GEOGRAPHY, shared history, ethnicity, religion, culture and economic interdependence dictate that Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan — good or bad — will always be close and intense. Neither country can disengage from the other, even if it wished to.

Since Pakistan’s independence, the relationship has witnessed periods of friction as well as of close cooperation. Problems in the relationship have almost always arisen from interference in each other’s internal affairs. Pakistan’s support to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet occupation, and the generous refuge offered by Pakistan to millions of Afghans, was the high point in the relationship. The period after the US intervention and the ouster of the Afghan Taliban by the US with the support of the Northern Alliance, has witnessed some of the lowest points in the relationship, including border clashes between Pakistani and Afghan forces.

With the departure of the mercurial Hamid Karzai, the withdrawal of most US-Nato forces from Afghanistan, the installation of the Ghani-Abdullah ‘unity’ government in Kabul, and the vacation of Pakistan’s territory by most of the Afghan Taliban, conditions may now exist for a new rapprochement between Islamabad and Kabul.

There are current compulsions in both capitals to realise such a rapprochement. In Kabul, the main preoccupation is to preserve the ‘unity’ government and to prevent the Taliban insurgency from gaining momentum against an Afghan National Army (ANA) which has yet to be tested as an independent fighting force. US drone and air strikes on insurgent positions, as being currently demonstrated in Iraq and Syria, may not be sufficient to halt advances by the insurgents.

Conditions may now exist for a rapprochement between Islamabad and Kabul.

The larger danger is that if factional and ethnic divisions revive in Afghanistan, the ANA, like the Iraqi army, could collapse in the face of a determined Taliban onslaught. This danger will grow as the US-Nato presence begins to thin out further.

For its part, Pakistan too requires Kabul’s cooperation to defeat the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and put down the Balochistan Liberation Army insurgents. Pakistan will need to address the new leaders in Kabul with due regard to their political and personal sensitivities.

By all accounts, Ashraf Ghani is an intellectually arrogant and prickly personality, yet amenable to flattery. He seems to have a ‘chip on the shoulder’ regarding Pakistan. Having been parachuted into Afghan politics from the Washington-based World Bank, Ghani does not have a ‘natural’ constituency within Afghanistan, even among his fellow Pakhtuns. He is dependent on the support of disparate Afghan warlords, like Rashid Dostum. President Ghani may thus have limited authority to negotiate with the several power centres in Afghanistan including the Taliban.

On the other hand, Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive, has a significant power base within the Northern Alliance and a political acumen acquired through his long involvement in Afghanistan’s faction-ridden politics. If the ‘unity’ government collapses, Pakistan may be able to preserve relationships with some of the Pakhtun factions but will require an interlocutor with Abdullah’s credentials to build relationships with elements of the Northern Alliance.

Pakistan can play an influential role in bolstering the new Kabul government, politically and economically, arresting the momentum of the Afghan insurgency and promoting reconciliation within Afghanistan.

At this stage, it would be wise for Pakistan to make some gestures of goodwill towards Kabul. In the economic field, these could include: easing transit trade; expanding imports from Afghanistan, including thro­ugh credit facilities; encouraging investment in Afgha­n­istan and reopening discussions on the TAPI gas pipeline. On the security side, Pakistan could revive cross border coordination and intelligence exchanges and offer larger training facilities to the ANA.

Most importantly, Pakistan can offer to convince the Afghan Taliban to make a clean break with Al Qaeda and the TTP; accept cessation of hostilities with the ANA and, despite their rejection of the Afghan elections, open a dialogue with Kabul for a power-sharing agreement.

Simultaneously, through quiet diplomacy with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, Pakistan could help to build regional support for the Kabul government and its reconciliation with the Afghan insurgency.

While extending its support for peace and development within Afghanistan, Pakistan should seek reciprocal support from Kabul for its vital national interests and respect for its ‘red lines’.

The first among these red lines is the presence of the TTP leadership and insurgents in Afghanistan and the support they have been receiving from Afghan and Indian intelligence. The TTP, which has aligned itself with both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and includes jihadist rebels from Central Asia, Russia, China and some Arab countries, is now a common threat not only to Pakistan but the entire region. To support and sponsor this group is to threaten the security not only of Pakistan but the entire region, including Afghanistan itself

Pakistan should ask Kabul and the US to uproot and expel all TTP elements from their ‘safe havens’ in Afghanistan. If the Afghan security forces are unable to do so, the remaining US-Nato forces in Afghanistan should undertake the operations against the TTP, including air strikes and ground operations. And, as the US has done in Iraq and Syria, Pakistan should reserve the right, under the anti-terrorism resolutions of the Security Council, to strike at the TTP wherever it is located, within or outside Pakistan.

Similarly, Pakistan should call upon Kabul to expel the Baloch separatists operating from Afghan territory under the sponsorship, guidance and collaboration of Indian and Afghan intelligence, and to shut down their safe houses and safe havens. In this context, the closure of the several Indian ‘consulates’ near Pakistan’s border would be a visible indication of the goodwill of the new Afghan government.

Finally, Kabul, the US and other regional powers should respect Pakistan’s sensitivities vis-à-vis India. Given the adversarial ties between the latter two, forging of a military alliance between Afghanistan and India is an issue of strategic concern for Pakistan. Islamabad cannot be expected to remain benign towards a neighbour which is in military alliance with its enemy.

The endeavor to revive a fraternal relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan can succeed only if leaders in both countries focus on their long-term common interests and accommodate each other’s sensitivities and vital national interests.

The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2014