COMPARISONS are odious. Still when Europe celebrated early this week the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought of the border at Wagha, drawn more than 62 years ago. It has no wall. Yet it is difficult to scale it because its brick and mortar is that of distrust and bias. The Berlin Wall was built to separate the two Germanys. It was a forced division. In the case of India and Pakistan, the partition came about after a willing compromise. Still the fact remains that the wall stands between the two countries to remind people how they have wasted some six decades in hating each other and in letting the opportunity for development together go by.

Founders of the two countries wanted relations to be friendly and amicable. Mahatma Gandhi told the Indians that he would go and live at Karachi. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said that Pakistan and India would be like Canada and America and have the same proximity and easy travel and trade as the later had. Both the founders have been betrayed.

Liberals and intellectuals on either side should assess what they have lost and what is still achievable. We, nicknamed as peace knickers, have hit a plateau and we find it difficult to move further. We go over the same exercise when we meet at seminars or colloquiums. We express lofty thoughts and we feel good in ventilating them. Yet we have made little progress because those who enjoy power find it beneficial if the two countries do not go ahead politically, economically or socially. One leading Pakistani businessman, recently in India, said that Pakistan had been stumped by the fauji (military) and India by netas (leaders).

The common man, groaning under the burden of rising price and lessening income, has no reprieve from the anti-propaganda doled out day in and day out. He is fed up with the same slogans and shibboleths raised 60 years to instill in the public mind that the enemy lived across the border and should not be trusted. The media has been a willing partner to spread hatred and venom. I am more concerned about the youth which in India is getting indifferent to Pakistan.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at Srinagar a few days ago that India was willing to have talks with Pakistan and laid down no conditions, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gillani should have picked up the telephone to request him to fix the date for talks. Instead, Pakistan Home Minister Rehman Malik said that India was behind the Taliban. The evidence produced was a few India-marked arms, which are available anywhere, and "a stack of currency notes" sent to Baluchistan. How does New Delhi gain by backing the Taliban who have said that India was their next target?

On the other hand, Pakistan has little to show on the action it has taken on the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack even after one year. The case has been adjourned on one reason or another. True, the court cannot be harried. But does it explain all the delay? The latest is the plot unearthed by FBI. National Defence College at Delhi was sought to be attacked by Pakistan expatriates David Coleman Headley and Tashawar Hussain Rana. Manmohan Singh was justified in complaining that Pakistan never informed India about the plot. The disclosure by former president General Pervez Mushraff that ISI had a hand in every act of violence is, indeed, disconcerting.

True, Pakistan is in the midst of a do-or-die struggle. It needs all the help and understanding. Yet it has not yet realized that it can face the situation more firmly and confidently by making up with India. And this is not possible until Islamabad stops behaving as if India is its enemy. Fortunes of the two are so inter-linked with each other, as Manmohan Singh says, again and again that they have no go from friendship. This means that they have to cover the journey to the future together. Both have at least 70 per cent of their population extremely poor, hardly affording two square meals. They have a long way to go.

Often it is said that India must solve Kashmir first. New Delhi has said many a time that it wants to have a peaceful settlement. But Kashmir is not the cause but a consequence. There is so much suspicion piled up against each other that even if you were to solve Kashmir, there would be another Kashmir unless the mistrust goes.

It is contended in Pakistan again and again that India does not regard Kashmir as a disputed territory. When New Delhi talks on Kashmir it concedes the point without spelling it out. After all, it does not hold talks on Tamil Nadu, West Bengal or Kerala. India has said many a time that the Kashmir question is yet to be settled. The official-inspired meetings to discuss Kashmir indicate that New Delhi wants a settlement with all the elements sooner than later. However, Pakistan must know that the Indian polity cannot go through another partition and that too on the basis of religion.

  The priority of the two countries should be to have an accord on Afghanistan. With Abdullah Abdullah withdrawing from the contest for presidentship because of rigged polling, the country’s leadership has got ruptured. Even a united Afghanistan is not strong enough to confront the Taliban. The divided one has no chance.

New Delhi and Islamabad may be able to bring the divided leaders together, including Gulbadin Hikmtayar or who is Pakistan’s prodigy. America’s stake in Afghanistan is only to the extent of fighting against Al-Qaida and the Taliban. India and Pakistan have a long-term interest in Afghanistan. They should help the country become strong so that it can fight against the forces of terrorism on its own.

Sooner or later, America and Europe are going to withdraw from the area. Both India and Pakistan need to chalk out a policy where there is no vacuum like the past when America left all of sudden and did not even collect the arms which the Taliban used to come to power. A joint India-Pakistan policy on Afghanistan, if reached, will lead to many things. It will give Pakistan access to the markets beyond Afghanistan and, more importantly, the Indian markets. Confidence between the two will bring about that.