MANY Pakistanis will struggle with what to make of the latest statement of the retiring chairman of the US joint chiefs, Adm Mike Mullen, before the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mullen, who has often talked about his close relationship with Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani, accused the military and the ISI (institutions that his 'friend' heads) of supporting assaults on the US embassy in Kabul and other specific targets of import to the US there.

These were ominous words. A country's embassy is internationally acknowledged as the 'soil' of that country. So, can we interpret Adm Mullen's statement to mean that Pakistan's government and the military should now prepare for the consequences of supporting an attack on the US?

The Mullen statement also said: “In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan — and most especially the Pakistani Army and ISI — jeopardises not only the prospect of our strategic partnership, but also Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence.”

So is this the end of Pakistan's 'strategic partnership' with the United States? More ominously are the two countries now heading towards some sort of a military confrontation over the alleged sanctuaries of the Haqqani network in North Waziristan?

Well, we don't have to speculate. Towards the end of the same statement Adm Mullen also said no matter how flawed or difficult the relationship with the Pakistani military, it was better than no relationship and that the military cooperation and the flow of information across the border was improving.

Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta spoke in terms of (still merely) putting pressure on Pakistan to deal with 'militant sanctuaries' along eastern Afghanistan but chose his words carefully when asked if Pakistanis understood what could happen if they didn't act: yes, they won't be surprised with actions we might/might not take.

Clearly, these remarks were an indication of the growing US frustration at the frequent breakdown of security in Afghanistan as President Obama appears in no mood to alter his troop drawdown schedule and is asking his military leaders and commanders to deliver the right conditions for it.

This pressure was telling as both Adm Mullen and Secretary Panetta carefully described the recent Taliban attacks on Kabul targets as 'headline-grabbing' and spectacular rather than really reflecting the overall security situation which, they claimed, was better than the same time last year.

When President Obama announced the troop 'surge' in Afghanistan but also set an 18-month drawdown plan, the former leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown had the most astute reaction in the Times newspaper.

“What the president intended was for audiences in the US and Afghanistan to hear different things. His message to the domestic audience was supposed to be 'troops to be home in 18 months' and to the Taliban '30,000 extra troops'. My worry is that the wrong people got the wrong message….” Perhaps, the 'good' Taliban's backers also got the wrong message.

But before we gleefully start pointing towards these contradictions and start celebrating the Americans' dilemmas in Afghanistan, we need to reflect foremost on our own interests and acknowledge that many of our troubles today can be traced to that country or our ambitions there.

It was the success of the CIA-ISI partnership mainly in arming, indoctrinating and training fanatical fighters that forced the exit of the Red Army from Afghanistan and, as some would argue, even led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The success of the Afghan 'jihad' intoxicated the Pakistani defence establishment and spurred official patronage to jihadi hordes which were deployed to Kashmir to 'slow-bleed' India. They all but destroyed the freedom movement in the valley.

The jihadi fighters were seen by the world as brutal foreign mercenaries, discrediting and diluting the legitimacy of the cause, and alienated the locals by their intolerant, extremist beliefs. The setback to the indigenous Kashmir movement was so severe that it took almost a decade (and nearly a generation) to recover from it.

And now they are running amok at home. Have our great and good commanders learnt any lessons from this? They don't appear to have. Any Pakistani can understand the need for stability on our western border and a friendly Afghan government but we also need to realise the price we have already paid for our obsession with contrived 'strategic depth'.

Had we followed robust, and not roguish, policies to protect our interests perhaps we wouldn't have buckled when threatened with being 'bombed to the Stone Age' by the US. We could have said 'no' as Turkey did ahead of Iraq's invasion when asked by the US to allow use of its soil for opening a second front.

Even now, if the US and its allies were to abandon Afghanistan totally in another three years and withdraw all their forces, should we support zealot hordes which force their way to power and do as they did when last in control or back a different, possibly elected, set-up or, better still, leave who governs Afghanistan to the Afghans?

Our military planners and jihadi 'handlers' are known to privately argue that with foreign forces gone from Afghanistan, the Afghan militants will head/stay home and be sympathetic to Islamabad. But these planners have been so wrong on so many counts in the past.

What if having 'defeated two superpowers' and restoring the Islamic Emirate at home, the Afghan militant inspires and supports a jihad for a similar set-up here. Wouldn't our quest for strategic depth turn tragically into a complete strategic disaster if it hasn't already?

An improbable scenario, you may argue, as we speak. But let me ask you if you believe it to be impossible too.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn .

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com