{"id":2006,"date":"2017-04-30T00:13:50","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T00:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=2006"},"modified":"2017-04-30T00:13:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T00:13:50","slug":"trump-administration-determined-to-take-regional-look-at-afghanistan-pakistan-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2017\/04\/30\/trump-administration-determined-to-take-regional-look-at-afghanistan-pakistan-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DETERMINED TO TAKE REGIONAL LOOK AT AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN ISSUE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sourced : Live Mint<\/p>\n

By Lalit K Jha<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is determined to take a regional perspective on the Afghan- Pakistan issue, the White House said on Thursday, noting that the previous regimes have \u201cnot done enough\u201d to address the challenges in the war-torn country.<\/p>\n

The White House is currently in the middle of a review of its Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, which is expected to be ready before the NATO Summit in Brussels in about a months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

Early this week, US defence secretary James Mattis made an unscheduled trip to Afghanistan, the first member of President Donald Trump\u2019s Cabinet to visit Kabul. His Afghanistan trip was preceded by that of the national security advisor Lt Gen H.R. McMaster who also travelled to Pakistan and India.<\/p>\n

While on the face of it the Trump administration seems to be focused on North Korea and against the Islamic State terror group in the Middle East, it has not taken its eyes off Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Early this month, the US used the \u2018mother of all bombs\u2019 against ISIS hideouts in Afghanistan and has been holding an intense discussion with its allies on the current situation in Afghanistan. \u201cWe are in the midst of a policy review, so I don\u2019t really want to foreclose on any of the discussions we\u2019re going to have with the national security team and with the president,\u201d a senior Trump administration official told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve been able to do, though, is take a fresh look at a problem that we\u2019ve been engaged with for 15 years, and identify, really, and understand better how that conflict has evolved in Afghanistan and evolved in Pakistan, as well,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re determined to do is to take a regional perspective, a regional look at the problem, and to make sure that we\u2019re integrating again all of our efforts. What we found is that often what\u2019s been consistent in recent years is that we\u2019ve often done just enough in Afghanistan to avoid failure, but maybe not done enough. And when I say enough, I don\u2019t mean scale of effort as much of integration of our efforts to succeed,\u201d said the official who requested anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other critical thing that we\u2019ve looked at is that our approach to regional aspects of the problem has to change, because we\u2019ve taken a consistent approach, for example, to the regional dimensions of the problem, and haven\u2019t really seen improvements in assistance from others and efforts to address the problem in Afghanistan more effectively,\u201d the official noted.<\/p>\n

He, however, did not, identify the regional players who have not been able to help the US in this regard. \u201cSo what we\u2019ve done is really looked at opportunities to better connect what we\u2019re doing militarily in Afghanistan, which involves a very significant counterterrorism effort that was highlighted by recent operations against ISIS Khorasan in the far eastern part of the country, in Nangarhar Province,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery effective operations that have resulted in the destruction of a large percentage of that enemy force, and an enemy that is an ISIS enemy, but we\u2019ve identified, really, overlap with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan groups, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups there. So it\u2019s a counterterrorism effort, certainly,\u201d the official said in response to a question.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, oftentimes, what hasn\u2019t happened is a very strong connection between that military effort and political efforts and diplomatic efforts, and so forth. And so that\u2019s what we\u2019re endeavoring to do with this review, is to create options that produce a better-integrated effort and a more effective effort,\u201d said the senior administration official.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sourced : Live Mint By Lalit K Jha The Trump administration is determined to take a regional perspective on the Afghan- Pakistan issue, the White House said on Thursday, noting that the previous regimes have \u201cnot done enough\u201d to address the challenges in the war-torn country. The White House is currently in the middle of… Continue reading TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DETERMINED TO TAKE REGIONAL LOOK AT AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN ISSUE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[513,252,66,636,579,641],"class_list":["post-2006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conflict","tag-afghanistan","tag-middle-east","tag-nato","tag-north-korea","tag-pakistan","tag-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2008,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions\/2008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}