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President Donald Trump speaks with the press near the South Lawn of the White House, Washington, D.C., September 9, 2019. /VCG Photo
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said that the peace talks with the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan are "dead".
"They are dead. As far as I am concerned, they are dead," Trump said at the White House about the long-running attempt to reach an agreement with the Taliban and withdraw U.S. troops from the country after years of war.
Over the weekend, Trump cancelled a secret plan to fly Taliban leaders in for direct talks at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington.
Driving another nail into the coffin of what had appeared to be nearly finalized negotiations, Trump said that a U.S. military onslaught on the guerrillas was back up at its fiercest in a decade.
"Over the last four days, we have been hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last ten years!" he wrote in a tweet.
An explosion is seen during heavy firing between the Taliban and Afghan government forces on the street in Kunduz, August 31, 2019. /VCG Photo
Until this weekend, there had been steadily mounting expectations of a deal that would see the U.S. draw down troop levels in Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban would offer security guarantees to keep extremist groups out.
But then on Saturday, Trump revealed that he had canceled an unprecedented meeting between the Taliban and himself at storied Camp David.
He said this was in retaliation for the killing of a U.S. soldier by the Taliban in a huge Kabul bomb blast last week.
The cancellation, which was announced on Twitter, was the first time most Americans learned that such a dramatic meeting was even planned.
Many in Washington were shocked and some got angry that the Taliban had been on the point of visiting the presidential retreat on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
A member of the Taliban negotiating team speaks on his phone outside the venue housing the talks between U.S. and Taliban negotiators in the Qatari capital Doha, August 29, 2019. /VCG Photo
A big part of Trump's 2016 election victory and subsequent first term in office has been his determination to keep the United States out of what he sees as unnecessary wars in Syria and other mostly Muslim countries.
Getting out of Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have fought a largely fruitless battle for against the Taliban over nearly two decades, was a top priority.
Trump repeated on Monday that he wanted "to get out by the earliest possible time."
However, whether because of last week's killing of a US soldier, as he says, or due to wider misgivings, that goal now appears in tatters.
"They did a mistake," Trump said of the Taliban's deadly bomb attack.