After Deadly Attack, Trump Cancels Afghan Peace Talks

US President Donald Trump has cancelled peace talks with Taliban, after the group claimed responsibility for an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. “Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday,” Trump tweeted late Saturday night. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “in order to build false leverage, [the Taliban] admitted to an attack…that killed one of our great great [American] soldiers, and 11 other people.” If true, the meeting could have marked the first time that Taliban officials had sat around the negotiating table with counterparts from the Afghan government. To date, the Taliban has refused to engage diplomatically with President Ahsraf Ghani’s administration, which it views as American puppet. President Trump noted that if the Taliban was unable to maintain a cease-fire during months-long talks with the US conducted in Qatar, “then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?” President Trump questioned. The Taliban, which currently controls more territory in Afghanistan than at any point since shortly after the 2001 US military invasion, last week launched assaults on two northern Afghan cities in addition to carrying out another suicide bombing in the capital Kabul.