Some believe that the turbulent nature of Pakistani society and politics makes all prognostication futile. But one can make reasoned guesses for Pakistan's possible trajectories over the next decade and, in the process, focus attention upon the forces that seek to drive it in different directions.

Independent of which government comes to power in Pakistan, there are likely to be certain fixed features of the country's future nuclear development:

1. The production of fissile materials and bombs, as well as intermediate-range ballistic missiles, will continue at the maximum possible rate permitted by technological and resource limitations. Missiles will steadily replace aircraft as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons.
2. Missile flight tests and command post exercises will continue to be periodically conducted.
3. Although Pakistan will want to match India's efforts in using outer space for reconnaissance and early-warning systems, it will not be able to do so.
4. If India is successful in acquiring and installing an anti-ballistic missile system, MIRVing, or in developing submarine launched nuclear-tipped missiles, Pakistan will counter by lowering the strike-threshold and wider dispersion of its mobile launchers, as well as employing decoys and moving towards SLBMs.
5. Unless India resumes nuclear testing, Pakistan will not test further.

On the other hand, the nature of the future political governments and their ideological composition, as well as their level of internal stability and confidence, will determine:

1. The safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
2. Attitudes towards sharing nuclear technology with Islamic groups or other nations.
3. The degree of transparency permitted to the United States.
4. The extent to which confidence building measures negotiated with India will be implemented or ignored.
5. The willingness, or otherwise, to go to war with India.

Political prognosis is therefore the key, given that the technological possibilities are fairly well defined.

In the following, I shall draw heavily from an important book to be published in November 2004, "The Idea of Pakistan", by Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Points of concurrence and difference with Cohen will be discussed.

One portion of my review of Cohen's book, also to be published in November, follows:

After every attempted assassination of General Musharraf - and there have been several, not just two - the media has raised the spectre of a nuclear armed state careening out of control with Islamic radicals seeking to scramble into the driving seat. But I would concur with Cohen that this is an alarmist view. Should he run out of luck, Musharraf would be readily replaced with a senior officer by consensus of the army establishment. Meanwhile, firewalls are being made in anticipation of a crisis of leadership - the recent installation of Citibanker Shaukat Aziz as prime minister of Pakistan can be seen in this light.

It is refreshing to see that Cohen breaks with some of Musharraf's international backers who "see him as a wise and modern leader, a secular man who is not afraid to support the West or to offer peace to India, and a man who can hold back the onrush of demagogues and Islamic extremists". Instead, he remarks that "no serious Pakistani analyst sees Musharraf in these terms. If he resembles any past Pakistani leader, it is General Yahya Khan-also a well-intentioned general who did the United States a great favor…."

Cohen offers the following insights into Pakistan's future:

• The present system is likely to continue, but certain events, trends, and policies might yet transform it. These include a catastrophic war with India, the growth of radical Islamic groups, the loss of American and even Chinese support, the failure to come to grips with Pakistan's social and educational problems, a series of assassinations of senior Pakistani officials, or the revival of ethnic and regional separatism.

• Pakistan's army is strong enough to prevent state failure and contain separatist movements, but not imaginative enough to impose the changes that might transform the state. Pakistan's foreign service and army strategists focus entirely on the next step in what is seen as a chess game of infinite duration. But in the long run, the lack of economic opportunity, the booming birth rate, the youth bulge, intensive urbanization, a failed educational system, and a hostile regional environment could leave Pakistan with a large, young, and ill-educated population that has few prospects for economic advancement and could be politically mobilized.

• Two "Islamist" scenarios are more likely than a revolution. One would be the gradual strengthening of Islamist parties to the point where they could stake a claim to power in a future government. Within five years, Pakistan could be a more overtly Islamic state. A second and more likely scenario would see the return of a modified Ziaist regime. This would be a military-civilian coalition glued together by nominal adherence to Islamic doctrine, with the military as the senior partner. Such a government might welcome an opportunity to proselytize in the armed forces, especially in the army, and a Ziaist military leadership would tolerate this.

• The possibility of more extreme scenarios- civil war, separatism, authoritarianism, or the triumph of Islamic radicalism-should not be discounted. Pakistan could evolve into a truly dangerous state or come apart, spewing nuclear technology and terrorists in all directions. Pakistan's own history provides grim evidence that its government can make fundamentally wrong choices.

Cohen notes that "Pakistan has adapted to changing strategic circumstances by "renting" itself out to powerful states, notably the United States, but also Saudi Arabia and China." He warns that the 911 windfall and the Al-Qaida card will, beyond a point, cease to rake in the cash. Although the economy is currently growing well, Pakistan has a fundamentally weak economy that is deeply dependent upon remittances from overseas workers. Low-tech textile exports are the mainstay of its industrial production, and it has an exploding population together with a work force that does not meet the requirements of a modern economy.

Rescuing Pakistan:
Prognostications of the future can be useful intellectual exercises: they lay out the range of possibilities, identify key determinants, and help focus debate on alternative courses of action.

