The rout of the Taliban and the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance has demolished a few cherished myths and put a sudden circle around Pakistan's importance as a staging post for the American war on Afghanistan.

Far from Afghanistan turning into a Vietnam for the United States, US military strategy there stands resoundingly vindicated. No argument being more powerful than success or victory, the Taliban rout which began from the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif and soon spread to Kabul lays to rest all the doubts raised in the last week or so about the effectiveness of the American approach to the war.

Now of course all the pundits will say that they had seen what was coming. But this would be wisdom after the event. Only a few days ago such a swift Taliban collapse was not anticipated. Nor is this a regrouping or tactical withdrawal for a wider guerilla war. This line in consolation hardly fits the facts on the ground.

The truth is the Taliban have been beaten. The truth also is that the American military doctrine, first crafted during the Gulf War, and much later re-tested in Serbia, has come out on top again. The two key principles of this doctrine are: (1) strike from the air and avoid a ground war - unless of course your enemy has been reduced to pulp; and (2) always choose an enemy who cannot hit back. It's like a heavyweight always choosing featherweight opponents. Not much chance of the heavyweight ever being beaten.

From the application of this doctrine, however, another lesson also flows: featherweights should not go out of their way to pick fights beyond their class. If there is no chivalry in taking out and slamming weak opponents - and then taking credit for one's military prowess - there is no wisdom in quixotic gallantry. Let the next Saddam Hussein, Milosevic or Mulla Omar remember this.

A thought might be spared though for Pakistan's predicament. Having gone out on a limb to support the American war effort, it should have been happy at coming out on the right side of victory. But with the Northern Alliance entering Kabul, thus confirming one of the ISI's worst nightmares, the mood in Islamabad is anything but celebratory.

Overestimating our importance (a weakness to which we are ever prone), we had convinced ourselves that our frontline status gave us a virtual veto over the shape of things to come in Afghanistan. If not that, then at least our objections regarding the Northern Alliance would be respected.

We forgot that the Americans were working to a different deadline. They wanted visible gains on the ground to offset growing criticism that the war was going nowhere. If for this they had needed the devil, they would have used him. Now that events have moved too fast for our calculations, and the Taliban have proved less stubborn in resistance than the gathering mythology about their hardihood had led many armchair strategists to believe, Pakistan is reduced to delivering dire warnings of further strife in Afghanistan.

Let us express our fears by all means. But with no leverage to back up our warnings, we only underline our impotence by crying out loud about something not in our power to change. Indeed our petulance on this score makes it appear as if it is we who have been defeated rather than the Taliban.

At the root of our distress lies our strange obsession with Afghanistan. For full 20 years we have meddled in its affairs in pursuit of the elusive dream of 'strategic depth' and a permanently friendly regime in that country. The turnaround in our Afghan policy forced upon us by the events of September 11 should have cured us of this delusion. But as the anguished hand-wringing in Islamabad clearly shows, old habits die hard.

Why don't we leave Afghanistan alone? Geography dictated Pakistan's importance for the US attacks on Afghanistan. Geography dictates a working relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, no matter what regime - communist, Taliban, Tajik or Hazara - holds sway there. Why shouldn't we be content with this? Why should we insist on playing the role of king-maker in a land which has made nonsense of all our attempts at dictation?

After September 11 many Americans asked why the US was so hated in parts of the Muslim world. We should ask ourselves why we have come to be so hated by the Afghans. Too much interference is not a good thing.

We need to get our thinking right on a whole range of issues. We magnified the importance of our role in Afghanistan in the 1980s and there is a danger we may have done so again. We were vital for the Americans from the moment preparations for a strike on Afghanistan began until the moment Kabul fell on November 13 - two heady months during which Pakistan was the centre of global attention and General Musharraf the most sought-after leader in the world.

But with the military situation having dramatically changed, Pakistan's importance as a front-line state has also rapidly altered. Our airspace and bases were crucial before November 13. Now the Americans have a whole range of other options.

Whether we played our cards as deftly as we might have is now a lost debate. It is worth recalling, however, that Hosni Mubarak of Egypt got loans worth 9 billion dollars written off during the Gulf war. We have got much less for our pains. In the days and months ahead we will have plenty of time to judge whether by showing more resolve we could have struck a better deal.

But this is water under the bridge. We will not get the dollars we imagined or secure the debt write-offs we thought would lighten our economic burden. Even so, other, and perhaps more important, opportunities beckon whose existence only blind foolishness can ignore.

For 20 years - that is, since Ziaul Haq's time - Pakistan has been in the grip of state fundamentalism: a mindset manifested in (1) our pursuit of nuclear status; (2) our obsession with Afghanistan; and (3) our attitude to Kashmir. At the altar of these sacred shibboleths all other aspects of national life, including democracy and sound economics, have been sacrificed.

It is instructive to recall that when justifying Pakistan's joining the US war effort, among the four reasons General Musharraf cited, two related to protecting the Kashmir cause and our 'nuclear assets', the irony no doubt being lost on him that supposedly our greatest strength had turned in a moment of danger into our biggest weakness.

At long last we have a chance to give Pakistan a new direction so that it looks ahead instead of back. We have a chance to cure the Pakistani state of its delusions of persecution and grandeur. The world is not out to get us (persecution). Nor are we a fortress of Islam destined to fulfil messianic dreams (grandeur).

This does not mean we resile from our stand on Kashmir. But we must recognize that after Afghanistan the freedom struggle in Kashmir is bound to come under greater American scrutiny. In the new global climate now forming there will be less patience for such extra-territorial organizations as Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad.

We do not even have the courage of Lebanon - a country one fortieth our size - which has firmly told the US that there is no question of blocking the funds of Hezbollah and Amal because both are engaged in a legitimate resistance struggle. So how best to support the Kashmir cause? By letting the Kashmiris carry on their own struggle or by raising the flag of militancy within Pakistan? Sooner rather that later we will have to answer this question.

But let's not kid ourselves. Pakistan will not change direction unless the army redefines its national role. If it insists on the driver's seat, and if every now and then half-baked nostrums of reform are thrust down the nation's throat, Pakistan will know neither stability nor progress. Our last Afghan involvement forged an alliance between the army and the most reactionary sections of Pakistani society. Out of the chaos and confusion of the present involvement must arise a new partnership between the army and democracy if we are to say we have gained anything from this experience.

But if General Musharraf, on whose shoulders so much rests, sticks to that doctored version of democracy a glimpse of which he provided to NBC TV - 'that elections will be held but I will remain president' - then the question arises whether Pakistan is at all capable of learning from its mistakes.