Donald Trump makes secret visit to Afghanistan, confirms talks resumption with Taliban

Washington: US President Donald Trump announced that Washington is re-engaging Taliban in talks after a secretive 36-hour trip to Afghanistan where he spent only three and half hours on the ground.
The visit was Trump's first to the country that has mired the United States in the longest war in its history, going into its 19th year. 'Just returned to the United States after spending a GREAT Thanksgiving with our Courageous American Warriors in Afghanistan!,' he tweeted a few hours after he returned to his home in Florida after the surprise trip.

Trump met briefly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and a lot longer with US troops at a military base, serving them a Thanksgiving meal and thanking them for their service.
'There is nowhere that I'd rather celebrate this Thanksgiving than right here with the toughest, strongest best and bravest warriors on the face of the Earth,' he told soldiers at Bagram Air Field.
The big takeaway from the political-diplomatic sortie, which included a decoy plane and a stopover at an airbase in Germany for an aircraft and crew change to save time, was confirmation that US is once again engaging Taliban after Trump abruptly canned talks - and scrapped their visit t Camp David - in September citing a brutal terrorist attack in Kabul.
But although such attacks continue - one of them resulting the death of Indian-American UNDP worker Anil Raj last Sunday - the US President has given a green light for resumption, suggesting it is Taliban that now wants a ceasefire and a deal.
“The Taliban wants to make a deal and we’re meeting with them and we’re saying it has to be a cease-fire and they didn’t want to do a cease-fire, and now they do want to do a cease-fire,” Trump said. “I believe it’ll probably work out that way.”
“We are winning like we haven’t won in a long time," he told US troops assembled in an aircraft hangar at Bagram Air Base, while at the same time explaining that success would not be achieved on the battlefield but rather through a political solution determined by people in the region.
Compounding the confusion, a pool reporter quoted him as saying after talks with Ghani, "The Taliban wants to make a deal — we’ll see if they make a deal. If they do they do, and if they don’t they don’t. That's fine.”
This was Trump's first visit to Afghanistan (he went to Iraq last Thanksgiving) and the White House went to great lengths to keep the visit a secret even as the media was distracted by the President's tweet showing his face superimposed on a muscular Rocky like figure.
His confidantes, including his son gloated about how the media misreported (or was misled) that he was spending the Thanksgiving weekend playing golf in Florida while he was hard at work bringing peace to the world.