But while traveling to Kabul, Mattis told reporters there were signs elements of the
Taliban were interested in negotiations.
The US administration, however, seems to be divided in their response to the
Taliban peace overtures.
The timing of the
Taliban overture was profoundly significant.
A spokesperson for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said while the government had encouraged the
Taliban to talk, the attacks in
The
Taliban said the attacks were a message to Trump that his policy of aggression would not work.
During its formation in the early 1990s, the
Taliban successfully transcended tribal and cultural norms, representing a strict form of Sunni Islam based on Deobandi doctrine, a dogmatic form of Islam originating in northern India that reinforces a conservative Islamic ethical code.
In 2010 the Obama administration poured more American soldiers in Afghanistan, taking the surge to one hundred thousand in a bid to stop the
Taliban making headway.
In 1998, a small
Taliban unit entered the Iranian consulate in Mazari Sharif, Afghanistan's third largest city, and rounded up and butchered nine Iranian diplomats.
The
Taliban claimed the death was a retribution for the recent assassination of one of its leaders.
In an audio posted on the
Taliban website, he also expressed condolences to the
Taliban Rabari Shura or leadership council over the death of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
A local elder Jehanzeb Burki says that the Gulzar-e-Hijri was a perfect house for the
Taliban leader because despite being a mix neighborhood it was not a strange place for the people wearing same outfits as that of the person believed to be
Taliban leader.
As there was no progress on any of these demands, it was felt that the
Taliban may not join the peace process being brokered by the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) with representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US.
