A strange confusion besets the official Pakistani mind. It is comfortable and at home either with extremism and belligerence or with abject and total surrender. The middle path somehow seems alien to its genius.
One moment we are godfathers to the Taliban and sticking to their side despite the world's protestations. A more vivid example of extremism would be hard to imagine. The next moment we are grovelling before the Americans and only too pleased to accept whatever they are offering: another name for capitulation.
To both extremes we are driven by fallacious reasoning, if at all lurching to and fro and galloping in the dark can be dignified by the title of reasoning. We prop up the Taliban, and for 20 years mess around with the Afghans, thinking that a friendly Afghanistan gives us 'strategic depth' and leaves us free to deal with India. When the earth moves and things change, we swing to the other extreme. Convincing ourselves that if our surrender is delayed by even a few days it would mean ruin for us and our precious nuclear 'assets', the supposed guarantors of our invincibility, we prostrate ourselves before the Americans.
Between the irrationalism of the first position and the cravenness of the second we fail to find any middle ground.
In both cases the demon lurking in the background is India. Strategic depth in relation to what? India. What is the unspoken fear behind the pressing of panic buttons after September 11? The thought that if we don't provide bases to the US military, India would, thus leaving us out in the cold. This is the nightmare scaring our military custodians: an Indo-American pincer squeezing Pakistan.
The same black/white dialectic informs our response to the Iraq crisis. Does Pakistan have a duty to speak up against America's war plans? Should its people question the morality and logic being deployed by the war party? Or should they remain silent out of fear of upsetting the Americans?
The question is not one of slamming the door shut on our American relationship. No one in Pakistan is talking in these terms, not even the mullahs tasting their first sip of political glory in 55 years. Opposition to a particular policy need not automatically mean general animosity. Germany and France are questioning the wisdom of the war frenzy being whipped up by the Bush administration. They are not recalling ambassadors from Washington. When the dust settles, frayed tempers will cool and calmer judgment will come to prevail.
The millions in the West who have marched and demonstrated against war on Iraq are anti-war, not anti-American. And they are certainly not pro-Saddam. Why should Pakistanis see themselves differently? False and self-serving arguments are being deployed to justify a war which makes sense to no one except to such ideologues of war at the heart of the Bush presidency as Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz who was writing about the necessity of a war against Iraq much before September 11. (The literature on this theme is fairly extensive.) To the extent that anyone can, should we be opposing these plans or not?
If nothing else, war on Iraq will shake up the entire region. It's hard to tell what precisely this may entail but one thing is for sure. The American presence in this region, already formidable, will immeasurably increase. Do we want this? Is it in our interests? Iran won't like an American protectorate in Iraq. Nor will Saudi Arabia, already leery of long-term trends in American Middle East policy. To echo Maugham: "Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away." It's best if Big Brother stays at a safe distance.
Not to forget another point, if the Americans have a fairly easy time of it in Iraq, Washington is not short of warriors who can be counted on to raise their sights and take in an ever-expanding range of targets. In such a situation it is not too far-fetched to imagine our nuclear capability coming in the firing line as a more credible example of 'weapons of mass destruction' than anything in Saddam's armoury. The ancients cautioned against Greeks bearing gifts. We can do worse than to beware of Americans liberating Iraq. We've already seen Afghanistan being made safe for democracy. Do we want any more Karzais?
Was it not Lincoln who said that to keep silent when they should protest makes cowards out of men? Thanks in part to our rulers and in part to the climate and soil of the subcontinent, we have not learnt the habit of judicious protest (judicious as opposed to mindless shouting and stone-throwing). This is one reason for our poor performance as democrats. The culture of dissent or of upholding alternative points of view is not deeply rooted in our societies.
Pakistan can still claim some history of pluralism, thanks to our colonial legacy rather than anything else. But most other Muslim countries cannot even claim this much. Across their parched landscapes the wind blows only in one direction. In such arid climates it is hard to nurture any culture of protest.
Dispirited masses, shaking governments, a collection of zeros helpless before the coming storm. Had the Bush administration planned a similar adventure in Latin America, it would have faced stiffer resistance. But the Middle East and states on its periphery constitute an easy punching bag. The resistance to war is coming from Europeans and other anti-war westerners, none from the inhabitants of the arc of crisis where any war and its consequences are likely to be played out.
Pakistan's condition is best captured by the performance of its cricket team. No, not so much by the team as by its management over the last three years--that is, since General Musharraf's arrival on the scene. Cricket was among the sectors of national life which the army set out to reform and raise to new heights of glory, the spirit in which a serving corps commander was made supremo of cricket affairs. After three years of his stewardship Pakistani cricket has sunk to perhaps its lowest depths ever.
Had this been a one-off affair it wouldn't have mattered. But in our case cricket is an extended metaphor for the national condition. From Wapda to national politics, everything the army touched has shared a fate not vastly different from that of our cricket team.
It's not simply a question of dictatorship vs. democracy. Dictatorships can be brutally effective in channelling national resources and making the trains run on time. Look at North Korea. For all the privations of its population, at least it has an army the US is afraid to grapple with.
Authoritarianism in East Asia--South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and even Malaysia where Mahathir is more an authority figure than a democrat--has delivered economic success. Dictatorships have also been known to excel at sports. What are the fruits of Pakistani dictatorship? What wonders can it claim to have delivered?
As the demoralization of the cricket team makes all too clear, the foremost national problem is not the less than lustrous image of the Jamali government or the depressed state of the national economy.
It is national dejection, the circumstance that there's no spring in the national step, no hint of healthy mischief in the national eye. Gone are the foolishly heady days greeting the Musharraf takeover. Liverish and bilious, the national condition today stands in dire need of an uplifting tonic.
But expect nothing of the sort from the medicine men now running (running?) the country. Their ministrations, if anything, have only made things worse.
Today these medicine men who set out to heal the country are very much part of the problem. Man to man, the custodians of national destiny look more out of sorts than the national cricket team. In the matter of the cricket team, the nation has the choice to switch off its television sets. What choice in the matter of the custodians?