President Ashraf Ghani’s strong criticism of Pakistan in the wake of the recent rise in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan served as the signal for both supporters and critics of his unity government to indulge in their favourite pastime of Pakistan-bashing.

Afghan government officials, politicians, civil society activists and sections of the media too started blaming Islamabad for the insecurity and many other problems plaguing the war-ravaged country. A section of the Afghan ulema based in Kabul issued a fatwa (decree) that it was legitimate to wage jihad in Pakistan. Soon afterwards, many Afghans started a campaign, primarily on the social media, to call for boycott of Pakistani products.

President Ghani’s outburst against Pakistan broke the unannounced agreement between the governments of the two neighbouring countries that they won’t publicly criticise each other and refrain from conducting diplomacy through the media as President Hamid Karzai used to do during his almost 14-year rule. In fact, the decision not to voice their complaints against each other publicly had helped remove some of the bitterness in the Pak-Afghan relationship and set the stage for improvement in their often unfriendly ties.

There are stories galore that the Afghan president has a temper, but many people thought he was wrongly being blamed when he showed patience with Pakistan as well as his opponents in Afghanistan. But on August 10, he spoke fiercely at a press conference in Kabul to condemn Pakistan. This was the first time since his installation as the president more than 10 months ago that he pointedly criticised Pakistan.

It was all the more surprising as he had spoken by phone the previous evening with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif to convey his feelings and remind them of the promises they reportedly made to help him in the Afghan peace process. In fact, it was agreed during their telephonic conversation that a high-level Afghan delegation would visit Islamabad soon to discuss all relevant issues. Still President Ghani felt the need to hold the news conference to publicly air his charge-sheet against Pakistan. Apparently, he was under pressure at home to lambast Pakistan to answer his critics who were criticising him for naively trusting Islamabad and giving it the leading role in the Afghan peace process.

President Ghani was so unhappy with Pakistan that he even questioned the utility of having relations with Islamabad if the Afghans continued to face death and destruction in attacks organised from Pakistan’s soil. Asking Pakistan to put an end to the "unannounced war" with Afghanistan and implement its pledge to consider Afghanistan’s enemies as its own enemies, he warned that relations with Pakistan would be ended and other options considered if Islamabad failed to take the required action.

It was obvious President Ghani was angered by the recent statement of the newly chosen Afghan Taliban head Mulla Akhtar Mohammad Mansour rejecting peace talks with the Afghan government and vowing to continue to fight in Afghanistan till victory and enforcement of Shariah. The Afghan President rightly pointed out that this statement was made by Mansour from his base in Pakistan. He wanted Islamabad to persuade the Taliban to return to the negotiations table and in case of refusal shut down their bases, disallow their meetings and stop treatment of their injured fighters in Pakistan.

A day after his emotional press conference, President Ghani arranged to meet ambassadors from a number of countries to build his case against Pakistan and present Afghanistan as a victim of cross-border terrorism. As if on cue, other Afghan government functionaries also began blasting Pakistan for real and imagined reasons that were holding back Afghanistan.

Chief Executive Officer Dr Abdullah, who isn’t someone known for his friendliness towards Pakistan, joined the chorus as he didn’t want to lag behind Ghani, who until now was seen as favourably disposed towards Pakistan. He also put the blame on Pakistan for the insecurity facing Afghanistan.

Former President Hamid Karzai, who moved Afghanistan closer to India and away from Pakistan, went a step ahead of President Ghani and asked the world to stop assistance to Islamabad as it was supporting terrorism. He reiterated his old demand that the war against terrorism should be fought in places where the terrorists had set up sanctuaries and not in Afghan villages and towns.

President Ghani’s special representative on reforms and good governance, Ahmad Zia Masood alleged that Pakistan was trying to stop progress of Afghanistan. Masood, who is brother of late mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Masood, argued that Pakistan tried to create problem whenever Afghanistan intended to move forward to strengthen its security and economy.

It was now time for everyone to chip in and do Pakistan-bashing. The former Uzbek warlord and now First Vice President General Abdul Rasheed Dostum alleged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was playing a new game to destabilise Afghanistan by backing both the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State. He argued that on the one hand the ISI was facilitating peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban while on the other it was backing the Islamic State to continue fighting in Afghanistan.

The tirade against Pakistan triggered an outpouring of patriotic sentiments in Afghanistan. Targeting Pakistan became the norm and many Afghans said they celebrated Afghanistan’s 96^th Independence Day on August 19 by condemning Pakistan. The Kabul-based Afghan clerics, led by Mulla Abdul Baseer, visited the Shah Shaheed locality in the Afghan capital where 15 people were killed and more than 400 injured in a huge bomb explosion, and quickly announced a fatwa that it was legitimate to wage jihad in Pakistan. The fatwa even pleased the Jamaatul Ahraar, a splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, as it too has been fighting the Pakistani state for the last several years and calling it jihad.

A group of Pakistani clerics, led by the Pakistan Ulema Council head Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi also jumped into the fray and said the Afghan clerics’ fatwa was misleading and an attempt to poison relations between the two countries and harm the nascent Afghan peace process.

It was in this tinderbox situation that a border clash happened and caused casualties on both sides. The Afghan authorities claimed several of their soldiers and civilians were killed in Kunar province. A Pakistani soldier also lost his life.

Though the Pakistani people were largely unaware of the rising anti-Pakistan sentiment in Afghanistan, the government also refused to be provoked. No effort was made to arouse patriotic feelings or fuel anti-Afghanistan sentiment. However, the visiting Afghan delegation, led by Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani and including Acting Defence Minister Masoom Stanekzai and the country’s premier intelligence agency, NDS, head Rahmatullah Nabeel, was quietly rebuffed by refusing its request for meetings with the Army Chief.

Apparently, this was meant to convey unhappiness over the officially sanctioned Pakistan-bashing in Afghanistan.

The peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government were already on hold following the death of Mulla Mohammad Omar and the differences in Taliban ranks over the selection of his successor and there was no indication whether or when these could be resumed. However, President Ghani’s declaration that Kabul would no longer seek Islamabad’s help for holding peace talks with the Taliban also didn’t help as it could discourage Pakistan from continuing its peacemaking efforts. This could also strengthen the hands of Taliban factions that were already strongly opposed to the peace talks.