Across the globe, and now hesitantly even in the United States, doubts are rising about the morality and sense of America's war on Afghanistan. Yet Pakistan's military government is living in a world of its own. Having committed the country to a course whose only virtue was expediency, it is trying to convince itself and the nation that signing up for a leading role in an enterprise detested throughout the Muslim world has been the best thing Pakistan ever did.
No other country in the world has offered its services so readily, or as completely, to the US as Pakistan. Even America's closest allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have withheld the kind of support expected of them. We are alone in this - with only that other great democracy, Uzbekistan, for company.
Is this a war against terror? Had this been so it should have begun from the Palestinian occupied territories where for 50 years Israel has been practising the worst kind of terror with the full support and understanding of the United States. Stripped of the self-righteous rhetoric which covers it, this is a war of blind vengeance but one which is already going astray because of the commanding fallacy on which it was based: that unable to withstand the knockout effect of air power, the Taliban would collapse in a matter of days.
To the growing discomfiture of the US and Pakistan this is not happening. With little on their side except spirit and determination, the Taliban are absorbing punishment but not giving up. The concern is beginning to show on American faces. Some reluctant admissions have also been made about the doggedness of Taliban resistance. As for Pakistan, the opinion expressed initially by its chief strategist, General Musharraf, that the days of the Taliban were numbered, may yet come to haunt him.
Why did we hasten to assume the role of bag-carrier? The argument advanced, almost as if it was self-evident, that we had little choice and that it was a question of choosing between national survival and national destruction is patently false. How was our national survival on the line? It took the US nearly three weeks of preparation before launching air strikes on Afghanistan. We succumbed and offered everything the Americans were demanding after a few angry statements from Bush and a mere phone call from Colin Powell, a day or two after September 11.
If we had asked for time to weigh the pros and cons and to consult friends would that have meant inviting US anger and getting our nuclear facilities flattened? Prudence and caution are good things but capitulation has a different ring to it.
Surely a strange nation which in so many things has pursued self-defeating policies and closed its eyes to real dangers but which succumbs at the first threat of an imaginary danger. The name given to this vacillation of spirit is "national interest" (without the definite article, please note) - "national interest" being the new name for short-sighted expediency in Pakistan.
What crimes in our history have been committed at the altar of the national interest, what follies not consecrated in its name. But what Pakistan is now doing takes the prize. In helping the US carry out its strikes on Afghanistan, our hands are also now covered in Afghan and Muslim blood. Why blame the Americans alone? We are accessories before and after the fact. No amount of references to the national interest will wash these stains away in a hurry.
The oft-repeated charge that we helped create the Taliban is disproved by this very fact. A nation as weak in spirit as ours could never have created a force with the resolve and fortitude of the Taliban. The Taliban are a product of the lawlessness which engulfed Afghanistan after the fall of Najibullah. We merely helped them along. Our government could not withstand the threat implicit in a phone call. How can we lay claim to a movement defying the fury of the mightiest military force in the world?
To be sure, inviting destruction is no sign of wisdom. So it is possible to fault the Taliban for their foolhardiness. But this is not the whole truth. Even in the US it is now being admitted that in various ways the Taliban had signalled their readiness to be flexible on the question of Osama bin Laden. The Americans were just too angry, or too arrogant, to read those signals or give them the importance they deserved. The Taliban were left with no option. They could either have let their noses be rubbed in the dust, which is what accepting American demands would have amounted to, or stood up to American threats.
That they chose the honourable course, if also the more difficult one, is a tribute to their spirit. Far from demoralizing them, American bombing has only strengthened their resolve while we have been left to cite the Treaty of Hudaybia - in which the Prophet, on whom be peace, made peace with the infidels of Makkah.
Whenever a Muslim ruler embarks upon the path of compromise he remembers nothing else from the entire pantheon of Islam except the Treaty of Hudaybia. That treaty gave the Prophet a respite during which he was able to gather his strength before setting out for the final conquest of Makkah. For which conquest of Makkah is the Musharraf government conserving Pakistan's strength?
While the government congratulates itself for the fictional advantages of selling the country to the US, it is oblivious to the real dangers whose seeds are being scattered across Pakistan's soil. What amount of aid can compensate Pakistan for the hordes of helpless Afghan refugees being driven across its borders? What can make up for the fissures opening up within Pakistan as a result of the Afghan war? The government is isolated but secure because it has the army behind it. The majority of Pakistanis are unhappy with their government but helpless to change its direction. This is a recipe for frustration and anger. And a dangerous erosion of national self-confidence.
For the first time in Pakistan's history the religious parties are reflecting public opinion while the so-called mainstream parties are content to waddle in the government's shadow, dutifully chanting the mantra that Pakistan had no choice but to side with the United States. The bankruptcy of Pakistani politics is thus complete, with the only two relevant factors being the government and the religious parties. The PPP and the various rumps of the Muslim League still command the popular vote but no longer command popular passion or anger.
Which Churchill will say this was Pakistan's finest hour? But while on the subject, let another delusion be nailed to the mast. A lot of Pakistanis - including, to my lasting shame, myself - took it for granted that the Taliban were exerting a reactionary influence on Pakistan. From this premise it was a small step to the conclusion that it was right to leave the Taliban in the lurch, and perhaps to their fate, as it served them right and this was also in Pakistan's best interests. Blind prejudice is no aid to clarity. Although there was a cross-border effect of Taliban rule on the two border provinces of the Frontier and Balochistan, the Taliban were not exporting their austere revolution to us. It is we who were imposing our patronage on them in the pursuit of such chimeras as strategic depth.
Our problems are our own and not because of the Taliban. The corruption and lack of direction which characterize our national life are not faults we can lay at somebody else's door. If the Taliban had not existed we would still have been lost in the woods, the ISI would still have meddled in politics. Now that we are rid of supporting the Taliban the walls of which shining kingdom will we raise in Pakistan?
In Iqbal's philosophy the bedrock of individual assertion and collective greatness is self-respect (a loose translation of his central concept of 'khudi'). With that lost, what is a nation left with? We have entered into a Faustian pact with the United States, handing over not just our air bases for use against the helpless people of Afghanistan but also the tattered remnants of our national pride. What can we possibly get in return for this?