Stringer Asia Logo
Share on Google+
notizie del giorno
la notizia
Trump and the Afghan issue
  • Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with U.S. President Donald Trump
    Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with U.S. President Donald Trump
`President Trump makes it clear once and for all that our allies can not be friends of America by continuing to support or justify terror ... President Trump's strategy for South Asia, based on goals, assures all commanders the authority and resources needed to deny terrorists safe havens in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. ` The document, issued by the White house while Trump concluded the State of the Union speech, clarifies and reiterates the guidelines of Trump's strategy: a strategy that, according to Undersecretary of State John J. Sullivan is: `a regional strategy that focuses on improving the situation in Afghanistan but includes a broader regional approach that includes relations with Pakistan, India and other countries in the region. ` The document, issued immediately after the four attacks that in the last twelve days have brought Afghanistan back to the years of real war, clarifies beyond the words a fundamental point: the American troops are from now on authorized to make real and proper actions of war against terrorists wherever they are in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Not only that: it declares in fact the will to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield before forcing them to a possible table of negotiations with the official government of Kabul. And denies the statements made in recent days by various representatives of diplomacy or the American bureaucracy who reiterated the White House's willingness to sit at the negotiating table without conditions. The wave of attacks in recent days was also widely expected and predictable. And it was read all over the subcontinent in the same way: it is a reaction to the 'new' Afghan strategy but, above all, to the pressure exerted on Pakistan and the suspension of military aid to Islamabad. In the aftermath of the Intercontinental attack Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, said that the attack `presents many similarities with the Mumbai attack of 2008 and the 2014 Peshawar Army Public School` both made by Lashkar -i-Toiba protected by the army and services of Islamabad. The Lashkar-i-Toiba was also evoked after the attack on the military academy in Kabul, where the attackers were in possession, according to the cultural attaché of the Afghan embassy in the USA, of equipment supplied only to the military and distributed by the 'Isi ai Taliban and, in fact, to LiT. Two days later, a delegation from the Afghan government went to Islamabad with a list of terrorist names involved in the recent attacks. According to the statement by the Afghan interior minister Wais Ahmad Barmak, some of the suspects arrested in recent days would have declared that they had been trained by Lashkar-i-Toiba and the ISI and that the attacks were designed in Chaman, Balochistan. The delegation also provided the Pakistanis with a list of the madrassas involved. Barmak also said that the Taliban who claimed responsibility for the attack claim that the orders would come from Pakistan and that Afghanistan, if Pakistan does not cooperate, is ready to present evidence to the UN Security Council. Islamabad, for the time being, limits itself to following the usual - well established - strategy of denying even the evidence. It is timed to understand well how far the Trump administration is willing to push itself into the so-called new strategy for South Asia. So-called because in reality, at least up to now, both the true novelties and the strategy have been lacking. It is true that Trump, on the advice of his generals, has revoked the famous withdrawal date of the troops naively given by Obama and intends to send to other 4000 men in Afghanistan to 'finish the job', but it is also true that these measures -sampling and nothing else. The strategy, for the time being, still follows the lines dictated by George W. Bush: threatening Pakistan to neutralize the Taliban and put an end to the war. Strategy that has not worked in the last fifteen years and will continue to fail until the pressure on Pakistan is real. Repeating the same action expecting different results is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia: continuing to threaten Islamabad without going through the facts, expecting that finally someone is afraid and decides to adapt to the will of Washington is pure madness. In all these years the Afghan situation has been discussed and dissected in half the world and in all its aspects: the most accredited theories, the enlightened ones, talked about nation-building and the peace process, without paying any attention to the fact that we can not building a nation while at war and that peace processes begin when the aforementioned war is over. Result: the Taliban, according to the latest estimates, are in control of about 70% of Afghanistan, Kabul is a city under siege, crime and drug trafficking flourish as never before, the Taliban have splitted into groups and sub-groups making it quite complicated to find a credible interlocutor. The Islamic State also appeared in its local avatars of Daesh and Khorasan: avatars that respond, however, according to the Afghans and according to some analysts, not to the Islamic State but to the Pakistani ISI. The umpteenth proxies of Islamabad to ensure the control of the territory and of an eventual and more distant process of peace. Keeping hell in the streets of Afghan cities and countries would be the only way for Pakistan to secure itself and always a leading place at the negotiating table and among the allies. What the United States can not or do not want to understand for a number of reasons, ranging from the close relationship between military and some service pieces to the good work of the Pakistani lobby in Washington aimed at making Islamabad appear as' the most dangerous state in the world 'that it is better to keep good, it is that America and Pakistan have different and often conflicting objectives regarding a possible solution of the Afghan conflict. The aim of the US is to find a solution to the Afghan conflict by involving as many regional actors as possible, or rather those regional actors who are comfortable in Washington, and returning home having `defeated terrorism`. To the Pakistanis to defeat terrorism it does not matter, on the contrary: of this and on this they live and prosper, and on this they count to regain control over Kabul and future governments that will no longer be chosen by the allies. And 'the famous theory of strategic depth that the ISI has never stopped fancing and that is convenient in this moment for China too. Elaborating strategies without taking this into account means having lost at the start. It remains to be seen whether the facts will be followed by the words of Trump and the White house, and if the measures and intentions declared will not only remain on paper. It remains to be seen, in essence, if The Donald and his are really capable of playing hard or if it is just the umpteenth script, like the famous `we'll bomb you back to Stone Age`.
Francesca Marino
@COOKIE1@
@COOKIE2@