WASHINGTON, AUG 26 (DNA) – Trump’s speech, which asked India to ‘help more’ with Afghanistan, amounted to calling for calm while also setting the house on fire, If Donald Trump had read this anecdote from a book by a former British Army Officer, the Afghan strategy he laid out on Monday might have been different.

In 2011, an American general in Helmand a province in southern Afghanistan brought together a group of village elders to win them over to the coalition cause. After the elders voiced their concerns, it was time for him to respond. He stood up and said: “Over the last thirty years, Afghanistan has been plagued by Mujahedin…I am here to clear them from the country.”

At this point the mood in the room changed and a frenzied chatter broke out. Why?

Many of the village elders, the very people the general was so keen to win over, were the ex-Mujahedin. A similar ignorance of local dynamics was on display again in Trump’s speech.

There were at least two clear changes in the new Trump strategy for Afghanistan. First, Trump put all tact aside and rebuked Pakistan in the most stinging terms, saying the US would no longer allow it to provide a “safe havens for terrorists.” The second change was a surprising call for India to do more in Afghanistan. On this he said, “we want [India] to help us more with Afghanistan.”

President Trump may not have realised this, but these two policies directly contradict each other. In fact, applying both policies in the same strategy shows a dangerous lack of awareness of why Pakistan has been playing both sides by supporting NATO while simultaneously harbouring militant groups, including the Taliban’s powerful Haqqani network.=DNA

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