Some 18 days after his ceasefire offer was rejected, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has announced he is formally ending the ceasefire and ordering a full return to military offensives against the Taliban.
The ceasefire actually was in effect for a few days at the start, around Eid al-Fitr, and this led to public calls for an extension. Ghani offered extensions, first of weeks, then up to an additional year, but was rebuffed by the Taliban.
The US has since insisted it was “unacceptable” of the Taliban to say no, though the US wasted no time in launching dozens of attacks as soon as Ghani declared the ceasefire was off. The US appeared to grudgingly follow the ceasefire, while escalating strikes on ISIS, who was not a party to them.
The Taliban holds more territory now than at any time since the 2001 US invasion, and the Afghan government has been consistently losing ground. US escalations have led to predictions of imminent progress, though so far this has not amounted to anything tangible.