The flaming warriors of the hard right apart, a nation sick and tired of the jihad politics of the last 20 years has welcomed with a sense of subdued relief the correct stance on Afghanistan adopted by Pakistan's present set of generals. It can scarcely be forgotten that the earlier line on Afghanistan, a line whose consequences we are now ruing, was the brainchild of an earlier set of generals.
Never mind that it had to take an international crisis for Pakistan to change course and see the light about the Taliban. There is no point in quarrelling about the means if the end be correct. The Taliban were a millstone round our neck, a drag on our resources, a spreading blot on our name. By itself the military would never have changed course, so strongly was it wedded to the 'strategic-depth' notion of Afghan policy. The skies cannot be praised enough if something, anything, has caused, or rather forced, a change in this absurd thinking. A tragedy for the US, an opportunity for Pakistan. No doubt a callous conclusion but in our case not so remote from the truth.
What remains is for Pakistan to cure itself of the ambition of playing the role of king-maker in Afghanistan. It is in our interest for peace and stability to return to that country so that the millions of refugees now in Pakistan can return to their homeland. But whether warlord, mullah or king rules Afghanistan is none of our business. Importing Afghan problems into our midst, and thereby encouraging the winds of fanaticism and bigotry to blow across the land, is the real threat to Pakistan, not any government in Afghanistan, whatever its colour.
Times have changed even if officialdom in Pakistan has been slow to grasp this fact. A hostile Afghanistan mattered to us when Afghanistan was in the Soviet sphere of influence and many of its external policies were influenced from Moscow. Pakistan in an Indo-Afghan nutcracker with a malevolent Soviet Union in the background was very much a cold war nightmare whose relevance, if at all it had any, was eroded long ago by the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Obviously, these past 20 years we have lived in a different world, chained to a set of shibboleths that only now we are beginning to break.
Even so, the change now being wrought is wrenching in many ways. For one thing, it has not come about as a result of our own thinking but forced on us from outside. For another, the champions of the old strategy are still in place and it will be some time before they fully adjust themselves to the fresh winds of change. The Taliban are not just an entity. They also stand for a way of thinking which in powerful quarters in Pakistan still holds sway. A major removing-the-cobwebs job remains to be accomplished.
It goes to General Musharraf's credit, however, that he can accept new facts and ideas, and fashion his behaviour in their light. A less mentally supple leader could have fallen a martyr to his own rigidity. All the same, to begin with, when he became army chief, his ideology had GHQ stamped all over it: with all the accompanying notions of jihad, Afghan depth and the strategic space provided by our nuclear capability. That these notions have taken a battering during the two years that he has been at the helm is obvious. Under the pressure of events, the old certainty about these central governing concepts has all but disappeared. But General Musharraf has taken these developments in his stride.
At one swoop, a shattering blow has been dealt our Afghan policy. In the rubble of the attacks on New York also lie buried some of the superior notions we had about our nuclear capability. Can it have escaped anyone's notice that what was billed as our greatest strength (our nuclear 'assets') turned within 24 hours of the attack on New York's Twin Towers into the greatest source of our vulnerability, with Pakistan's high priests in panic at the thought of what would happen to our nuclear assets if the US took it into its head to flatten them? Is it not a little curious that all the professors of national security who used to wax so eloquent about our nuclear capability are strangely silent during these troubling times?
Putting the famed Dr Khan out to pasture was a good first. It should be followed by the next logical step of not investing more good money into a venture that has only raised our walls of insecurity instead of lowering them. While the world worries about nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands, some lingering importance still attaches to them. Five years down the line they will be as useless as Russia's rusting nuclear arsenal. If there are any takers for our 'strategic assets' (hilarious phrase) we should sell them while we still can. A write-off of Japanese debt (and the promise of some more money besides) in return for a solemn burial of our nuclear programme should not be a bad bargain.
If India wants to hold fast to its nuclear trinkets, let it. Nuclear weapons are no longer a short-cut to international prestige. As for strategic considerations, India's nuclear weapons are as much based on false premises as are Pakistan's.
Anyway, of the holy trinity of Pakistani national security - Kashmir, Afghanistan, nuclear weapons - all that still remains intact is the notion of jihad in Kashmir. But does anyone seriously think this will remain unaffected by current developments? As it is, the attack on the state assembly in Srinagar has caused more dismay in Pakistan than even perhaps in India because at a time when we are engaged in recasting our steps in Afghanistan, it gives India renewed opportunity to beat Pakistan with the stick of 'cross-border' terrorism. Let us hope that in Kashmir we make the right choices while the initiative is still with us, instead of waiting for the time when choices are forced down our throat, as has happened in the case of our Taliban policy.
At bottom, however, the issue is more internal than external. Joining the international mainstream does not simply mean cutting links with the Taliban and keeping in step with the Americans. There was a time when there was no Taliban, no ISI forward policy in Afghanistan and we were good friends with the Americans. And yet we made a mess of our national affairs, pursuing wrong goals, worshipping false gods, and in thrall to stupid ideas.
The mullah-military nexus came into existence only in the eighties. Before that there was a nexus between the military and the US. What good did that do us? What if after the breaking of the mullah-military nexus - one of the good things to flow from the present developments - we continue to mismanage our internal affairs secure in the knowledge that we now have American support and understanding to fall back upon?
The main issue is putting our house in order and, for that purpose, of returning to institutional rule. Let us bear in mind the circumstance that while there is much about General Musharraf that is personally likable - a genial and easy-going dictator being better than a Franco or Pinochet specimen - he has presided over a dispensation which in almost everything it has attempted at home has struck confusion and failure.
A few items in a long list: a bad economic situation made worse by ill-judged taxation measures, plunging law and order standards, the question of administrative reform and easier provision of justice not addressed at all. Furthermore, the local government initiative carried out in the name of devolution is already a disaster showpiece, sowing confusion at every step and in every district. In foreign policy General Musharraf has shown the right instincts. At home his government's performance has been singularly lack-lustre.
If Pakistan is to profit from the present upturn in its fortunes, two things have to be done. Firstly, the army must define its place in national life and stick to it. It must not spread itself all over the place. Secondly, sooner rather than later, there must be a return to representative rule - minus, I hasten to add, the two cartoons who symbolized democracy during the nineties, Benazir and Nawaz Sharif. The present ad-hocism will only lead to more failures like the devolution plan.
Above all, to get out of the present rut the country needs a broader canvas of governance than the corps commanders conference. Render unto the corps commanders what is theirs, the running of the army. Render unto other pontiffs the day-to-day running of the country.
If, however, all that we get from the present crisis is a strengthened military government, its confidence bolstered by American support and acceptance, the nation will be left wondering what it gained by rejoining the international mainstream. Just as we now wonder what we gained from our Afghan involvement in the eighties.