Our problems are not unique. Our confusion is in a class of its own. Much as we like to think otherwise, Pakistan was not a manifestation of divine grace. That we are a fortress of Islam is, sadly, a fiction we have lived with for too long.

Although much of the Muslim clergy had opposed Pakistan they seized upon the idea of Muslim separateness to press for the creation of an Islamic republic. As for the secular elites, the more they failed in running the country the more they ran behind the banner of Islam. The mullahs were never an influential power in themselves. Their rise to number one national nuisance owes itself to secular failure. Pakistan’s English-speaking classes have failed it the most.

The one exception to the trend to use Islam for political purposes was Ayub. But he fathered his own folly in the shape of the 1965 war, the single most disruptive influence in our history. In many mysterious ways we have still not recovered from its effects. The India-centricism of our national security fallacies was fixed in stone by that ill-conceived venture.

A visionary leadership could have rescued us from our past. But we were unfortunate in that respect. Bhutto’s ‘democracy’ was almost an invitation to the reactionary backlash which came with the 1977 agitation and Zia’s martial law, the darkest chapter in Pakistan’s history. From the dragon’s teeth sowed then sprouted the monsters of religious extremism and violence which haunt Pakistan today.

We have signally failed in solving our own problems. But we remain obsessed with trying to wield influence in Afghanistan. Our posture towards India lacks clear thinking. We have spread our feet too far apart and, in many things, continue to live in a world of fantasy and make-believe.

Our major problems are self-created. If only we could live and behave like a normal country.