President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has increasingly turned against Pakistan after having started on a positive note when he assumed charge on September 29, 2014, once he was declared the winner of a disputed election against his rival, Dr Abdullah.

Gone are the days when President Ashraf Ghani, Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Army’s just retired chief General Raheel Sharif used to describe enemies of Afghanistan and Pakistan as their common enemies. Now allegations are being traded, especially by the Afghan government that has unleashed state propaganda against Pakistan.

High-level state visits have stopped and brief meetings on the sidelines of international conferences are the only opportunity for Ashraf Ghani and Nawaz Sharif and their foreign ministry officials to reluctantly listen to each other and figure out if they can break the stalemate in the Pak-Afghan relations.

Any hopes of making improvements in the uneasy relationship were dashed to the ground during the recent 6^th Heart of Asia Conference in Amritsar, India when President Ghani lashed out at Pakistan for harbouring Afghan Taliban militants to destabilise Afghanistan. He even made fun of Pakistan’s pledge of $500 million for war-ravaged Afghanistan’s reconstruction by advising Sartaj Aziz, the Prime Minister’s advisor on foreign relations who was attending the conference, to better use this money to fight terrorism in Pakistan.

The snub was widely condemned in Pakistan. Even those Pakistanis were angered who have been critical of their own government for not doing more to improve relations with Afghanistan.

The Afghan President also quoted a former Taliban diplomat, Rahmatullah Kakazada, to supplement his point that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan would collapse within a month if their sanctuaries in Pakistan were closed down. However, he forgot to mention that Kakazada has since denied this statement and accused the journalists who interviewed him of misquoting him to fulfill their purpose.

Arguing that he didn’t want to enter into a blame-game, Ashraf Ghani did exactly this thing by repeatedly blaming Pakistan for Afghanistan’s woes. He was justified in mentioning the presence of Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan, but deliberately failed to mention the Pakistani Taliban and Baloch separatists who have found refuge in Afghanistan and were using his country’s territory to launch terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

In fact, at the 5^th Heart of Asia Conference held in Islamabad in December 2015, he had admitted the presence of the Pakistani Taliban head Maulana Fazlullah in Afghanistan and claimed credit for undertaking several military actions against him and his men. It was this statement that provoked the Afghan spymaster, General Rahmatullah Nabeel, to resign as the National Directorate of Security (NDS) head after publicly criticising his own President for making this admission in the capital of a state that was sponsoring terrorism in Afghanistan.

Ashraf Ghani’s diatribe was a lot more toxic than that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who at least didn’t name Pakistan while arguing that "silence and inaction against terrorism will only embolden terrorists and their masters." The fact that the Afghan President made his provocative statement in India added insult to injury.

One cannot say that the well-informed President of Afghanistan doesn’t realise the level of hostility between India and Pakistan. It is therefore obvious that this was a deliberate act aimed at maligning Pakistan at an international conference attended by high officials of 14 countries and dozens of organisations. Besides, the conference focused on Afghanistan and was meant to consider measures and assistance to make Afghanistan peaceful and prosperous through regional connectivity.

The Pakistan-bashing at the event generated an avoidable controversy that harmed Afghanistan’s cause.

The patience shown by Pakistan was remarkable even though many Pakistanis felt Sartaj Aziz should not have attended the Amritsar conference as it was clear beforehand that India would use the occasion as the host to push Islamabad into a corner.  Besides, there was also this feeling that the elderly Sartaj Aziz should have made a forceful speech to defend his country in Amritsar and responded there and then when the Afghan President and the Indian Prime Minister put aside diplomatic norms and attacked Pakistan.

To his credit though, Sartaj Aziz showed maturity and made a positive statement that earned praise even from Russia’s special presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov. Also, Sartaj Aziz made a brave effort not to antagonise Afghanistan and foil what the Pakistani officials insist is a conspiracy by India to drive and widen the wedge between Islamabad and Kabul.

The Afghan President has reasons to be concerned about the spiralling insecurity in Afghanistan. His national unity government in which Dr Abdullah as the chief executive officer (CEO) is the second most powerful figure, is struggling to contain the Taliban-led insurgency, provide security to the people, and deliver on promises to improve the economy, enhance good governance and fight corruption. The unity government isn’t really united as the President and the CEO have been unable to overcome their differences. Dr Abdullah earlier publicly complained that he was being bypassed in decision-making.

The First Vice President and former Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rasheed Dostum has accused the President, who is an ethnic Pashtun, and the CEO, who represents the Tajiks, of favouring and trusting their respective ethnic groups at the expense of the Uzbeks, Hazaras, Turkmen, etc. Dostum has reportedly also quietly revived his Uzbek militia and has kidnapped and tortured two of his political rivals.

Another worrisome issue is the tussle between the government and the Wolesi Jirga (National Assembly) which recently disqualified seven ministers for failing to spend 70 per cent of their budgeted funds required under the law. The confrontation increased when the cabinet asked these ministers, who included foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani, to continue working until a verdict by the Supreme Court. As the apex court is taking its time in deciding the case, the MPs have warned they won’t approve the budget if the disqualified ministers weren’t sacked.

President Ghani’s aides and some Pakistanis have been arguing that he felt betrayed that his friendly overtures to Pakistan weren’t responded as Islamabad neither brought the Taliban to the negotiations table nor took action against them.

However, they fail to mention that the Afghan President too was unable to implement the intelligence-sharing agreement between the Afghan intelligence agency, NDS and Pakistan’s ISI or stop his own spies and the Indian RAW from using the Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants and Baloch separatists to destabilise Pakistan. The blame-game must stop to overcome the trust-deficit as both Islamabad and Kabul share some of the blame for the deterioration in their relations.