Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban

„During the negotiations, Taliban envoys told their American counterparts privately, as my colleague Adam Entous and I reported late last year, that, if the U.S. bombed the Islamic State, “We will hang flowers around your necks.” About Al Qaeda members, they added, “Kill as many as you want.” Of course, talk behind closed doors is easy; on a number of topics, the Taliban’s interpretation of what they promised in the Doha Agreement has proved to be starkly different from what American negotiators had hoped.“