IT IS hard to figure out which is worse: the conspiracy of silence or the conspiracy of stupidity which holds sway over this country.

Take Kargil, now no longer just the name of a region in the Himalayas but a synonym for national humiliation. While it was a product of stupidity, its authors are being protected by the rules of silence, which are always observed when self-inflicted disasters hit Pakistan.

It is hardly a secret any more that at a briefing in late October/early November last year various options for pepping up the freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir were presented by the top army leadership to the prime minister. Amongst these options was a proposal to exploit a wide gap which existed in the Indian defence line in the Kargil sector.

There was nothing new about this idea. As part of the army's contingency planning (it being the business of armies to plan for the future), it had been on the cards since the mid-eighties. Whatever the justifications advanced for this particular option (one of these being that inactivity on our part could encourage India to do another Siachen on us), the long and the short of it is that it was broadly accepted, the prime minister giving his concurrence to it. Had he not done so this plan would have been stillborn.

Arguably, the top army leadership (and in this context the adjective 'top' is of special significance) should have proposed nothing of the kind. The army has always fancied itself as the conscience and brains of the nation. Conscience, fine, but where were its brains when a forward thrust in Kargil was being outlined for the prime minister's benefit? This was the top army leadership's blunder, compounded, of course, by the circumstance that most of the formation commanders were kept in the dark. At the time they had no inkling of what was about to be done in the army's name.

As for the Prime Minister, not only did he hear the scheme out and approve it, he went a step further and, ever a man in a hurry, said its time-frame should be compressed. It has been suggested in the Prime Minister's defence that he did not fully understand the implications of what was being discussed. Perhaps but then he has no business being where he is.

There was no discussion of the Kargil forward movement in the DCC. Even the other service chiefs were not consulted. In other words, while a war tattoo, with all the potential of escalating, was being contemplated, there was a total absence of institutional consultation. In other words, a near-repeat of 1965. Which shows the respect Pakistani leaders have for the lessons of history.

To be fair to the top army leadership, the Vajpayee visit confused it. This visit and the preparations in hand for Kargil were at odds with each other. When this oddity was pointed out (to the quarters concerned), the answer in effect was: you do your work while I do mine. Thus was the route charted for the nation's greatest humiliation since General Niazi's surrender before the victorious Indian army in 1971.

In any other country after such a mess a guillotine would have been erected and heads would have rolled. After the breakthrough of the German army in France in 1940 Chamberlain found it impossible to continue as Prime Minister of Britain. He had to make way for Churchill. After the Suez crisis of 1956 Anthony Eden had to step down as prime minister. He had to accept responsibility for the debacle.

Pakistan obviously is a different country. Its leaders think they can get away with murder. No wonder both the civilian and military architects of our Suez seem little concerned about national humiliation. What they are looking out for is their survival. A tempest might be howling about their ears but they are hoping that, somehow, they will be able to ride out the storm.

Survival of course is a great political imperative and there is nothing wrong with wanting it, especially in a dump like ours where power is everything and the wilderness full of nameless terrors. But two things should be clear.

First, after such a disaster its twin architects have forfeited their respective mandates. To their titular authority they may cling on but their moral right to continue in their respective offices lies buried in the snows of Kargil.

Second, Pakistan will know no peace unless the specter of Kargil is exorcized from its mind. Obsessed with survival, the government will be looking over its shoulder all the time and as a consequence unable to think or look ahead. The country will remain rooted to the same spot. The top army leadership too will be in a similar predicament, its effectiveness undermined by its uneasy conscience. The people of Pakistan may be guilty of many things but they don't deserve this.

But how is this specter to be exorcized? The fates which rule our destiny are unlikely to be propitiated except by an offering of blood. In plain words this means that those responsible for this disaster must not only read the writing on the wall. They must also take a page out of history and look hard at the examples of Chamberlain and Eden.

Just before Chamberlain's fall, Leo Amery, a senior MP, borrowed these words from Oliver Cromwell to make his case for Chamberlain's departure: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go." The National Assembly is not the House of Commons and in the dumb and silent ranks of the Muslim League there are no Leo Amerys. Even so, Cromwell's words fit the situation we face. Those responsible for the Kargil fiasco should go. This is the least favour they can do the nation.

But there is an important caveat. Since the responsibility for this fiasco is two-fold, both the cooks of this broth should go. No scape-goating and no passing the buck. Either a two-fold cure or none at all. Half a solution will set nothing right and will only prolong the country's distress.

But there is a serious problem. Who will induce the twin architects of Kargil to follow the Roman example and fall on their swords?

Pakistan's affairs are out of order. The old system of checks and balances has collapsed. Parliament has abdicated its authority to the prime minister who in turn is guided in his decisions by a small and secretive group of advisers. The overriding aim of government is not what may loosely be defined as the national interest but the greater glory of a single family. In such a Byzantine circumstance accountability becomes an alien concept.

It is a barometer of our self-respect that leading Pakistani politicians are swept by gratitude, and a sense of their importance, if they can get someone to see them at the State Department. It is a measure of our pathetic condition that Washington should be telling us from the house-tops how to conduct our affairs: warning the army to desist from extra-constitutional actions; advising the government to respect democratic liberties. Even a banana republic would consider such public lecturing crude and excessive. But then we are hardly in a position to complain. This is what in our pitiable condition we have brought on ourselves.