PROF Burhanuddin Rabbani is the first of the seven leaders who represented the face of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980s to be assassinated.

He was not a power-broker like Wali Karzai, the assassinated half-brother of the Afghan president, nor was he a man who stood in the way of any power player’s ambitions in the current fratricidal Afghan conflict. Yet his assassination carries a message; it is not without purpose.

Prof Rabbani, a person of dignified bearing with scholarly credentials and demeanour, had his share of controversy, guile and animosities, but, unlike some of his peers, he was never known to be ruthless. He played his hand masterfully in early 1992, when the Najibullah regime crumbled, to facilitate the entry of his ally Ahmed Shah Massoud in Kabul who had already succeeded in winning over key Parchami generals controlling the city.

Rabbani manoeuvred to negotiate the Peshawar Accords that gave the strategic defence portfolio to his party, Jamiat-i-Islami, and ensured that the position of prime minister did not go to the person of Massoud’s arch rival, Gulbadin Hekmatyar. He managed to extend his titular presidency beyond the period of four months agreed under the accords. He is also credited with a short-lived, last-minute Massoud-Hekmatyar patch-up in 1996 when the Taliban were knocking at the gates of Kabul. The Bonn process did not accord Rabbani the recognition he had expected following the ouster of the Taliban. Thereafter, his political fortunes remained somewhat in decline.

Hamid Karzai appointed Rabbani to head the High Peace Council, a body mandated to work for reconciliation, because he remained one of the few Afghan personalities who could reach across the ethnic divide which is partly responsible for keeping Afghanistan in a state of political fragmentation and turmoil.

The Council has achieved little, but as its head and for the respect he enjoyed, Rabbani symbolised the idea and the process of reconciliation. His assassination is meant to kill the process. The crime is a stubborn and disdainful rejection of peace on the part of its perpetrators. The circumstances of the assassination should help to identify them. Their act calls for a firm and forceful response. The challenge for the Afghans and for Pakistan is how to salvage the reconciliation process and push it forward.

Reaction to Rabbani’s assassination includes calls within the Kabul establishment to end the reconciliation process. The media have reported views that, being a Tajik, Rabbani was not the right person to head the process which cost him his life or that the assassination demonstrated that this is not the time for reconciliation which must await the withdrawal of the US/Nato forces. These are dangerous, if not motivated, explanations and a veiled justification for continuation of the conflict.

The US/Nato military presence has become part of the problem, and a clear US commitment to limit and withdraw military presence is necessary for the eventual balance and stability of Afghanistan. Realistically, however, the drawdown and withdrawal of US forces will be eased by progress towards reconciliation and reduction of violence. Those wishing to force the US military exit, recalling the fate of the Soviet intervention, need to bear in mind the difference.

A large section of the Afghans and almost all countries of the world are comfortable with the US military presence as long as it is seen to be combating the Taliban and extremism. Arguably, domestic pressures within the US are building to bring the troops back home, but that opinion will not countenance a retreat. On the other hand, the Taliban, their extremist creed and linkages with Al Qaeda are universally viewed as an abomination. Many countries including Afghanistan’s neighbours and most Afghans will oppose and resist any return of the Taliban rule, even if supposedly the US military presence were to end precipitously.

Stabilisation in Afghanistan depends on progress towards reconciliation and reduction of violence which requires a three-way cooperation between the Afghan government as the process must be Afghan-led, the United States as the occupation power and Pakistan, not for any claim of a special role but because of the demographics of the area and the presence in Pakistan of many Afghan Taliban elements including leaders.

Pakistan has the ability to put pressure on some of the Taliban, who may be amenable to reconciliation, to accept reasonable and realistic terms. While Pakistan’s tolerance for the presence of the Afghan Taliban inside the country and its insistence on choosing its own tactics to deal with militants and extremists is understandable and possible to explain, Pakistan cannot allow the use of its territory for operations and attacks in another country, which negate its claim of sovereignty and attract the charge of complicity.

The opportunity for tripartite cooperation to promote reconciliation, and hence prospects of peace, appears to be all but lost with the recent downturn in US-Pakistan relations. The US defence secretary and chairman, joint chiefs have publicly accused Pakistan of backing the Haqqani group’s recent attacks on the US embassy and Nato compound near Kabul. The implicit warning is unprecedented. Official denials or blaming the US military intervention for the violence will not help. In the interest of our national security, we need to take every measure to ensure that Pakistan’s generosity towards the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan refugees is abused no more.

The ominous trends in US-Pakistan relations must be arrested through urgent dialogue at the highest political and military levels based on realism and frankness and without false expectations. Positive US-Pakistan relations, but not necessarily an aid relationship, are important for Pakistan and for the region. Advocacy to the contrary is bereft of comprehension of global and regional correlations of forces.

There is no gainsaying that Afghanistan has long suffered and needs peace. The three decades of conflict have spread to Pakistan, inflicting a heavy toll and threatening destabilisation. Insensitivity about continuation of the conflict amounts to acquiescence in its fatal consequences for the future of the country.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.