With no amount of modern storytelling techniques to recreate scenes of shrapnel shattering through windowpanes of classrooms in Kabul, the mass media can make the global audience realise the hell the Afghan Taliban have turned human lives into in Afghanistan. Twelve killed, 179 injured and counting! This is Sunday’s haul. Having set Kabul on fire, the Taliban are also talking peace with US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad in Doha and he is playing ball with them. This is the second attack on Afghan cities by the Taliban in a week. It has been reported that a delegation of Afghan leaders was on their way to hold ‘peace summit’ with the Taliban in Doha when their spokesman made the bone-chilling confession that they have done the killing. As if to put up a justification, he said that those killed were Afghan intelligence officials and the target of the attack was a Defence Ministry office. The intensity of the attack was so that it took security forces eight hours to eliminate the attackers. The Education Ministry reports that five schools were also attacked and children hit. The exact number of casualties has yet to be ascertained but the gory scenes of classrooms littered with schoolbags and other stuff are haunting and harrowing. The Taliban had also besieged this city last year. This is not the only city that bears the scars of Taliban paws. Every city does. Hard to imagine is the fact that their leaders at the same time manage to convince world powers that they can hold peace dialogue. The US is engaging them in peace talks and their seventh round is on. When Khalilzad says that this is the most productive and conclusive phase of dialogue oozing out confidence in its outcome, the UN reports that year 2018 has been the bloodiest since 2009 as about 4,000 civilians were killed this year, about 1,000 of them children. It seems that the Taliban are exploiting the situation in which the US is desperate to pull out forces and Afghanistan is going to have general elections. The Taliban have never allowed any government official to share table with them all through the dialogue process. All stakeholders need to keep an eye on the ball and should not allow harm to human lives at any cost. Human lives must not be used as a bargaining chip. *