Esper Milley Trump Kevin Lamarque / REUTERS

The US is still trying to negotiate with the Taliban, which a new report from the Institute for Economics and Peace found to be the world’s deadliest terrorist organization in 2018.

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 found that the Taliban was responsible for nine of the 10 deadliest terrorist incidents in 2018, including the deadliest, which killed 466 people in Ghazi, Afghanistan, in August of that year. It surpassed the Islamic State as the deadliest terrorist group in the world for the first time since 2014.

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As officials in the Trump administration continue to attempt negotiations with the Taliban to broker a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a new report from the Institute for Economics and Peace has rated the terrorist group as the deadliest in the world.

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 Western hostages, one American and one Australian, who were abducted from the American University of Afghanistan in 2016. The Taliban also said 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 was part of a 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 IEP’s Global Terror Index now considers the world’s deadliest terror group.

Trump officials are quietly negotiating with the Taliban — which is now ranked the world’s deadliest terror group

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