should take pride in whatever good there is in us. But we should also be honest with ourselves. How many opportunities have we not wasted, how many chances not blown?

We had so many advantages at birth: the trappings of democracy before most other Asian countries had acquired them, functioning institutions, capable administrators, a good enough infra-structure, things that worked, a people awaiting fulfillment and even redemption. But we fell on evil ways and into the clutches of truly mediocre men, the promise of our early years sacrificed at the altar of despotism, both mufti and khaki. There is so much to do at home, Mr President. Palestine will take care of itself. And even if it doesn’t, it won’t be seeking any help from us any time soon. We are a cog in the larger scheme of things and it is to our own problems we should pay the foremost attention. Did you not yourself say, “Pakistan first”? Have you been faithful to your own affirmation? Pakistan is not a Hashemite kingdom carved out of the desert sands by the British (actually Churchill at the Cairo Conference, 1921). It is a fairly large country straddling the crossroads of history which deserves something better than uninterrupted misgovernment and misrule by products of the general staff. Surely, this wasn’t Jinnah’s dream, surely not the shape of things envisioned by Iqbal.

We should be thinking of how best to give Pakistan stability and make it a republic of laws rather than a republic based on individual whim instead of playing at Bismarck in the Middle East, especially when no one has invited us to do so.

Tailpiece: What is the historical legacy that has shaped and influenced Pakistan as we see it today? Young Ilhan Niaz of the Quaid-i-Azam University’s History Department attempts an answer to this question in his very well-written “An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent.” Published by Alhamra, it is worth a read.