Pakistan saw seductive possibilities in the reconfiguration of central Asia. Throughout its brief history, Pakistan had been a fragile country wedged between a hostile Afghanistan and a hostile India. Central Asia looked like an escape hatch because there as elsewhere Islamism came flowing in as Communism ebbed out, and Islam, as it happened, was the fundamental political and ideological premise of Pakistan, the one theme that provided social cohesion to Pakistan’s disparate parts. Also, no matter what Turkey and
