- The US is still trying to negotiate with the Taliban, which was found to be the world's deadliest terror organization for 2018, according to a report from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
- The US envoy for the Afghanistan peace talks, Zalmay Khalilzad, facilitated a prisoner swap between the US-backed Afghan government and the Taliban on Tuesday, in which the Afghan government released three Taliban leaders in exchange for two Western hostages and 10 members of the Afghan Security Forces.
- The IEP's Global Terror Index (GTI) shows that the Taliban was responsible for nine of the 10 deadliest terror incidents in 2018, including the deadliest, which killed 466 people in Ghazi, Afghanistan in August 2018. It surpassed ISIS as the deadliest terror group in the world for the first time since 2014.
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Officials in the Trump administration continue to attempt negotiations with the Taliban to broker a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as that group becomes the most deadly in the world, according to data for the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
Official peace talks between the US and the Taliban were declared "dead" in September after a Taliban bombing in Kabul killed a US soldier and scuttled President Donald Trump's attempt to bring Taliban officials to Camp David. But Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy to the Afghanistan peace talks, has been working to restart the talks since then.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reports, the US-backed Afghan government freed three senior Taliban officials with ties to the deadly Haqqani network, in exchange for the release of two westerners, one American and one Australian, abducted from the American University of Afghanistan in 2016. The Taliban also stated it would hand over 10 members of the Afghan security forces.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heralded the move as "a good step," but cautioned, "it's only that," indicating that the prisoner swap is part of an ongoing process to get direct talks between the US and the Taliban back on track, this time including the official Afghan government in Kabul, which the Taliban has referred to as a "puppet" government.
The three Taliban leaders released are part of the Haqqani network, the most ruthless and bloodthirsty faction of what is now the world's deadliest terror group, according to the IEP's Global Terror Index.