Not being Saddam's Iraq.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq suffered two nightmares - the first when Bush Senior launched the Gulf War, and the second when Bush Junior carried out an invasion that extended into occupation and ultimate horror of civil war that ruined and undid the country. The lessons that I draw from Iraq and Saddam's strategic experience are very relevant to Pakistan. They are relevant because they were Saddam's 'ideas in action' which when seen in the hindsight tells us altogether a different story. Today, in Pakistan many ideas are in action and history is in the making. It seems that the many actors in Pakistan, like Saddam in Iraq, are on the lookout for short-term benefits and many may eventually, like Saddam, find themselves on the wrong side of the history.

The first lesson one can draw from Saddam's Iraq is the cost one pays for taking rash decisions. Saddam seemed very happy to take advantage of an unfavourable situation and the chaos that followed after the fall of Shah of Iran. Given enemy's vulnerability he initiated a war against Iran that he thought he would be able to win. Nine years later when the war ended in 1988 it had cost him $80 billion and half a million lives. When leaders take rash decisions the cost paid for such decisions is enormous.

There were Sunni Arab countries that lent money to Saddam to fight the war against Iran. After the war. Saddam's major worry was how to repay the debts. He wanted his Arab brothers to write off the money that they lent him to fight the war. When that didn't happen, he requested them to pump less oil so that the price may rise and he may generate more revenue. When he failed to draw favourable response on both his requests, he felt betrayed and accused Kuwait of stealing oil that belonged to Iraq from Rumaila oil field, located at Kuwait border, about 50km west of Basra in southern Iraq. At 1.5 million barrels a day capacity, it is the world's third biggest oil producing field and accounts for approximately a third of Iraq's total oil supply. If Saddam was offered a 'Marshal Plan' by the Arab countries that supported him against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war or even by the US or European countries, he may not have resorted to aggression against Kuwait. Leaders disregard logic when their strategic reliance on outside world fails and they find themselves locked in humiliation.

Another lesson that one can draw from Saddam's Iraq is that you may be a defence and strategic partner and a client state of a...