Senior Taliban officials and U.S. representatives are meeting this weekend in Doha, the capital of Qatar. However, Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told The Associated Press there would be no cooperation with Washington on containing the increasingly active Islamic State group in Afghanistan. “We are able to tackle Daesh independently,” Shaheen said, when asked whether the Taliban would work with the U.S. to contain the Islamic State affiliate. Following Friday’s attack, Afghanistan’s Shiite clerics assailed the Taliban, demanding greater protection at their places of worship. A Taliban official in charge of refugees, Mohammed Arsa Kharoti, said there are up to 1.3 million Afghans displaced from past wars and that the Taliban lack funds to organize the return home for all.
