Pakistan is predominantly Muslim, but the Muslim rule for a thousand years in the region did little to change or dilute our collective shadiness. The British rule, followed by rising Indian military power, seems to add to our dark national obsession. The maddening clamour has reached a pitch where seemingly well-groomed and well-informed men also tend to be swayed into daydreaming and absurd discourses built around obscure prophecies and fabricated ancient forecasts. These skewed men and the likes of them are the ones thoroughly blindfolded by the triple menace of the fossil-brained mullah, the partisan historian and the dubious writer. They taint the truth, hide facts and whitewash motives. As a result, see the kind of madness, irrationality and inhumanity we have plunged into as a country. Minorities are relentlessly persecuted, Shias, Ahmadis and Christians being slaughtered in the name of religion and vulnerable sections of our society being hounded out and dispossessed. There is hardly a whimper from those in power or from the clergy. Yet our pious conceit and self-righteous arrogance is boundless. We are told that we are the fortress of Islam, which none in the Muslim world accepts us as. That Pakistan is the leader of the Muslim ummah is a concept never conceded by any country in the Islamic world as it lacks historical evidence and necessary voltage. That Afghans are forever indebted to us for hosting them for 30 years and helping them to fight their war of resistance is the misconception scorned by the Afghans. Mounted knights of the imperial cavalry are never indebted to their horse grooms; they merely pay for services, and that is what we were. That we have a geo-strategic significance and are a nuclear power, whose arsenal and geography are fast becoming a liability and could soon become relatively redundant. Finally, it is drummed into us, mostly from the pulpit, that we create awe in India, which is somewhat amusing and none really cares about it there except for our latest nuisance: the worrisome militancy. All our manufactured national premises seem to be slanted and are coming apart. It has been a deliberately designed, conceptual tragedy of cinematic proportions. As a result, we are still pitiably groping for a national vision and identity even after 65 years of wavering statehood. Nations of the world are distancing themselves from us thinking we are a mischievous, nettlesome and irresponsible crowd, whose nuclear arsenal is considered a potential threat to the world. That we foster militancy and terrorism by choice and are dubious by volition. This is not a very nice view of a nation that wishes to be regarded well. But then we have to first deserve what we demand to be seen as. National power, prestige and esteem are neither found in the IMF vaults nor in the murky world of wishful thinking. Ever noticed how shabbily Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was treated after being officially invited over to visit the US? He was literally shouted out and Pakistan called all sorts of names after his address to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, just before his meeting with President Barack Obama. This is what happens to those who live on the other’s dole and still think they are equals. Shoeshine and the lord master are never equals. After 4,000 soldiers killed, thousands more wounded in chasing terrorists, a tragic loss of 40,000 civilians perished and billions of dollars of property destroyed, those accountant chums from Los Angeles (Robert Lorsch and Ed Royce) in the Foreign Affairs Committee had the audacity to tell the PM that Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban and sends its soldiers to attack US forces across the border and all the stock accusations rattled out ad nauseam. It was a show of moral and mental bankruptcy, one must say. The regret is not as much on the US’s lack of hosting etiquette or their renowned diplomatic scruffiness as on the utter uselessness of our huge and irreparable loss of life, material and face in helping the US to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Also we must realise the horrific insensitivity of the very poor esteem in which Pakistan and its people are held by the policy makers in the US. What a terrible wastage of our national effort and time chasing a worthless mirage of partnership and phantom common interests with the imperious US. But is the US only to blame? Not exactly. We are equally culpable of chronic imbecility, greed and selfishness. We continued to see our ongoing relationship with the US through the blurred prism of our persistent nostalgia. Our unrealistic expectations crashed repeatedly, giving way to astronomical disappointments and national bitterness. Yet we continued to fail to undertake a reality check of the true nature of our mutuality. We never wanted to see that our relations were transactional and not strategic, nor based on any lasting commonality of interests and sublime perceptions. Therefore, we did not really have to cosy up to the US the way we did, and now have had to behave like a luckless mistress just as their global interests pull them away from Pakistan and closer to India and Afghanistan. The way the State Department has thrown our protest on the implications of the killing of Hakeemullah Mehsud, who was a rogue by all counts, on our peace initiative out of the window is how they have always liked to treat our concerns: keep Pakistan on the whistle and discard when disused. What in heavens are we doing to ourselves? The country’s collective drift into oblivion and our suicidal sleepwalk into humanity’s black hole must stop. We have already reached the precipice and are about to tip over. The entire governance structure is shuddering; it is full of holes and corrupt to the core. The state is dissolving. It is ominously collapsing inwards on itself. Our sovereignty has become the butt of jokes and the writ of the government is mostly a farce. Government officials are extremely insecure, and, therefore, invariably shrink from making hard decisions for fear of reprisals. The judiciary set hardened terrorists scot-free on flimsy grounds. Lucrative police stations and immigration posts at international exits are auctioned for huge sums. The police is paralysed by corruption and crippled by bureaucracy and politicians. A huge mass of the common people is at the mercy of the criminal, the terrorist, the sectarian killer and the white collar ripper. Their measly property, daily wages, women and children and personal security are mercilessly violated. There is no respite for them in sight. Things have come to such a sorry pass that a concoction of a country like Afghanistan pushes us around and we take it. A regional leftover like Iran tells us what to do with our border with her and we obey. Pakistanis are caught as illegals in most unlikely locations in the world and then pitied for their abject poverty. The Indian army shells and kills civilians across the working boundary and we merely mew in toothless indignation. This is not how self-respecting nations go about their business of life. We need to put an end to our absurd romance with the putrid past, put some spine in our back, dignity in our posture and show that grit in our pervasive adversity that earn nations respect among their peers. We must become contemporary and not redundant. (Concluded) The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com