US President Joe Biden decided to dispatch his top spy to meet the top Taliban leader amid pressure from the allies to delay the August 31 deadline to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Taliban has, however, warned against moving the date forward.
The chief of American spy agency CIA William J Burns held a secret meeting with the Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday, according to the Washington Post which quoted unnamed US officials.
US President Joe Biden’s decision to dispatch his top spy, a veteran of the foreign service, comes amid a frantic effort to evacuate people from Kabul international airport in what the president has called “one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history,” the paper said.
Though the CIA has not officially commented on the meeting, the Post quoted officials to report that the discussions likely involved the impending August 31 deadline for the US military to conclude its airlift of US citizens and Afghan allies.
The Biden administration is under pressure from some allies to keep US forces in the country beyond August 31 deadline in order to assist the evacuation of tens of thousands of citizens of the US and Western countries as well as Afghan allies desperate to escape Taliban rule. A meeting of G7 countries – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – will take place virtually on Tuesday, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to push for a deadline extension.
However, a Taliban spokesman on Monday, August 23, 2021 warned that there will be “consequences” if the US and UK sought an extension to the August 31 deadline for the US-led troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.
Baradar, who spent eight years in Pakistani prison before his release in 2018, has served as the Taliban’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the US in Qatar that resulted in an agreement with the Trump administration on the withdrawal of US forces.
