US President Donald Trump has declared that he will resolve the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan “very quickly”, which last week experienced a serious wave of armed clashes on the border.
“I will solve it very quickly,” Trump said during a speech at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which is being held from today to Tuesday in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. The American president boasted of having stopped eight wars during his second term and said that “only one remains”, the conflict between Islamabad and Kabul.
“I know them both. The field marshal (Asim Munir, Pakistan’s chief of staff) and the prime minister (Shehbaz Sharif) are fantastic people and I have no doubt that we will achieve this goal quickly,” Trump added. “I feel like it’s something I can do,” the US leader underlined.
Representatives of the Pakistani government and the de facto Afghan government met yesterday in Istanbul to discuss possible solutions to the crisis, currently suspended at a military level following the ceasefire reached by the two countries in Doha on 19 October, with the mediation of Qatar and Turkey. However, the positions of Islamabad and Kabul remain firm. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has warned the Taliban of the possibility of “open war” if bilateral peace talks fail. For their part, the Taliban have made it clear that the Doha ceasefire does not mean that Afghanistan accepts the Durand Line as its official border with Pakistan. This porous border, drawn by the British Empire in 1893, delimits the current territories of the two states for more than 2,600 kilometers and has been a constant source of tension. In addition to the border disputes, Islamabad accuses Kabul of having offered refuge on its territory to members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), i.e. the Pakistani Taliban – ideological brothers of the Afghan fundamentalists – who, according to the Islamabad government, carry out terrorist acts in the North-West of the country. Kabul denies these accusations.