Over the weekend, the Taliban held talks with the US. On Saturday, spokesman Suhail Shaheen issued a statement confirming that the Taliban will not work with the US in efforts to contain ISIS or other extremist groups.
Shaheen says the Taliban are comfortable that they can handle ISIS independently. US officials seemed to support the idea, suggesting that they too believe the Taliban can handle it.
For the Taliban, the driving concern is to not give the US any sort of pretext to stumble back into Afghanistan with a new open-ended mission. For now, at least, the US doesn’t seem to be fishing for that.
The US hadn’t shown any great capability to handle ISIS within Afghanistan at any rate, and probably is better off just leaving it to the Taliban, who have had at least some success against them.
Of course they were. They just did not get it this time.
The same hawks will continue to fish for a “pretext to stumble back into Afghanistan with a new open-ended mission.” It is who and what they are.