US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns held a secret meeting with top Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday in what is being seen as the highest-level contact between President Joe Biden’s administration and Afghanistan’s new rulers.
While details of Burns’ discussion with Baradar were not released, the secret meeting represented an extraordinary moment for the CIA that for two decades had targeted the Taliban in paramilitary operations. And it gives a sense of the extent of the wrangling happening ahead of the end of America’s two-decade war in the country.
The CIA partnered with Pakistani forces to arrest Baradar in 2010. He spent eight years in a Pakistani prison before the Trump administration persuaded Islamabad to release him in 2018 ahead of peace talks.
The Washington Post first reported Burns’ meeting with Baradar in Kabul. A US official later confirmed the report on the condition of anonymity. A Taliban spokesman said he was not aware if Baradar met the CIA chief.
A secret meeting was held between the chief of American spy agency CIA William Burns and Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday. In response to pressure from partners to postpone the August 31 deadline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden dispatched his top spy to meet with the top Taliban leader
. The Taliban, on the other hand, has warned against extending the deadline further. The decision by US President Joe Biden to dispatch his top spy, a foreign service veteran, comes amid a frantic effort to evacuate passengers from Kabul International Airport. A G-7 meeting is scheduled to be held to discuss the imposition of sanctions on the Taliban.
This was the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the two sides and comes more than a week after the insurgent group seized power in Afghanistan, the Post report said.
