THE other day, the Independent of London carried a story containing the charge that Pakistan had given Taliban fighters the batteries needed to make their portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles operational.

These weapons played havoc with Soviet helicopter gunships and are thought to be largely responsible for Moscow’s defeat in the Afghan war. If the allegation is true, it marks a clear and undesirable worsening of ties between the two neighbours. But given the barrage of charges and counter-charges flying between Kabul and Islamabad, it is difficult to know what is true and what is hostile propaganda.

Why are the two countries, linked so closely by history, culture and geography, now at loggerheads? The immediate cause for the tension is Kabul’s perception that Gen Musharraf is not doing enough to stop the cross-border attacks being launched by the Taliban into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But Hamid Karzai is well aware of the difficulties involved in interdicting incursions across the porous border. The terrain is mountainous, with few roads. But more than the physical difficulties, the tribal code of honour erects a shield that is difficult to penetrate. During their occupation, the Soviets did their best to block the mujahideen’s infiltration, but without much success.

In his defence, Gen Musharraf has pointed to the fact that he has put 80,000 Pakistani troops on the border, and in harm’s way. Several hundred have died in short, intense fire-fights with the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements, as well as with their Pakistani supporters. The Pakistani president has often urged his Afghan and American critics to put their troops where their mouths are, and station more units on the frontier.

There are times when you get what you desire, and you wish you hadn’t. This might be one of those occasions: in a couple of months, 3,000 British troops will move into Helmand province, across the border from Balochistan. This is one of the most lawless areas of Afghanistan, with drug barons and warlords ruling the roost. Kabul’s authority is a distant rumour, and cross-border movement by drug smugglers, gun-runners and terrorists takes place with very little interference from either state.

Once the British soldiers start taking casualties, pressure from London as well as Washington will start building up for Gen. Musharraf to stop attacks launched from Pakistani soil. He will then have to tell them what Gen. Zia once used to tell Moscow: you try and stop the infiltration on your side. But resisting Soviet pressure when you have the world’s most powerful country on your side is one thing; telling your allies to push off is quite another.

The truth is that relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have seldom been warm. The latter opposed Pakistan’s entry into the United Nations in 1947 as it did not accept the Durand Line as the border between the two countries. This line, drawn by the British in the 19th century, pushed the boundary from Attock to the tribal areas. Ever since then, Kabul has harboured a grudge.

But Pakistanis had hoped that after the Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan would be grateful to its neighbour for harbouring three million refugees, including Hamid Karzai’s family. However, this proved to be wishful thinking. Islamabad backed the most retrogressive Afghan elements before and during the civil war that broke out after the Soviet pullout. Both the Northern Alliance and educated Afghans were particularly aggrieved by Islamabad’s support of the mediaeval Taliban who brought their country to the edge of ruin.

Indeed, the shelter they provided to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda invited American attack and western occupation. Now as Kabul struggles to reconstruct a shattered country, it sees its efforts to restore peace being blocked by the support it believes Islamabad giving the Taliban.

One reason is the chimera of ‘strategic depth’ our generals have long pursued in Afghanistan. Viewing Pakistan’s narrow waist as a nightmare in a conflict with India, they have sought to gain guaranteed access for their forces on our neighbour’s territory. For this, they need a friendly, if not pliant, regime in Kabul. Hence their earlier support for Pushtun warlords like Gulbudin Hikmatyar, and later for the Taliban.

Then there is the natural sympathy for fellow Pushtoons among our own army and bureaucracy, which contain many people from the Frontier province in their ranks. Political parties, too, and especially the Islamic ones, have many senior Pushtoon leaders. And of course tribesmen openly shelter and support their cousins from across the border. This web of relationships and blood-ties makes it natural for a pro-Pushtoon bias to lodge deep in Islamabad’s policies towards Kabul.

But do sympathetic tendencies have to translate into intrusive meddling in our neighbour’s affairs as Karzai alleges? There might have been a change of policy in Islamabad after 9/11, but this may not meant a change of heart. Our generals may still continue to consider Afghanistan a backward vassal state. In his recent interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen Musharraf reminded Hamid Karzai of the debt he owed to Pakistan for his election to the presidency. The implication was that by not allowing the Taliban and their supporters to disrupt the polls, we had done Karzai and Afghanistan a big favour. But surely this is normal conduct between neighbours.

As it is, many Afghans view Pakistan’s role in their affairs with deep suspicion. And given our past record, one can hardly blame them. But with the arrival of a large contingent of western troops on our borders, and the keen interest being taken in developments in Afghanistan by the rest of the world, the reality is that we can no longer play the role of power-broker.

Not willing to trust Pakistan, the Afghans have encouraged India to invest in the infrastructure and in trade. Understandably, Islamabad views New Delhi’s influence in Kabul with considerable unease. Already, official spokesmen have accused the two states of dabbling in the troubled waters of Balochistan.

There is a need to reorient our attitude towards our neighbour. The question of cross-border infiltration is not about to go away. The drum-beat of allegations of Pakistani support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda will build up unless we do more to eliminate these elements from our soil. True, this is easier said than done. But as long as the anomaly of the virtually independent status of the tribal areas is not ended, problems along our border belt will continue to bedevil relations between the two states.