Zalmay Khalilzad

An American service member was killed in action in Afghanistan on Sunday, just two days before Christmas, the Pentagon announced.

Peace talks between representatives from the United States and the Taliban continued in Qatar over the weekend as the narco-jihadi group detonated a car bomb outside a government security compound in central Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, killing 14 people and injuring more than 180, including many children.

A dispute erupted on Twitter this week between rival neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan over U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban, prompting the Pakistani minister for human rights to dismiss the American ambassador in Kabul as “little pigmy.” 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration privately requested a formal apology from a top Afghan official who accused the United States of sidelining Kabul during the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan, NBC News reported Wednesday.

The National Security Adviser of Afghanistan on Thursday accused U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy in charge of peace negotiations with the Taliban of “delegitimizing” and “weakening” the Kabul government during the talks to serve his ambitions of one day running the war-ravaged country.

The longest round yet of peace talks between the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban ended in Qatar on Tuesday with a draft agreement on two issues — the withdrawal of American troops and assurances from the terrorist group that Afghanistan will not harbor international jihadis like its ally al-Qaeda, the top negotiator from the United States revealed on Tuesday.

American diplomats and Afghan Taliban narco-jihadis, including one of the group’s co-founders, reportedly began the highest-level negotiations so far in Qatar on Monday as part of efforts by U.S. Donald Trump’s administration to end to more than 17-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The Department of State (DOS) indicated to Breitbart News on Monday that the U.S. supports a “balanced counternarcotics strategy” in Afghanistan where the Taliban appears to remain among the world’s most prolific opium producers.

The U.S. and the Taliban reportedly agreed over the weekend on a draft framework for a peace accord in which the American-NATO-led foreign troops would withdraw from Afghanistan.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan reconciliation envoy insisted Wednesday that the discussions of a negotiated political settlement to end the war “will happen soon” despite the Taliban threatening to cancel the discussions.

Pakistan facilitated the negotiations this week between the United States and Taliban to end the more than 17-year-old war in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan declared via Twitter on Tuesday.

Pakistan this week welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to make political reconciliation between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul the primary goal of America’s strategy to end the more than 17-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military announced Tuesday that three U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan and three more wounded when they hit a roadside bomb.

A three-day meeting between the Taliban and a “high-ranking delegation of the United States” in Qatar to find an end to the war in Afghanistan yielded “no agreement,” the terrorist group proclaimed on Monday.