ISLAMABAD: A challenging year for ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan ended on Saturday with phone calls from Gen Qamar Bajwa to President Ashraf Ghani and other Afghan leaders in which the army chief conveyed his New Year greetings, a move that could set in a thaw in the relationship.

The Afghan leadership reciprocated by inviting Gen Bajwa to Afghanistan, according to military spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, who tweeted about the calls.

In his conversations with President Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and his counterpart Gen Qadam Shah Raheem, Gen Bajwa offered his best wishes for the new year and pledged to work with them for peace.

The year 2015 had ended with similar hopes when Gen Raheel Sharif visited Kabul and an agreement on making the Quadrilateral Coor­dination Group (QCG) for peace in Afghanistan operational was reached.

Later, the Afghan intelligence chief visited Islamabad for talks. But the failure of the QCG process and a major attack by the Haqqani network on a building of the National Directorate of Security in Kabul on April 19, 2016 induced a negative cycle in the relationship.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2017