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Myth vs reality India has lost the      PR war What if Musharraf falls Is America losing the      war? The road to bin Laden

Time is running out for Musharraf

What was the most earthshaking event of the past seven days? The conflict in Afghanistan? Or the war on and off the pitch in South Africa? I would award the palm to a small American laboratory -- where they succeeded in creating a human embryo by completely artificial means.

The implications, both scientific and ethical, are staggering. I suppose it is now possible to literally make a new man. But these are issues that we shall take months, even years, to absorb.

One man who is desperately involved in the same task is General Pervez Musharraf. Sadly for him, he is less skilful than the American scientists, or, to do him justice, he is working with poorer raw material. His task? To convince the world that there is a newly minted Taleban man!

General Musharraf astonished the world when he spoke of a "moderate Taleban". This was denounced as an oxymoron. Musharraf is too intelligent not to have realised that he was talking nonsense. So why did he do so? Well, mostly because he was desperate to save his own countrymen.

"Moderate Taleban" is actually a euphemism for Pakistanis enrolled in the Taleban. Islamabad has consistently denied the fact that there are any, but the skeletons are now out of the cupboard.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the Pakistani dictator was the darling of the American media. It has not taken long to become disillusioned. The Pakistani leader's concern for the Taleban troops trapped inside Konduz and Kandahar has not been received well. But you cannot blame the Pakistani leadership for being concerned about its own.

United Nations relief organisations have reported the presence of "Urdu-speaking foreigners" amongst the Taleban. Asked how many there were, the answers ranged from 25 per cent to 40 per cent. (Delhi believes that 40 per cent of the Taleban's officers are, or were, Pakistani, and 25 per cent of the troops as a whole.)

I am little surprised that this should have come as a surprise to the Western media. The respected defence journal Jane's has repeatedly written in its newsletter about Pakistan's involvement. However, it is proverbial that there are none so blind as those who shall not see!

Western intelligence agencies were not as clueless about what Pakistan was up to in Afghanistan. Yet they hoped that everything had changed after the attacks on the World Trade Centre. It seems that all that has changed is Musharraf's rhetoric.

The truth is that the Pakistan Army simply cannot afford to give up the Taleban quite so easily. For one thing, Afghanistan represents 'strategic depth' in their view. In turn, Pakistan was the 'supply depot' for the Taleban.

That 'supply depot' supplied more than money and munitions; it was also the source for men. I remember reading an interesting article in the Pakistani newspaper The News. The report said that on one memorable occasion several madarssas across Pakistan postponed the 'final examination' and sent their final year students to Afghanistan to get some 'field experience'! Need one ask what subject was being taught in such schools?

Let us now turn from men to money (the 'sinews of war', as Napoleon described it). Maintaining an army is not a cheap task, even an army as small as that of the Taleban. Intelligence estimates state that it would have taken in the region of US $88 million every month to keep the Taleban equipment and personnel in fighting trim.

Afghanistan, as we all know, was isolated by all its neighbours except one, and its economy was shattered (except for opium sales). Yet it is on record that the Taleban's mercenaries were being paid in American dollars at one point. Where do you think the money came from? (Even if drugs were the major export, Afghanistan required an outlet to the world, did it not?)

Some assumed that all this was history, something that changed after September 11. So what then were Pakistanis doing, battling alongside their Taleban comrades in Konduz and Kandahar and Kabul?

Let us go one step farther (as Western intelligence agencies have already done). Some Pakistanis felt so strongly about the Taleban that they were willing to stay and fight it out rather than retreat to safety. It is no secret that there were a lot of people in the Pakistani government who sympathised with the Taleban. Is there any reason to believe that they have changed their minds any more than their fellow Pakistanis in the Taleban ranks?

Such questions are coming at an uncomfortable time for Islamabad. The more successful the American campaign against Afghanistan, the less the United States needs Pakistan. American troops (British too) are already on Afghan soil. Russia's benevolence means American planes do not need Pakistani airspace as much as they used to. And the sharper attitude is clear in the US Navy's announcement that it intends to quarantine Pakistan, searching ships leaving the country for escapees.

That is a very serious action. It is precisely what was done in the Persian Gulf in August 1990, before the bombardment of Iraq began. And in 1962, just such an action in Cuban waters almost sparked off World War III. No self-respecting nation should tolerate this, but Pakistanis must grin and bear it.

Musharraf knows America is all that stands between him and an assassin's knife. Pakistan's decade-long Afghan policy has failed; a generation of Afghans will never forgive Pakistan. Cooperating with the United States has not paid dividends; the Taleban have collapsed too soon. The last thing he needs is the American public to hear that Pakistanis form the core of the Taleban...

About 25 years separate the first test-tube baby from the first artificial embryo. General Musharraf doesn't have that kind of time -- he must convince the United States that there is a new Taleban, and a new Pakistan, in 25 days or so before television screens fill up with images of captured Pakistanis.

T V R Shenoy