If Pakistan government wanted these two spared, it was to announce a firm decision not to send Pakistani soldiers to Iraq to help achieve Americans' aims. Islamabad did no such thing and poor Sajid Naeem and Raja Azad were executed on Tuesday last week. All Pakistanis were shocked and angered at the insensitivity shown by Pakistani rulers. An ugly situation has developed in which thousands may become suicide bombers. First sign of local reaction was the suicide bombing to kill the PM-in-waiting, Shaukat Aziz, on Friday last. Al-Qaeda has owned the attack.

Why did Islamabad not reject the US pressure to send troops? The reason is twofold: Pakistani elites are hopelessly in love with the US that throws some greenbacks at them for services rendered. Islamabad fears that if the US wishes are thwarted, the big Bully can do fearful things to it. Witness Iraq. That is one reason. The other is lack of any vision of what Pakistan might stand for and how it is required to act. These hereditary or uniformed worthies cannot think of life without Americans being their guardians. How can they bring themselves to say 'no' to Uncle Sam? For fifty years the outsiders have taunted Pakistan for being a client state of America. But even when the US imposed a slew of sanctions, Islamabad remained extra-active in rebuilding the old relationship of a principal and a satellite. Witness Nawaz Sharif rushing to Washington on a July 4 to make US persuade India not to fire at our returning troops in Kargil.

Turning to Iraq, almost every day there is some version of Baquba's suicide attack on a police station on Wednesday last week that killed at least 68 Iraqis or Falluja's clashes with occupation troops on Friday last in which 13 Iraqis died. The fact is there is a proper Iraqi Resistance -- albeit not too organised with a single leadership -- to American occupation of Iraq. The socalled sovereign Iraqi government of Iyad Allawai is neither a government nor it is sovereign -- not by a long chalk. It is not a factor in the situation, except as an insulting challenge to Iraqis. Only two sides now matter: occupation army and the people of Iraq, most of whom want to throw out foreign occupiers.

The Iraqi Resistance is divided among al-Qaeda, Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, the remnants of Baath party and Arab Nationalists or plain patriots. It asks for no quarters and is not giving any. Since it has no tanks, aircraft or HMVs, it relies on two terrible weapons against which the foreigners quail: suicide bombers and, no less terrible, kidnapping unsuspecting foreign civilians for ransom. Only, the ransom is not money; it is forcing the victims' governments to refrain from actively aiding American occupation. Otherwise they would kill them brutally. Resistance has employed these weapons to telling effect more easily because it is like a fish in the Iraqi sea. Thanks to popular support kidnappers are not caught -- easily.

Who occupies the high moral ground in Iraq? Most people are certainly shocked and pained over the heavy toll of innocent human lives; no one likes unlimited blood letting. But politically and morally who can blame the Iraqis and Palestinians for resisting foreign occupation of their lands that have been cradles of civilization? And who regards Anglo-American leadership to be morally justified? Their main alibi for the Iraq war has turned out to be false. Look at what the Brits are saying about Blair. Well, America is rather different for being so self-righteous and disdainful of outside world. Despite men like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, contest between Kerry and Bush is said to be evenly balanced; Bush has not lost support in middle America for having his case for Iraq war proved to be false.

Initially there seemed three reasons why American Neocons and their British camp followers chose to go into Iraq: the first was oil; Almighty chose to put so much oil under the Iraqi sands. They thought that whoever controls this second highest oil reserves can get a chokehold on the economies of those who depend on Persian Gulf oil. They extended this logic to other areas where production and reserves of hydrocarbons are large, as in Central Asia. Who maintains that American control over the sources and trade of this key resource is a noble aim for which Pakistani lives should be put at risk?

The second reason was Israel. The latter fears Iraq and regarded Saddam to be an immediate menace. That was why Israel, with American help, destroyed the Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. In retrospect the US support and supplies to Saddam, including WMDs' wherewithal, and manoeuvring him into two wars against Iran and Kuwait -- and arranging the subsequent UN role in 1990s -- can now be seen as having been aimed at weakening Iraq and making it defenceless. An Iraq ruled by American stooges will give America two benefits: control over its oil and secondly Israel's security will be enhanced just as Israel is planning the final future of Palestinians.

The third reason was geo-strategic: with American interest supreme in Baghdad -- assuming all its hopes are realised -- it will be so much easier to change the socio-political face of ME. Older and decrepit regimes in ME can be replaced easily. This prospect was altogether too alluring for Washington. That can make ME a secure backyard of the US like Latin America used to be. The US could relocate its forces in the region more advantageously to project power in all directions.

John Chapman in his Guardian article (July 28) gave a fourth reason: It is the dollar. Some facts: the US will have to import 70 per cent of domestic oil demand by 2050; America's presence in Iraq promises a tight control over the region's oil production through (a) suitable regime changes; (b) unilateral and preemptive military action; (c) since 1970s OPEC oil has been traded exclusively in dollars; (d) thereafter the US virtually could print unlimited dollar bills to pay for its profligate imports and run up in 15 years a trade deficit amounting to $ 2,700 billion; (e) in 1999 Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, the competitor of the dollar; and (f) in late 2000 Saddam made this switch for Iraqi oil; (g) Bush called both Iran and Iraq Axis of Evil in 2002 and invaded in 2003.

Imagine, if other OPEC nations had also made this switch, the consequences for America would have been huge. Says Chapman: "Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US". Thus America had good economic reasons to invade and occupy Iraq. What interests has Pakistan in Iraq to send Pak troops there? Why assist America's imperial ventures?

Pakistanis are aware that President Pervez Musharraf had agreed "in principle" to sending troops with US President George Bush in the summer of 2003 at Camp David. The US can claim credit for the upturn in Pakistan's macro-economic indictors: American loans, grants, aid and facilitation in rescheduling debt liabilities, including home remittances, did it. But does this help entitle the US to own Pakistan -- creating a master and slave relationship -- in perpetuity? Haven't American purposes in Afghanistan and regarding al-Qaeda and Taliban been adequately served? Can't the two be ever quits?

Sending troops now to Iraq involves putting them in harm's way; they will be legitimate targets of infuriated Iraqis. They can be ambushed, shot at or subjected to suicide attacks. On human grounds alone, Islamabad should muster courage to say 'no' to the request of -- who? Allawi, the nominee of Paul Bremer and hated by most Iraqis; and or Kofi Annan whose august organisation and himself have been so mercilessly used and manoeuvred by America that both have lost credibility.

The touchstone on which the question of sending troops should be tested is: under whose operational command will they be in Iraq? The US is very particular on this point: all foreign troops in Iraq will remain under American command. Therefore, the Pak troops will be at the beck and call of Americans. Moreover, sending troops means Pakistan accepts American aims as its own. Do all Pakistanis agree that what the US is embarked on in Asia is morally just and is a noble aim? It had better find enough reserves of will to say the simple N word.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.