United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that countries such as India, Iran and Russia will eventually have to step up their fight against terrorists in Afghanistan. He made the statement while lamenting that the US was left to deal with terrorists from nearly 7,000 miles away, and other countries were not doing enough, PTI reported.
“At a certain point Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, they are going to have to fight their battles too,” Trump told reporters at the White House, while answering questions about America’s plans to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Other nations would have to start fighting the militant group as the US does not want to “stay there for another 19 years”, the president said. United States soldiers have been in Afghanistan for 18 years now, since September 2001.
“Look, India is right there. They are not fighting it. We are fighting it,” he said. “Pakistan is right next door. They are fighting it very little. Very, very little. It’s not fair.”
It is unclear whether Trump has conveyed these new expectations to the countries that he claimed had to “start fighting” against terrorism in Afghanistan. However, according to the US president’s 2017 South Asia Strategy, India’s role in conflict-ridden Afghanistan was aimed at reconstruction and development. India was not expected to engage in combat operations in the region, according to Hindustan Times.
Trump on Wednesday also added that thousands of ISIS fighters were in the custody of the United States and that Europe should take them. “We’ve got thousands of them and now as usual our allies say, ‘no, we don’t want them’, even though they came from France and Germany and other places,” Trump added. “So we’re going to tell them – and we have already told them – take these prisoners that we’ve captured because the United States is not going to put them in Guantanamo for the next 50 years and pay for it.”
The Islamic State has been gaining force in Afghanistan. At least 63 people died and 182 were injured in an explosion at at wedding in Afghanistan capital Kabul on August 18. A day later, on the country’s Independence Day, a series of 10 explosions in and around Jalalabad city injured at least 66 people. The attacks occurred amid peace talks between the United States and members of the Taliban terror group in Qatar. The discussions are aimed at ending the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.
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