Nation caught in the middle of a global struggle

Pakistan

Maulvi Gowher Rachman, the spiritual leader of a madrassa, or Islamic seminary, less than an hour's drive from Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, tucked his legs up on the big bed, stroked his straggling grey beard and pursed his lips pensively. "President Musharraf only said that he will co-operate against terrorists," he said. "Islam is against terrorism. He did not say he would co-operate with America against Afghanistan. He also did not say that he would allow America to use Pakistan's airspace ..."

Whenever a Pakistani opens his mouth in these strange days to discuss what Pakistan can or should do, he seems to find himself walking a verbal tightrope. The Maulvi of the madrassa in North West Frontier Province ­ whose students had just locked in a room on her own the American female photographer I was attempting to work with, to prevent her outraging their modesty ­ was no different.

Each step along the rope is a challenge. The attacks on America were bad ­ "Islam is against attacks on civilians ... I strongly condemn the attacks on New York and Washington. Islam allows jihad, holy war, when it is imposed on them on the battlefield. But not like this. It's not a good act."

That's step one. Then step two: "Afghanistan is not involved in this attack. And if America carries out attacks on Afghanistan, it will be a great cruelty." And step three: "Osama is innocent. He is innocent because he is a good Muslim who first fought against the Russians."

Step four: "America has no evidence against Osama. If evidence is found against him he should be tried in an Islamic court in Afghanistan." And so the end of the tightrope is reached, the circle is squared, and the Maulvi steps gratefully to safety.

All is well in this cloistered, bearded, unisexual bit of the world, where all you need to know is the Koran by heart, and to surrender yourself to the will of Allah.

But of course all is not well: at the end of Pakistan's tightrope now is a yawning void. Yesterday, foreign businessmen continued to fly home on one-way tickets, while foreign journalists came the other way, cramming the capital's hotels to overspill. Speculation began to take on a tinge of panic. If Pakistan gives America permission to use its airspace, what of the danger to Pakistan's secret nuclear installations? And if they were to fail to co-operate, would not that danger be perhaps even more tangible?

Thousands of Afghans who have heard ­ through the grapevine ­ of impending attacks, crowd the Pakistan border and are desperate to escape. Pakistan's guards have officially closed the frontier but it is a porous line of resistance and the mountains provide easy cover for the determined

The Taliban, meanwhile, threatens to attack any country that aids America, and while such an attack would not be on a scale to menace the Pakistani state, it could set the border ablaze. And the reactions of the Taliban's spiritual kinsmen across Pakistan (such as Maulve Rachman and his disciples) is entirely predictable. The only thing that can be said with confidence is that, for Pakistan to be seen once again in the pocket of "infidel" America will test their somewhat shallow reserves of patience to the utmost.

General Musharraf, who was preparing to deliver a speech to the nation last night after a day of meetings with political, military and religious figures, knows that many of Pakistan's 140 million people are adamantly opposed to helping the United States.

The hardline Islamic parties that openly back the Taliban, and have helped to supply cannon fodder for military offensives since their emergence from Pakistani madrassa in 1994, now openly warn of the internal unrest that helping an American onslaught on Afghanistan will trigger.

The jihadis might even go so far as to heed the words of the former army general Mirza Aslam Beg. "Pakistan cannot afford to allow the US to use its facilities for attack on Kabul," he said. "If the government took such a step, the nation would reject it and rise up against it."

An anti-American demonstration in central Islamabad yesterday of several hundred Islamic conservatives gave a foretaste of what may be to come. At the back of many people's thoughts is the memory of what happened on the previous occasions that Pakistan was persuaded to co-operate with America.

General Beg said: "Pakistan had extended the fullest co-operation to the US against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But the day the USSR pulled out, the US turned its back both on Pakistan and Afghanistan ... Pakistan stood on the side of the US during the Gulf War, but the result was no different."

Scepticism about joining a US-led war is not confined just to the jihadis: many trace the fact that the country is awash with guns and drugs and blighted with sectarian killings to its role as the base for the decade-long war against the Soviets.

But through the smoke of anxiety and resentment that shrouds Pakistan today, occasionally a clear beam of light penetrates. Why, asked Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, writing in the daily newspaper Dawn yesterday, does Pakistan find itself shackled to the universally execrated Taliban?

"Since independence, Pakistan has had an Afghan headache," he wrote. "The invasion by the Soviet Union and the American-backed jihad had only one meaning for us: a Soviet retreat must be followed by a friendly government [in Kabul] ... After all, having a friendly government in Kabul is all that motivated the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] into its Afghan misadventure."

Like the British Raj that preceded it, Pakistan's abiding worry is unrest on the Afghan border, where no Afghan regime in history has agreed on the official demarcation between the two nations.

The Taliban, created, funded and advised by Pakistan, seemed a wily and permanent answer to the problem. But now the answer has blown up in Pakistan's face ­ with consequences no one dares to predict.