KABUL: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani played down on Tuesday recent failures to jumpstart peace talks with the Taliban, instead choosing to highlight recent successes against fighters of the militant Islamic State (IS) group in Afghanistan.

Taliban have made significant gains in recent months, briefly capturing the northern city of Kunduz and threatening to overrun multiple districts in the southwest.

The latest efforts to bring them to the negotiating table faltered when the militant group issued a statement refusing to participate.

Mr Ghani, facing rising domestic criticism and eager to ensure continued international aid, has publicly focused on a military campaign in eastern Afghanis­tan aimed at IS, often referred to as Daesh, which has struggled to replicate its successes in Iraq and Syria.

“Daesh is on the run,” he said at a joint news conference with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, responding to a direct question about the Taliban. “They are running for cover.”

“No quarter would be given” to IS fighters, he added. A combination of air strikes by US warplanes and “massive” ground ope­r­ations by Afghan forces had left IS reeling, he said.

Mr Stoltenberg reiterated that the coalition had no intention of sending combat troops back to fight in Afghanistan, more than a year after the Nato-coalition declared an end to its combat mission.

Thousands of coalition troops remain in the country to train and advise Afghan forces, but operations are limited to self defence.

In July, Nato officials will meet in Warsaw to determine the future of funding for 2018 through 2020, as well as other issues such as foreign troop levels, which have been thrown into flux as the coalition seeks to prop up the struggling Afghan forces.

Before that, however, international backers were looking for Afghan leaders to fight corruption, modernise institutions, reform the electoral process, and protect human rights, Mr Stoltenberg said during his visit to Kabul.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2016