Note that this is a real-life recall from a South East Asian Muslim citizen, where levels of tolerance, impoverishment and the contact with modernity is very different when compared to the South Asian experience. And in recent months, the pattern of medieval Islamist ideology challenging the writ of the state is more than evident along the Pak-Afghan border where the resurgence of the Taliban is manifest in myriad ways.

The existential challenge was conveyed in unambiguous terms in Islamabad where militant youth — young men and women — wearing the certitude of Islam on their sleeve challenged the writ of the military regime in the heart of the Pakistani state. Is this angry South Asian constituency emboldened by the events in distant Iraq? The answer, alas, is yes. The death of every hapless Iraqi, whether by US action or internecine Shia-Sunni hatred, nurtures a non-linear negative emotion in the collective Muslim psyche, which can then be manipulated as the Hamid experience tells us.

Thus the South Asian societal ozone layer, while still largely insulated from the fall-out of Iraq and not yet directly affected, is a stake-holder in the future trajectory of Iraq and the choices made by its principal interlocutors.

Metaphorically toppling the Bush statue is not a policy option.

The writer is a security analyst