Aimal Faizi: The Taliban has rejected the Afghan government’s offer for peace talks as “futile” and “misleading”, saying they would be “contradictory” in the face of the fresh deployment of US troops and continued US air strikes and night raids in Afghanistan. Last week’s rebuttal came after the Pentagon deployed “hundreds” of new soldiers to back US elite forces in combat against the Taliban in Helmand, a strategic southern Afghan province. Beating the war drums, the Pentagon is convinced that the United States remains in an armed conflict with the Taliban – according to a December 2015 Pentagon report on the situation in Afghanistan. Click here to read more (external link – Al Jazeera).