In my opinion, steering Pakistan away from the brink and towards a sustainable future will require the following:

Encouraging General Musharraf to take seriously his call for "enlightened moderation": Liberal Pakistanis are relieved that he has sought accommodation with India, softened his stand on Kashmir, cracked down on Islamic terrorism at home, and is negotiating revision of blasphemy and anti-woman laws. But is this enough? Najam Sethi, editor of an influential weekly published from Lahore, notes that:

"While the direction of change is right, the momentum of change is too slow and awkward and unsure to constitute a critical and irreversible mass. In addition, two core elements are still missing from the equation. First, the jihadis have not yet been "packed up". Apparently, the military's argument is that until a "satisfactory solution" on Kashmir is found, this card cannot be abandoned unilaterally. The cost of obtaining a solution to Kashmir on the back of the jihadis has proven both elusive and exorbitant. It is time to give up this failed strategy unilaterally. Second, the MMA [alliance of Islamic parties] has also got to be packed up so that the doctrine of "enlightened moderation" can take root across the country. But this cannot be done by force. It can only be done democratically on the basis of a new round of free elections in which room is made for the moderate mainstream parties to naturally pack up the reactionary politico-religious parties. As long as General Pervez Musharraf's agenda doesn't address these two core concerns, his doctrine of "enlightened moderation" will remain an opportunistic philosophy incapable of protecting, enhancing and projecting the true national interest."

Taming the army: Cohen describes Pakistan as "a state hopping on one strong leg. That leg, the army, retains its élan and professionalism". He worries about the decline of US influence over the Pakistani military and the growth of radicalism in the army: "changing them will require extended contacts with the West….If the Pakistan army does move further down the road of Islamic parochialism, one reason will be that it was cut off from those Western contacts that had been a liberalizing force for its first thirty years".

But it is a mistake to think that anti-US sentiment comes from insufficient contact with the US. Anger at the US reflects the general state of tension between the US and the Islamic world; more contact may not do much good. As evidence, one only needs to recall that among the senior officers forcibly retired by Musharraf, who opposed his u-turn in Afghanistan, were those who had spent extended periods of time in the US. It is also a mistake to think that contacts with the US military have fostered liberal and democratic beliefs in the Pakistan army. Thirty years ago, Eqbal Ahmad wrote:

"Through training courses in America and contact with the MAAG (Military Assistance and Advisory Group, established in October 1954) and MAP (Military Assistance Program) operatives they have come to respect American technology, crave for contemporary weapons systems, and favor alliances which promise hardware. More to the point is the fact that two decades of Pakistan-US military ties have created links between the Pakistani military commanders and the US institutions and individuals who in recent years, encouraged the Brazilian, Greek, and Chilean coups".

A democratic Pakistan is in the long-term interests of both the people of Pakistan and the United States. To generate a responsible civilian leadership, while keeping putschists at bay, ought to be the goal.

Repoliticizing Pakistan: When General Zia-ul-Haq declared that he would purge Pakistan of "the scourge of politics", he meant what he said. He and his successors, both military and civilian, have succeeded in depriving a once-feisty people of the means of self-expression and collective action. Popular politics at the national level has disappeared from Pakistan, together with trade unions, peasant collectives, and student groups. Idealism and dreaming for a new and better society is nearly extinct. Thirty years ago, students in my university - Islamists and socialists - noisily argued over their ideological positions and competed for student votes. Today there is no voting and no legitimate student representative body - there are only Islamic sectarian groups pitted against each other, as well as groups defined purely by ethnicity. Deprived of exposure to any philosophy of social reform and attracted by the only permissible form of political ideology - Islamism - these students are prime candidates for recruiting into extremist organizations. To stop sliding down further, the depoliticization of Pakistan must be reversed, political organizations must be permitted to operate locally and nationally, and the state's intelligence agencies must stop their intimidation and harassment of those critical of the state's policies.

Reforming Education: An exploding population, together with abysmally poor education standards and widespread illiteracy, are perhaps the clearest dangers to Pakistan. More alarming than poor educational statistics is that Pakistani schools - and not just madrassas alone - churn out fiery zealots, fuelled with passion for jihad and martyrdom. The issue of Pakistan's poisonous education curriculum is scarcely new . Recent street rampages by religious forces in support of continuing the teaching of jihad in schools has underscored the difficulty of change. Feeling the heat, General Musharraf's minister of education, Zubaida Jalal, promptly declared herself a fundamentalist and announced that school textbooks without Quranic verses on jihad are incomplete.

In an attempt to deal with Pakistan's serious education problems, for the last two years, through USAID, the US has led Britain and the EU into pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Pakistani schools, teacher training, and infrastructural needs. Either out of lack of knowledge, or as a tactical compromise, the White House chose to praise Pakistan's former education minister and her "reforms". The newly appointed education minister, General Javed Ashraf Qazi, is the former head of the ISI and known for his ruthless tactics. It is an enormous step backwards. But USAID officials in Pakistan seem more concerned with collecting their inflated salary checks than engaging with the government on the issue of eliminating jihad and militarism from school books. It therefore appears that General Musharaf's educational curriculum will essentially remain a copy of General Zia's, faithfully transmitted onwards by the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Fearful of taking on powerful religious forces, every reigning government has refused to take a position on the curriculum and quietly allowed future minds to be molded by fanatics. But without this essential reform, the long-term prospects for Pakistan will be grim.