Anyone who wants political power in Pakistan must hold three aces — America, the army and Allah. As Pakistan plans its 60th birthday celebrations this year, it may hope for a future less in thrall to its military, to its mullahs and to Washington. President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a bloody 1999 coup, is facing a crisis.

Pakistan is neither dictatorship nor democracy. Its newspapers are louder in criticism of their President than the anti-Blair or anti-Bush press in the West. Opposition politician, Cambridge-educated billionaire, Benazir Bhutto, isfree to return home when she wants. But General Musharraf and his army are in charge. The house arrest of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after he refused Musharraf’s demand to resign, has caused outrage.

Pakistan urgently needs a return to democratic civilian rule even if its elected leaders in the 90s became bywords for corruption, encouraging the Taliban and the madrassas, as well as the long-bearded, turban-wearing politicians who insist the law should be subordinate to theocracy. Democracy requires compromise between the military and the politicians. Instead there may be a slow drift towards increased authoritarianism under Musharraf, further alienating Pakistan.

In fact, the most poignant story in Pakistan last week was the stoning to death of a woman and two men accused of adultery. The rise of religious intolerance is now a political danger from the Christian West to the Muslim East. Yet it is all too easy to patronise Pakistan. Many are currently gushing over India with its clever graduates and Midas-touch businessmen.

But India’s record on human rights and the illiteracy of half its population is little better than Pakistan’s. India is rightly seen as a strategic partner for the West, especially the US, which is playing a balance-of-power game using India against China. But Pakistan, not India, is key to stability in the new world order.

The chain reaction that began when the West and Saudi Arabia called into being the jihadi movement to oust the Russians from Afghanistan is coming back to haunt Pakistan. In the 80s it allowed itself to be the base for military attacks on Russia. Now the jihadis are heading steadily eastwards as fanatical Islamism preaches hate and justifies suicide bombings. But Afghanistan could be saved if a political-economic-social campaign can gain ground from a purely military definition of the challenges.

Earlier this month US soldiers ran amok after a bomb attack. They fired indiscriminately, killing 30 people. A few more Bloody Sundays like this and Pakistan’s neighbour will be Iraqified before reconstruction pays off.

Britain is sending one of its toughest trouble-shooting diplomats to take over a beefed-up presence in Kabul.

The UN agencies, the European Commission plus the European Council, plus dozens of NGOs constitute the huge effort being made in Afghanistan, yet without better co-ordination it may end up chasing its tail.

The news is good in terms of schools, roads and hospitals built. Kabul looks richer than when it was three decades ago. But relentlessly the Taliban and the jihadis from among the three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan are back in business.

Pakistan is endlessly reproached about not doing enough. It is told to close its frontier, as if the US can close the Mexican border or 30,000 British soldiers could seal the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland across which IRA killers roamed. Pakistan is pressured to hunt bin Laden, but NATO can’t find Radovan Karadzic or persuade the Serbian army to stop protecting Ratko Mladic.

The time is overdue to acknowledge the sacrifices Pakistan has made. It has 80,000 soldiers along the 2,300km frontier with Afghanistan; 500 have been killed, far in excess of NATO casualties in Afghanistan or Britain’s in Iraq. India could join the war against terror by removing its soldiers from Kashmir and opening the border.

If Pakistan felt its eastern flank was secure, it could transfer its military to Afghanistan. Britain in recent years has given GBP 1 billion in aid to India, while India spends GBP 200 million on aid to Afghanistan.

If Afghanistan goes wrong, the next target for the ideologues who unleash suicide bombers will be Pakistan with its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is the key to defeating the new threats to the world. Time and again, the West has turned its back on Pakistan. That mistake should not be made again. Britain, with its close links to Pakistan, its able, articulate Muslim MPs, and its duty to tell America to change tactics, should help before it is too late. — The Guardian