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Pakistan patches up relations with both India and Afghanistan. Regional peace will depend on what happens next Dec 10th 2015 | ISLAMABAD | Asia

THERE were doubts until almost the last minute about whether the top-billed guests would turn up at a diplomatic conference in Islamabad on December 9th to discuss peace in Afghanistan. Both Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan and co-host of the “Heart of Asia” conference, and Sushma Swaraj, the Indian foreign minister, had reasons to keep their distance: both believe Pakistan stays at the heart of their problems by harbouring, or even directing, the violent groups that attack them.

India is outraged by, among other things, the fact that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the presumed operational mastermind of the jihadist attacks on Mumbai that killed 166 people in November 2008, was released on bail in April. Mr Ghani, for his part, has little to show for his conciliatory policy towards Pakistan, the historic foe, which he undertook in the hope it would use its influence to rein in Taliban insurgency. Instead violence has risen sharply and become more brazen.

In the event, both turned up. Ms Swaraj was the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan since 2012. She told delegates it was time for India and Pakistan to display “the maturity and self-confidence to do business with each other and strengthen regional trade and co-operation”. At the end of a day of meetings, including a call on the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, she announced that Pakistan and India would restart talks on all outstanding disagreements, at a date yet to be announced.

Previous attempts to resume the process have been postponed repeatedly. The government of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, demanded that talks must be, first and foremost, about terrorism. Pakistan insisted that the status of the disputed territory of Kashmir could not be ignored. India also took umbrage at Pakistani officials’ habit of consulting Kashmiri groups before the talks. There could be not third parties, insisted Mr Modi. Nor could the talks take place in third countries.

But Mr Modi has compromised. The breakthrough came during a short conversation between Mr Modi and Mr Sharif on the margins of the Paris climate-change talks. Within days, their national-security advisers met in Bangkok, paving the way for Ms Swaraj’s visit. She has agreed to a “comprehensive bilateral dialogue” that includes the discussion of Kashmir, thereby resuming a process that had been broken off since 2012.

The reasons for Mr Modi’s change of heart are unclear. One factor, some think, may be the politics of the wider region. Mr Modi is committed to attending a summit in Islamabad in September next year of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC), an eight-country grouping; its rules state that all decisions must be taken by unanimity, so the summit would have been cancelled if Mr Modi had not patched things up with Pakistan by then. Another reason may be Western pressure, particularly from America, which has long worried about the lack of dialogue between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

Mr Ghani is under intense pressure at home over his strategy, launched immediately after he came to office in September 2014, of compromising with Pakistan. He has stopped publicly complaining about Pakistan, agreed to long-standing demands for Afghan cadets to be sent for training at Pakistan’s officer academy and signed a hugely controversial intelligence-sharing deal with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Afghanistan’s spy chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, who was deeply unhappy about the collaboration (and has been blamed for failing to halt the spread of Taliban violence), resigned a day after the latest “Heart of Asia” summit.

Mr Ghani was warned by politicians at home not to smile when he came to Islamabad. But he could not help himself, such was the ceremony lavished upon him. He was met at the airport by the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistani military chiefs and a 21-gun salute--far in excess of the protocol he expected. He left with promises from Pakistan, China and America that all efforts would be made to restart a dialogue between representatives of the Taliban leadership and the Afghan government.

This will return the situation to the position of last summer, when Pakistan used its clout over the insurgency to organise a meeting near Islamabad on July 7th. That breakthrough came to nothing after it was revealed that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s storied leader, had been dead for two years. Further talks were called off and a firestorm of violence erupted inside Afghanistan as Omar’s former deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, attempted to assert control. Many Afghans, though, suspect Pakistan of fuelling the fire to punish Afghanistan for leaking the news of Omar’s death.

For all the positive mood in Islamabad, few have much hope that this latest round of talks with India, if they are held, will settle a dispute that dates back to the partition of British-ruled India in 1947. And Mr Ghani left Islamabad far warier of his hosts than he had been after his first diplomatic offensive in Islamabad in November 2014.

Nevertheless it was a good day for Mr Sharif, a businessman-cum-politician more interested in trading with neighbouring countries than in the army’s traditional obsession with extending its influence in Afghanistan (and curbing its territorial claims to parts of Pakistan), confronting India and preventing its dominance of the region.

But Mr Sharif now has to deliver on promises that are in the exclusive gift of the country’s powerful security establishment. A key concession made to Ms Swaraj in Islamabad was a commitment to bring to a speedy end the glacially slow trial of the Mumbai plotters. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Kashmir-focused jihadist group that carried out the attack, has long been allied to Pakistan’s deep security state, which may not yet be ready to give up its asset. Even the decision to improve trade by reciprocating the “most favoured nation” status that India applies to goods from Pakistan – nominally a civilian responsibility – has been repeatedly put off amid opposition from the army.

Moreover, it will be Pakistan’s powerful spooks who must deliver the Taliban to the peace table. Pakistan has repeatedly told the Afghans it lacks influence over the whole of the Taliban movement and will not use force to compel them to negotiate. The insurgency is now badly split; one well-placed official in Kabul estimates that Mullah Mansour has lost control of 40% of the movement (unconfirmed reports say he was injured in a recent shootout with rivals). It was noticeable that the summit’s final statement talked of facilitating talks with “Taliban groups” rather than a single body. Reducing violence and bringing stability to the region will require much more than diplomatic niceties.