Rising US deaths cloud peace outlook

A rash of American combat deaths in Afghanistan is putting a spotlight on a stalemated 17-year war that is testing President Donald Trump’s commitment to pursuing peace with the Taliban.

Trump has acknowledged that his original instinct was to withdraw from Afghanistan, but last week he suggested he is willing to stick it out, asserting that the US is in “very strong negotiations” - an apparent reference to US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad’s efforts to get the Taliban to agree to peace talks.

On the other hand, Trump indicated he had little confidence the talks are going to succeed.

“Maybe they’re not. Probably they’re not,” he said. The human cost of the conflict rarely makes headlines in the US, leaving Trump with political room to manoeuvre. But that might be changing.

In early November, Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, and a major in the Utah National Guard, was killed by an Afghan soldier in Kabul.

Last Saturday, Sgt Leandro Jasso, a 25-year-old Army Ranger from Leavenworth, Washington, was mortally wounded in southern Afghanistan. On Tuesday, US officials said they had determined that Jasso probably was accidentally shot by an Afghan soldier during battle with an al Qaeda fighter.

The US military headquarters in Kabul announced on Tuesday that three US service members were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, where the Taliban has been resurgent. It was the deadliest attack on US forces in Afghanistan this year.

The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan before US forces invaded in October 2001, carry out near-daily attacks on Afghan army and police forces. AP