India should have had dialogue with Taliban, says Owaisi

TIL Desk/National/Hyderabad/ India should have had a dialogue with Taliban but the Narendra Modi government wasted seven years and failed to read what was happening in Afghanistan, said AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday.

The Hyderabad MP said now that Taliban is in complete control of full Afghanistan, but India has no communication or talks with them. He said all international security experts had suggested that India should have dialogue with Taliban. “India should have had a dialogue. We should have opened some sort of informal or formal talks with Taliban. We lost time. For last seven years Modi government failed to read what was happening,” he told reporters.

He pointed out that India spent $3 billion on reconstruction of Afghanistan. It constructed Afghan Parliament building which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi with then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Salama dam was built with India’s money while scholarships were given for Afghan students who came to India. Owaisi said the serious worry for India were many ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan.

“Al Qaeda and ISIS have moved their core headquarters and shifted recruitment from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan. Jaish-e-Mohammed has now entrenched in Helmand area. All security experts have said this.” He recalled that when he had raised the issue in Parliament, he was criticised and scoffed at for advocating dialogue with Taliban.