The US President’s remarks on Afghanistan and Kashmir drew sharp responses from New Delhi, Kabul and even the Taliban
For long after he is gone, American history would be much richer and funnier in likely uncharitable anecdotes attributable to the present occupant of the White House Donald Trump.
As far as South Asia is concerned, the past week would go down as a memorable one with President Trump and his amazing propensity to put his foot in his mouth.
And now the Afghans have taken rightful umbrage.
The office of the Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani put out a polite but stern release Tuesday: “The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan calls for clarification on the US President’s statements expressed at a meeting with the Pakistan prime minister, via diplomatic means and channels… The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate.”
It all happened in a joint briefing after President Trump and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s meeting in Washington on Monday, July 22.
“I could win that war (in Afghanistan) in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people… If I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone. It would be over, literally, in 10 days… I don’t want to go that route,” Trump told reporters.
It drew a response from the Taliban too, that unsurprisingly harped on history, alluding to the failed efforts of the Mongols, the British and the Soviet Union to conquer the country. “On the contrary, their Empires were wiped off the face of this earth but the Afghan nation proudly endured and will continue to endure, live and remain proud, Allah willing.”
And then, Trump dropped the Kashmir bombshell.
“I was with Prime Minister Modi two weeks ago, and we talked about the subject. And he actually said, ‘would you like to be a mediator, or arbitrator’, and I said ‘where?’, and he said ‘Kashmir’, because this has been going on for many, many years,” Trump told reporters.
Trump would have been referring to his meeting with PM Narendra Modi in Osaka, Japan, on the sidelines of the G20 Summit last month. On Kashmir, the Indian stand has been consistent—Kashmir is a bilateral issue with no scope for third party involvement. In effect, what Trump said would amount to a big negation of everything India had stood for and maintained.
“The Americans always have a plan for everything, I really doubt if Trump just blurted out on Kashmir, there can and would be a plan,” a senior Indian bureaucrat said during a private chat on Tuesday evening. But the official’s hint of a possible grand US scheme soon came a cropper. In no time, US State Department officials and India’s South Block officials were scampering back to their records to be doubly sure.
