WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has reached out to India seeking an enhanced role for New Delhi, especially in the economic field to bring peace and stability in Afghanistan. “We appreciate India's important contributions to stability in Afghanistan, but India makes billions of dollars in trade with the United States, and we want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development,” Trump said.
The US President has cleared the path for the deployment of thousands of US troops to Afghanistan, backtracking from his promise to swiftly end the battle. In his first formal address to the nation as commander-in-chief, Trump put aside his previous criticism of the 16 year old war as a waste of time and money, admitting that things looked different from “behind the desk in the Oval Office”. He said his “instinct was to pull out”, but following months of discussion, he said he had concluded that the “consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable” and left a “vacuum” that terrorists “would instantly fill”.
The conflict that began in October 2001 as a hunt for the 9/11 attackers, has now turned into an effort to keep Afghan's divided and corruption-hindered democracy alive amid the Taliban insurgency. Trump warned that the approach would now be more pragmatic than idealistic. He also hinted that single-minded approach would extent to US relations with ally Pakistan that has often been criticised for links with terrorist groups and harbouring leading jihadists.
“We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. That will have to change and that will change immediately,” he said. He also warned that he could reduce security assistance for Pakistan unless it cooperates more in preventing militants from residing on its soil.
