Please talk peace with the Taliban, says US secretary of state.

The only images coming out of Afghanistan are violence violence violence. There is nothing to stop the Taliban rampage, apart of course from the 350,000 or so Afghan troops and police, and Afghan Air Force and US airstrikes from afar, but so far nothing has stopped the insurgents from making their relentless way towards Kabul. So the plea by Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, to President Ghani,the Afghan leader, to accelerate peace talks with the Taliban is pretty meaningless because there is absolutely no chance that the Taliban will stop fighting, lay down their arms, and talk seriously about peace. They have no reason to because they are making so much military progress that they have no time or interest in reawakening the peace talks which have dried up in Doha, Qatar. Both Blinken and Ghani, in a chat on the phone, condemned the Taliban violence. But the Taliban won't care about that either. They have basically taken no notice of anyone else in 20 years, especially not the Americans, so they are hardly going to react positively to pleas for peace when they haven't finished their fighting and killing. Blinken said if they didn't stop the violence they would be isolated from the international community. But do they care? I don't think so.They have already got the Chinese sidling up to them and promising support - as you would expect from the ever-conspiratorial Beijing - so I'm afraid with the US troops now 95 per cent pulled out of Afghanistan, the Taliban are not going to bother to listen to Blinken or anyone else from the US. That's just the way it is and it's a tragedy.