Dear Presidents Bush and Putin,

You have much in common. Still young, you both possess great power. You are both new leaders of great countries in critical times. And you seem to like, if not quite trust, each other.

Two more parallels: First, for nearly half a century your nations were each other’s bitterest rivals. Cold War misgivings linger still. Second, your two countries now have the same special obligation whose fulfillment, as it happens, will serve both your nations’ interests. Your task: To take the lead in re-constructing Afghanistan. Your opportunity: To create the Bush-Putin Plan.

Separately, your people are already on the ground. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Kabul on Jan. 18 and told the Afghans, “We will be with you in this current crisis and for the future.” One day later Russians helped re-open the Salang Pass tunnel (world’s highest at 11,034 feet) which links Afghanistan’s north and south. That’s as it should be, but why work separately?

As this letter outlines, three great things can be accomplished by working together in your former battleground. For starters, however, you both have to fess up.

Confession is good for the immortal soul but hard for proud superpowers, whether they be current (America) or once-and-future (Russia). But consider how frank admission has helped impoverished, unstable South Africa. Under the leadership of moral giants like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has done much to clear the psychological ground for reconstruction. What works within a country can work between countries … and also for the benefit of another country, in this case much-aggrieved Afghanistan. So here, Messrs. President, are two hard Afghan truths – one for each of your great countries. Acknowledge them, and you too may someday approach Mandela-Tutu stature

First the hard Russian truth. Your country, President Putin, utterly devastated Afghanistan. Heartland of the then-Soviet Union, Russia crossed the Oxus River in 1979 and stayed for a disastrous decade. Your Vietnam was even worse for the Afghans: close to Armageddon. Half the pre-war population was killed or maimed and/or displaced. We’ll never know exact victim figures. The world still does not know all the gory details of Soviet-perpetrated terror – in part because, being state-hired and inspired, its soldiers were not called terrorists.

Since precise statistics of Soviet havoc are unavailable, here’s one small, non-fatal, but still-awful story. Still with me, President Putin? I like your no-flinch look, by the way. This tale – far from the most horrific available, but known first-hand to me – would make lesser eyes than yours turn away.

Midway into Moscow’s horrendous “mission of friendly assistance,” a man named Ahmad Ali was found in possession of decades-old certificates from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ahmad Ali had worked as an Afghan army construction foreman in cooperation with USAID programs in southern Afghanistan. At program’s end, all Afghan workers were given these mass-printed certificates of American appreciation. Ahmad Ali put these papers in a trunk … where they were found years later by agents of KHAD, the Soviet-trained and supported Afghan communist secret police. Known to have arthritis, Ahmad Ali was kept outside in a ditch full of water from November to March. He soon lost all feeling in his legs, then all use of them … and thus had to be dragged by a rope tied to his wrists behind a Russian vehicle over stony winter ground to his interrogation sessions. One minor sample, President Putin, of what your folks did in Afghanistan. Your country, Mr. President, owes Afghanistan big-time.

This story has further chapters, and these are for President Bush. Chapter 2: Ahmad Ali lived, was eventually released, and – after several years of scuttling like a crab – came to the United States for a simultaneous double hip transplant performed pro-bono by a generous American surgeon at a generous American hospital. Your father, George H.W. Bush, was president at the time. His belief in volunteerism was borne out by this second chapter of Ahmad Ali’s story. Here, indeed, is Bush-ism at its best. Chapter 3, sadly, offers less chance for self-congratulation.

While often heart-warming and sometimes useful, volunteerism is no substitute for public policy. During the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and William Clinton there was, in effect, no coherent U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. Certainly there was no constructive priority for a people who, more than any other in terms of proportionate suffering, had done the hard work and won the Cold War. No allies in American history were braver and more determined. Your country and mine, President Bush, then abandoned them to the tender mercies of Pakistan’s ISI, their own vicious warlords, and finally the Taliban and al-Qaida. As a Pentagon official recently explained it to me, “We had other things on our plate.”

There wasn’t much on Ahmad Ali’s plate. Back in Pakistan as a refugee, he was offered this three course meal: 1) Further deterioration of his already devastated country; 2) Drastic reduction of outside assistance to Afghan refugees; and 3) Maturation of his children into a millennium without prospects. America stood by: sometimes shaking hands with ISI and the Taliban, sometimes wringing its hands in cheap and empty disapproval. Our country, Mr. President, owes Afghanistan big-time.

These are the sources of obligation, Presidents Bush and Putin. Own up to them, get to work, and you can do three great things.

First the obvious goal: You can rebuild Afghanistan and restore to its people the wherewithal for dignified, meaningful life. Price tag? We don’t yet know just how much. A January 21-22 international conference in Tokyo will assess needs and approximate costs. But don’t get stuck on sticker shock. Afghans will, as before, do most of the heavy lifting with their customary resourcefulness. Their needs are enormous, but so is their energy and imagination. And remember: Dignity and meaning in Afghanistan have never been hi-tech. They need security, government salaries, and basic infrastructure. Help them achieve these three conditions … and then make way for the children of Ahmad Ali.

The patriarch died in August 2000. Two sons – by virtue of hard work, some ex-pat assistance, and (they would say) the grace of God – went to the United States on scholarships. One of these, now a Baltimore lawyer, is founding the University of Central Afghanistan. His younger brother, now a sophomore at the University of Chicago, was mentioned in the previous column for beginning, while 17 years old, a school for girls despite Taliban opposition. One day he’ll make a fine minister of education. Their sister is already at work in the Afghan hinterlands with the Spanish branch of Doctors Without Borders. If these people and their country don’t deserve our help, Presidents Bush and Putin, please tell us who does.

National interest, we realize, takes precedence over Good Works. Reasons nos. 2 and 3 for the Bush-Putin Plan offer exactly such incentives.

Its second goal is the enhancement of American and Russian credibility within the Muslim world. Both your countries, admit it or not, have serious problems with Islam. You seem locked into deeply adversarial relations with Muslims in Palestine (President Bush) and Chechnya (President Putin). Islamist terrorists point to these positions, among others, in their efforts to demonize the West and recruit suicide bombers. Leadership in rebuilding Afghanistan – along Afghan Muslim lines – would go far to shatter the stereotypes on which men like Osama bin Laden depend for support.

A third goal of the Bush-Putin Plan takes us to history books … and here the two of you had little in common as schoolboys. Specifically you read very different accounts of how and why the Cold War started after World War II. History books have always been partisan, but in retrospect both sides now realize this much: That the reconstruction of post-war Europe marked a key point of separation for the two new superpowers. America’s Marshall Plan led to one socio-economic model which then took military form in NATO. Russia and its USSR went another route and constructed the Warsaw Pact. Rebuilding Europe separately led to decades of Cold War build-up.

You can do better. The Bush-Putin Plan can rebuild Afghanistan, rebuild Western credibility with the Muslim world, and rebuild trust between two men – and two countries – with much in common. Your Plan can and should solicit help from others. But you, Presidents Bush and Putin, must take the lead.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.