Among the worst possible international headaches can be two nuclear countries at loggerheads perennially, finger-wagging at each other. Worse is when they are large neighbours with a history of unresolved territorial disputes and bloody wars, occasionally threatening to actually use their nuclear weapons against each other.

It’s ironic, then, that while the world wants the two - Pakistan and India, with a combined population of over 1.5 billion - to make permanent peace, the media and politicians in these states attack their respective leaders for not being harsh enough to each other when they do manage to meet and explore peacemaking.

Which is what happened in early July 2015 when Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi locked themselves into the same room in Ufa in Russia with their aides for an hour to decide how their countries could start stitching a proper official entente. Both the media and the opposition parties threw a fit over the official version on what the two prime ministers had decided as the blueprint of re-engagement as articulated in a joint communique on next steps. Congress in India castigated BJP’s Modi for even meeting the Pakistani leader before the closure of the Mumbai attacks case while the media in Pakistan tore apart PML-N’s Sharif for agreeing to engage with India on the Mumbai case while not even mentioning Kashmir and Balochistan in the roadmap.

Clearly if Pakistan and India are ever to clean up their act and become friends it will not be because they will be able to satisfy everyone.

Ever since their official enmity was birthed in the bloodied Partition in 1947, the two countries - with constant reminders from a worried world - have been trying to bury the ghosts of a contrarian past that is admittedly hard to closet, and become friends. The intervening decades have demonstrated that even though both countries have reluctantly agreed to long-term peace and friendship, they have been simultaneously frustrated, increasingly entrenched opponents of permanent truce. There is a discernible see-saw over various periods of time in how they have gone about resolving this problem and their failings. Some patterns are clear: Pakistan and India have gone to direct war twice. Both times (1965 and 71) there was military in power in Pakistan. The other two times when hostilities all but broke into a war there was military again in power (Zia’s Brasstacks in 1980s and Musharraf’s missile crisis in 2000s).

Times when hope for lasting friendship was at its highest was when civilians ruled the roost in Islamabad (Bhutto in mid-1970s and Benazir and Sharif in the mid-90s). Sharif’s second government in 1999 was overthrown in a military coup arguably birthed by a row between the military and civilians over the Kargil fiasco in Kashmir. Earlier Benazir was famously dubbed a ‘security risk’ (despite being an elected prime minister!) because she cooperated with Rajiv Gandhi over Khalistan ("how dare she help India put down mutiny").

Likewise in India, it was under the powerful governments of Congress - constitutionally majority tenures of Indira, Rajiv and Manmohan - when both opportunities and hopes were bettered by an inability to seize the moment for posterity’s sake. The opportunities were squandered by Indians both in the tenures of civilians (Benazir and Sharif) and the khakis (Musharraf) in Pakistani. Ironically it was when Pakistan-bashing, hardline BJP rode to power in India for the first time in the late 1990s when both countries came closest to striking a permanent peace.

The moment was BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee - in the role of India’s elected prime minister - standing astride Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore saying India accepted Pakistan as both a reality and partner in regional future. This despite Musharraf, as army chief, only hours before refusing to salute Vajpayee in the Governor House even though the air and naval chiefs did as duty mandated. The same army chief in a few months overthrew Sharif as the elected prime minister for coming closest to a Pakistani elected leader resolving the India problem - the single largest problem holding Pakistan back in the new millennium.

So, what is it about Pakistanis and Indians and their frustrating inability to stop employing the past as the proverbial stick to spoke any agreement on a shared prosperity and future (considering that they are neighbours)?

If, according to detractors of peace in Pakistan, Modi admitted that India actively aided secession of East Pakistan into independent Bangladesh, then another Indian prime minister from the same BJP (Vajpayee in the shadow of Minar-i-Pakistan no less!) came over to Pakistan and laid down the gauntlet. If Sharif blew into a rage over Musharraf in uniform - according to his aide and former Chief of General Staff Lt Gen. Shahid Aziz in his book Yeh Khamoshi Kahan Tak -- spending a night in Indian-administered Kashmir (imagine if he had been captured - the army chief of a country and the commander of ones of the world’s only eight nuclear arsenals no less!), then there was also the same Musharraf (as chief executive and president this time) in Delhi and Kathmandu offering to forego Pakistan’s claim on Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistanis need to stop being selective when using history to defend their insistence on ‘dealing with India decisively once and for all’ - a euphemism for nuclear-assisted annihilation.

The demonic perceptions about each other in Pakistan and India are actively aided by their respective media, traditionally trained to either raise expectations too high or blast even minor forward movement as betrayal of national interests. Because public interests are eternal while national interests change (now the military establishment is ready to go to war over Kashmir because it is our ‘jugular vein’, now it is ready to forego UN resolution on plebiscite for the Kashmiris), when it comes to one of the world’s last few remaining hangovers from before the Cold War ended, the media needs to be nuanced in reporting on engagement between the two countries at the highest levels.

Context is all important: Sharif and Modi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit - there was huge pressure on Islamabad and Delhi to repair their worsening ties and not bring their juvenile divisions to Ufa. Pakistan becoming member of SCO (pressured by China for patch up with Delhi) and India becoming member of SCO (persuaded by Russia to engage with Islamabad) was the backdrop to the Modi-Sharif summit. An exhibition of maturity was required for membership status. SCO is the world’s only other pluralist political body that has four nuclear powers now as members and no internecine quarrels will be brooked.

Que: Sharif talked about regional integration through communications links (rails and expressways) while Modi stressed on accelerating efforts for TAPI gas pipeline.

And, then, additional pressure on supporting Afghanistan (the timing of hosting of Taliban-Kabul talks in Murree was no fluke).

All of this has been conveniently missed over by media in both Pakistan and India in favour of the easy, belligerent soundbites and myopic allegations of betrayal.

If Pakistan claims to be a champion of peace, it should be able to back that claim through engagement and diplomacy. It should have the superior diplomatic muscle to persevere with and outwit an allegedly canny India through tact rather than weakening the hand of its own prime minister by painting him a traitor. Sharif has the public mandate to solve problems. India has had 15 prime ministers. Only three - Nehru, Rajiv and Vajpayee - have visited Pakistan. Now Modi has promised to be the fourth to do so. Sharif has been able to convince two Indian leaders to visit. As elected leader of Pakistan he will host a second Indian prime minister.

If this is not high diplomacy what is? He went to Ufa and met Modi not to deliver peace but to re-start the process that can deliver peace. How can he then be judged for the outcome of a process when the process has not even begun?

Media bashing and public suspicions notwithstanding, will India and Pakistan ever be able to become friends? The laws of attrition and probabilities alone will ensure this is inevitable but before they can become friends they have to graduate in status from enemies to frenemies. Only from there they can transition to full friends.

If only the media and security establishments - and their apologists - in both countries will let them. With nuclear wars no one will win. Only peace can deliver victory.

In the meanwhile, credit should be where credit is due and no villains presumed easily. As someone said: "…There is no glory or heroes in war. Glory comes from actions that prevent war, and the heroes are the ones who implement the actions."

Couldn’t be truer in Pakistan and India’s case.