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CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting on Monday in Kabul with the Taliban’s de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, in high-level face-to-face meetings between the Taliban and the Biden government since the insurgents seized the Afghan capital. The US official familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
President Biden dispatched his top spy official, a Foreign Service veteran and the most respected diplomat in his Cabinet, amid efforts to evacuate people from Kabul’s international airport in what Biden called one of the largest and most difficult air evacuations in history.
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The CIA declined to comment on the meeting with the Taliban, but discussions will likely involve an upcoming August 31 deadline for the US military to complete air deliveries of US citizens and Afghan allies. Washington Post, Tuesday (24/8/2021).
As for Baradar, playing the role of partner for the CIA Director is an irony after the spy agency caught him in a joint operation with Pakistan. He also had to languish in prison for eight years.
Even so, the Taliban leader is no stranger to the West.
After being released from prison in 2018, he served as the Taliban’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the US in Qatar that resulted in a deal with the Trump administration on troop withdrawals. In November 2020, he posed in front of a gold-framed chair with then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
A close friend of the Taliban’s founding supreme leader, Mohammad Omar, Baradar is believed to have significant influence over the ranks and archives of the Taliban. He fought Soviet forces during their occupation of Afghanistan and was governor of several provinces in the late 1990s when the last Taliban ruled the country.
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