BATTERED and bruised as a result of Kargil, humiliated in Washington, at this juncture in our history the last thing we need is to have the burden of Afghanistan round our neck - a burden weighing Pakistan down for the last 20 years.
Need it be recounted how our ham-handed involvement in Afghanistan has bled us white? Refugees kept not in controlled camps as was done by the Iraniansbut allowed a free run of the country. Kalashnikovs, drugs, a surge in crime and, perhaps most ominously of all, a fillip to fundamentalism: these are the foremost gifts of our Afghan adventure.
It might have been supposed that after reaping such a bitter harvest our ambitions would have been tempered by realism. But, plainly, ordinary rules of prudence do not apply to us. Even the Americans cut their losses in Vietnam and went home. But in pursuing foolish ventures we are mightier than the great powers andcontinue to be stuck in our own little Vietnam, obsessed by half-baked notions of strategic depth, of installing a friendly regime in Afghanistan and opening a pathway to Central Asia.
The effrontery sustaining these bizarre notions is colossal. A military and bureaucratic class which has made a mess ofits own country's affairs, turning a land of promise into a permanentbasket-case, and what to talk of anything else, not even able to manage its cricketing affairs, swept by dreams of Mughal glory.
If only we had the humility to see ourselves as others see us: a drawn sword in one hand, a begging bowl of iron in the other. The world is full of beggars (otherwise the IMF and the World Bank would be out of business) but none more audacious than us. Even as we shout for alms (pleading not being our forte) weremain smitten by a sense of our own importance.
Going nuclear has made things worse. Now our begging is accompanied by the rattling of our atomic sabre. As if the world will be impressed and will think that it is in its own self-enlightened interest to give us a living.
Kargil was the outcome of this world view and this mindset. Weobviously thought amilitary intrusion in the Himalayas would bring India rushing to the negotiating table. The Kashmir issue would be internationalized. We simply refuse to learn anything. Forget history, a difficult subject. We refuse even to learn from our own experience. The 1965 war and the loss of East Pakistan are no more than blurs in our memory.
One reason for this amnesia is the kind of governing class we have. What matters to it if the country suffers? If successive leaderships stoop to folly who carries the burden of this adventurism? The hapless people in their boundless misery.
As for internationalizing Kashmir, it is a phrase which makes you want to reach for your gun. Another victory like Kargil, another triumph like the one Nawaz Sharif secured in Washington, and we could wash our hands of the whole business of Kashmir.
Kargil, however, was not just the expression of a blinkered warrior mentality. It had a strong connection with our Afghan experience, its inspiration coming from the winds of jihad blowing across the scorched landscape of Afghanistan. If the Soviets could be evicted from that tortured country, why not the Indians from Kashmir?
Some of the brilliant military minds who conceived the Kargil operation are old Afghan hands. On the ISI itself Afghanistan has left a lasting imprint, the Soviet retreat from the mountain fastnesses of that country being the ISI's finest hour. It is another matter that the CIA, which along with the Saudis funded the Afghan jihad, has moved on to other fields and other conquests. Pakistan's command centres remain stuck emotionally in the mud of a country which has taken a giant leap backwards into the middle ages.
Nor is Pakistan's obsession with Afghanistan purely of a military nature. The Afghan experience has spawned a whole new culture of conservatism and orthodoxy in Pakistani society. Consequently, we are witnessing a strange blurring of the Durand Line. While the Taliban under Mullah Omar rule most of Afghanistan, their ideological hinterland is in Pakistan, the Sandhurst of Afghan revivalism being the Madrassa Haqqania, Adora Khattak.
Will Pakistan not be touched by this experience? It is already feeling the heat from it. As the so-called mainstream parties retreat, the forces of fundamentalism advance. Their rhetoric is influencing political discourse while outside their training camps the waiting lines are long. On the other side of the divide, the PPP is bankrupt, its leadership tarred by the brush of corruption. The Muslim League government, impaled on the lance of its own ineptitude, is in the process of bankrupting itself. The people are tired - tired of politics, tired of the old slogans, tired of the same old faces.
Is there hope amidst this gloom? There is but it turns upon a slim possibility. Pakistan's military and bureaucratic elites have to sweep the cobwebs from their minds. The warrior mentality must be purged, foolish thoughts of conquest given up. The refrain that with our nuclear toys our defence has become impregnable should be made a cognizable offence. We should learn to look within, to converse with ourselves quietly and with a measure of dignity instead of shouting from the housetops and beating a drum all the time.
None of this will happen as long as Afghanistan keeps tempting the Pakistani bureaucratic spirit to messianic zeal. As long as the Taliban hold sway in Afghanistan, there will be officials in Pakistan spouting obscure theories of strategic depth and of liberating Kashmir by replicating the experience of the Afghan civil war.
Regarding one thing we should be clear. Kashmir is not the albatross around our necks. To its liberation, whether by word or deed, we are committed and the day we forswear this commitment some of our raison d'etre as a nation will be lost. This does not mean we must go to war for its sake. But neither should it mean that we do a Yasser Arafat over its burning remains. The albatross is Afghanistan, which has burdened us cruelly and, worse, has clouded our thinking (or what passes for thinking in this neck of the woods).
To set ourselves free this burden must be cut loose. But if at all this has to be done, we must bring to the task the spring of the tiger. Half-way measures will not do. The sorry business of supporting Afghan factionalism must come to an end once and for all.
Twenty years is a long enough time. What the Afghans do with their country is their business. Let them settle their affairs by themselves as they have done throughout history. If they want the Taliban and mediaevalism, so be it. In any event, it is not for us to play Talleyrands abroad when our own house is in such a mess. If it be objected that we owe a duty to the people of Afghanistan who are our neighbours, we must remind ourselves that the first duty we owe is to ourselves.