Pakistan and Afghanistan are doing the fandango once more. This is nothing new. Yet in this latest dance-off, Pakistan may want to rethink linking the reopening of the border crossing to Kabul handing over 76 of its most wanted militants. Islamabad believes groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar – the group behind numerous deadly attacksand which has claimed moral support for the Islamic State – enjoy safe-havens inside Afghanistan. We have been here before. During the Musharraf-Karzai years, it was Kabul that routinely accused Islamabad of doing the same for the Afghan Taliban. The contention was that those networks were using Pakistani soil to launch attacks back across the border at the international forces stationed in Afghanistan. Less than a year after NATO and the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Forces left Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghaniappealed to the Russian Bear to step in and help him flush out a resurgent Al Qaeda and an emerging Islamic State. Meaning that after 13 long years of war in Afghanistan – Kabul was seeking the help of those godless Russians in eradicating the legacy of Islamist militancy left behind by the American democracy project. Pakistan must now play its part. The longer the border remainsclosed the greater the risk of humanitarian crisis. Already the Afghan Chamber of Commerce has estimated that traders from both sides are incurring losses of up to $4 million per day. With 80 percent of those borne by Pakistan. Afghanistan is threatening to airlift its citizens out of the country. Again we have been here before, sort of. In the first few days of Operation Enduring Freedom, Gen Musharraf is said to have asked President Bush, who had control of Afghan airspace, to open up the air corridor so that all Pakistani intelligence agents could be recovered. According to accounts from the Northern Alliance as well as US Special Operation Forces who were on the ground at the time – extra ‘cargo’ was loaded on to the plane in the form of a few hundred Al Qaeda members. Both sides must refrain from returning to this era. The way forward is to recognise that there is no honest broker in resolving this systematic cycle of distrust and recrimination. Islamabad and Kabul will have to do this themselves. If they don’t they will find themselves caught in a landslide with no escape from reality, as the song goes. *