Shireen M Mazari It will soon be nine years since the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland. Since that time the Muslim World has continued to be bled by the US which remains traumatised nine years on. And the world has not only become more polarised, but also more violent and more bloodied by conflicts and asymmetric wars. Meanwhile, the US has neither been able to restructure the Muslim World as it wished, nor has it been able to convince its people they are safer than they were before 9/11 happened. All that has happened is that after an inconclusive war in Iraq the US has had to withdraw its troops, leaving behind a dissipated country weakened and polarised a ready breeding ground for external players to fight proxy wars, while seeking to fill the vacuum of power. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban have regained lost strength as they now bear the mantle of fighting to liberate their country from US occupation and Al-Qaeda continues to haunt the US psyche as it has been turned into a brand name for any extremist Muslim group seeking to gain global attention anywhere in the world. The US is bound to exit Afghanistan in disgrace also regardless of the rhetoric - because the surrogates they are seeking to leave behind in power have lost credibility long ago and are themselves desperately seeking to reach some political compromise with the Taliban. Meanwhile, the US has also lost sight of its initially limited at least publicly-stated agenda in invading Afghanistan as it has sought to deal with its earlier Iran trauma and somehow target nuclear Pakistan, all simply because they were in the region. For these deviant purposes, they have sought to aid and abet terrorism in Iran, including using the terrorist group Jundullah, while targeting Irans peaceful nuclear low-grade uranium enrichment programme. But unfortunately for the Americans, the Iranian regime has refused to blink and called the US bluff even as it has managed to seize and hang the Jundullah leadership right under the US and their surrogate Pakistani regimes noses. As the battle of wits goes on and a dangerous political one-upmanship is sustained between the US and Iran with the Zionist entity Israel jumping into the fray, Iran has sought to make a very public display of developing its armaments, especially missiles in response to the US-sponsored sanctions on Iran. By politicising the technical aspects of nuclear proliferation - which is what has happened as the UN Security Council has become centre stage and the IAEA pushed into the background in dealing with this issue - the US has almost ensured that the NPT will remain weakened and this has now been evident in the last two NPT Review Conferences. So all the US has managed to do with its post-9/11 targeting of Iran is to ensure that the latter bolsters its defence and hardens its position on issues like nuclear proliferation. Also, with the space now provided in Iraq and West Asia, Iran is a natural contender to fill the power vacuum So much for the neoimperialist goals of the US post-9/11. Unfortunately, Pakistan is the only country which has fallen in line with US diktat, thanks to it successive pusillanimous leaders. As a result, Pakistan has and continues to suffer, more than any other, directly as a result of 9/11 and its disastrous aftermath resulting from a vengeful and misguided US policy in this region. The irony is that none of the perpetrators of 9/11 were Pakistani or connected in any way to Pakistan. Yet, the world has conveniently forgotten the Arab origins of these terrorists as the US has successfully wedded their identity with Pakistan Meanwhile Pakistan has been rent asunder by acts of terrorism, that now include suicide bombers, as well as US terrorism through drone attacks on Pakistan territory which have killed primarily innocent Pakistani civilians. Here too our kowtowing leadership - both civilian and military - has also not only been complicit in these drone attacks but has not had the courage to look the nation in the eye and admit it has allowed the US to kill its citizens at will in their own country. But then this is the same leadership class that also allowed renditions of Pakistani citizens and Afghan diplomats like Zaeef to the US who put them in Guantanamos illegal detention facility. Nor is this all. Post-9/11, the Pakistani state has effectively become enchained to US diktat with US personnel having a free run of the country, targeting Pakistanis at will with no respect for the law of the land. Even worse, the Pakistani leadership has watched in silence as the US has brought in its strategic ally India into Afghanistan - from where it has sought to conduct low intensity operations against Pakistan as well aid and abet terrorism in Balochistan. By a continuing cacophony of the do more mantra, the US has also managed to force the Pakistan military into shifting its troops from the Eastern front to the Western one. But worst of all, it has pushed our military into conducting large-scale operations in FATA which has led to indiscriminate killings of Pakistanis as well as to thousands of internally displaced people who remain so despite official claims to the contrary. Now, as the US goes down the slippery slope of military defeat in Afghanistan, it is seeking to shift the centre of gravity of the war into Pakistan - and given a compliant leadership here it is succeeding on that count at least. But surely Pakistan must have gained some advantages by becoming the frontline state for the US-led war on terror. Well, there were some short-term monetary benefits which could have translated into long-term gains had we reformed and restructured our economy. Instead we let ourselves become hostage to the IMF. Again, the market access promised to us by the US and EU never happened but we kept delivering to them as they dictated and still continue to do so. Our military got some new tactical toys including the F-16s but all these have come with debilitating conditionalities and since we had fared well without US military toys we should have continued on that conditionality-less path. As for the Pakistani nation, it has gained nothing and lost much. It has paid and continues to pay for a crime (9/11) it did not commit - thanks primarily to the Musharraf and Zardari-Gilani regimes. Yes, the US is putting money into civil society but most of it is going to create a new rentier class in strategic segments like the media which will further the goals and value system of the US. The Gramscian model of hegemony is visible so clearly today in Pakistan, especially in the new class of intellectuals who are embedded with the external hegemon. So really while some individuals may be benefiting from US dollar largesse, the costs for the Pakistani nation have been high for supporting the misguided US war on terror. And so far one cannot see any light at the end of this fatal tunnel in which the US has pushed us with the active assistance of our own leaders. The biggest tragedy for Pakistan is that its leaders have latched on to the losing side and while the US is in the process of accepting this reality and extricating itself from it, unless the Pakistani leadership is able to delink from the US and steer a more nationally-desirable course, it will find itself marooned and isolated once again. As for the US, its policies post-9/11 have played into the hands of Al-Qaeda. If only it had abstained from a vengeful path and not fallen prey to neocon opportunism, the world truly could have become a more peaceful place. But that was not to be - more the pity