Is anything like dignity or self-respect left in a country we insist on calling the Islamic Republic?
Self-respecting nations don't allow their scientists, atomic or mechanical, to be humiliated at the behest of foreign powers.
News reports, yet to be denied, suggest that during the cloak-and-dagger arrests of two leading nuclear scientists attached to the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), Engineer Muhammad Farooq and Yasin Chauhan, accompanying the nabbing party were two American lookalikes - urging "hurry up, hurry up".
Which gives you an idea of national sovereignty after we became willing recruits in what began as George Bush's war on terrorism but is now his war against only God knows what or whom.
Granted we've been toeing America's line ever since, even going to the extent of handing over jurisdiction in some domestic areas to American agencies (CIA/FBI). But the latest to transpire is serious business, KRL lying at the heart of our nuclear programme.
While always a beggar nation, we clung to the belief that our nuclear programme was one area of national life beyond external pressure. But with our scientists no longer sure of their personal safety, this belief now enters the realm of fiction.
Ah, but the arrested scientists need to be questioned, we are told. That may be so but why pick them up in this manner? Surely there are other ways of asking questions.
Bringing the focus of suspicion on our scientists implicates not just them but the nation itself because, given the tight security under which our nuclear regime operates, no scientist can have any links with North Korea, Iran or the devil himself without official clearance.
In any case, anything connected with our nuclear programme is for us to deal with. The Americans should have nothing to do with it. Give them some latitude and we won't know where to stop. God knows we've done enough for them already. What more do they want?
Dr Mahathir (will Pakistan ever have a leader like him?) was not being anti-Semitic when he said the Jews were a thinking people and had survived by using their brains. This was the highest compliment anyone could have paid the Jewish nation. Mahathir's conclusion was that Muslims should be like the Jews: able to think rather than to be victims of blind anger.
Well, the Jewish nation has developed a sophisticated nuclear programme without allowing anyone, not even the US, to have a peek into it. During Eisenhower's time (or was it Kennedy's?) the Americans, alarmed by reports that Israel was developing nuclear weapons, insisted on inspecting Israeli nuclear installations. Guess what the Israelis did. They fabricated an entire nuclear facility just to fool the Americans. The Americans went back satisfied because they saw nothing sinister.
And what did the Israelis do to Mordechai Vanunu who blew the whistle on their nuclear programme? Through a girl (who else?) they enticed him from London to Rome from where he was kidnapped and brought to Israel. He's been locked up ever since. That's the Israeli concept of national security.
Compare this to the emotionalism and chest-beating accompanying our attempts to make the bomb. The only thing we didn't do was make the bomb in the open.
Anyway, having acquired a nuclear capability, what on earth is it for, to make us less or more dependent? If this is the price to pay for remaining in America's good books, we might as well exchange our bombs for what money we can get.
A strange nation we have become, devoid of balance and equilibrium, forever swinging from one extreme to the other. Raising the banner of jihad and defying world opinion by supporting the Taliban. Then swinging to the other extreme and becoming a banana republic.
Nor is this all. To please the Americans we vow to exterminate religious extremism. At the same time, Gen Musharraf woos the very forces, in the form of the Muttahida Majis-i-Amal (MMA), whose fundamentalist thinking is a threat to the concept of a modern Pakistan.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed's Jamaat-i-Islami and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman's Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, the leading components of the MMA, were both opposed to the creation of Pakistan. Today, thanks to Musharraf's dalliance with them, for the first time in Pakistan's history they are turning into serious claimants of political power.
General Zia isn't around but Pakistan still lives with the poisoned fruits of his policies. Just as it will have to live with what grows out of the dragon's teeth Gen Musharraf is now sowing.
Why is he doing this? For no purpose higher than self-preservation. In the compromise now being worked out, Musharraf and his LFO will receive clerical benediction while the mullahs have an easier time of it in the Frontier and Balochistan, the two provinces they dominate.
A see-saw approach is also evident in relations with India. Musharraf, recall, gave us Kargil, the mother of all follies. When he became ruler of Pakistan his tone towards India was tough, a bit too tough as many people thought. Now the same person is bending over backwards to please India.
If there was no sense in Kargil and jihad, there's little dignity, and no wisdom, in Pakistan's present course. In response to Indian proposals for easing travel restrictions, etc, the Pakistan foreign secretary says one thing. Everything is on track and the Indians aren't miffed. Then out of the blue, the Pakistan prime minister takes a slightly different line. He even offers a unilateral ceasefire along the Line of Control. A great idea but pegged to what overture from India? As far as anyone can make out, none.
Pakistan takes a certain stand on over-flights, seeking guarantees against a unilateral cut-off, not an unreasonable demand, given India's unilateral banning of over-flights twice in the past, 1970 and 2001. Right when a Pakistani team is in Delhi for talks on the issue, Gen Musharraf does an aboutturn and announces an unconditional acceptance of over-flights.
This just a day before elections in four Indian states, in which the BJP makes a strong showing. Mr Vajpayee's claim to statesmanship rests in part on his 'peace policy' towards Pakistan. Here, right on the eve of a crucial poll, Pakistan's ruler sends a signal which can only benefit, not harm, the BJP.
Asked about reports that India was accelerating work on fencing the Working Boundary (between Sialkot and Jammu) and the Line of Control, Gen Musharraf's response is dismissive. He says the fence was five kilometers inside Indian Kashmir and not visible from the Pakistani side. Even then, Pakistan had protested.
A few days later, driven by second thoughts, Pakistan's response gets louder and angrier. We now say the fencing constitutes a violation of international treaties. People in Pakistan, however, note that with the guns silent along the LoC, there is nothing that Pakistan can do to deter India from going ahead with the fencing.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jamali, away on another of his meaningless foreign visits (which country takes him seriously as an interlocutor?), calls the Indian prime minister from Paris to thank him for agreeing to come to Pakistan for the Saarc summit. For good measure he adds that Pakistan is waiting to welcome him.
What is going on? Peace with India, yes, but why these gymnastic feats to please India? Who appreciates unilateral concessions? Who doesn't read them as signs of weakness?
Even nations vanquished in war try to take a tough stand at the negotiating table. We were defeated in 1971 yet Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to his lasting honour, did not sell national dignity at Shimla. Thirty odd years later Pakistan is like a monkey swinging from one high branch to another: now caught in the throes of jihad, now for no rhyme or reason giving a new twist to appeasement.
Poor Nawaz Sharif eking out a royal exile in the Holy Land. His approach towards India had more dignity to it than the blow hot, blow cold policy we've seen over the last four years.