Afghan cease fire ends after Afghanistan refuses to release Taliban prisoners.

Taliban fighters and civilians celebrate the cease fire. BBC. 

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have failed, with the Taliban resuming attacks. BBC. The sticking point was a Taliban demand to release 5,000 prisoners, which the Afghan government rejected. The Taliban just signed an agreement with the United States that was intended to reduce violence and facilitate a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Despite the Afghans disagreement with the Taliban, the Taliban will not target US troops. So far there hasn't been a major uptick in violence and US plans for withdrawing troops are still going ahead.

My Comment:

Just a quick update to earlier news. It looks like the Afghan government has failed to keep the peace here. This could quickly cause the deal with the United States and the Taliban to fall apart. If a large amount of violence happens than the United States will probably pull out, and it will certainly happen if US troops are targeted. 

However, I don't know if that will happen or not. The Taliban have specifically said that they will not attack international troops. So technically they haven't broken the cease fire deal yet and may not do so in the future. Our deal with the Taliban is about our troops, not the Afghan government. 

I do think it's pretty dumb to not give into the Taliban's demands here. A prisoner exchange would be a good faith measure and I think it would be a good gesture to release some prisoners. I think the numbers are a bit out of control, 5000 is half of them, but if they even released a small number, like 100 or so, they could probably pull things back from the brink. 

This isn't great news though. I was really hoping that we could pull out of Afghanistan. As of this writing we haven't pulled out of the deal and the pullback is on schedule, but things could fall apart very quickly. I hope that the deal works out in the end and we can finally end America's longest war.