CIA director secretly met with Taliban leader in Kabul

The director of the CIA, the American intelligence agency, William Burns held confidential meeting Monday in Kabul with Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar, the daily reported on Tuesday The Washington Post.

This is the highest level meeting to date between the United States and the fundamentalist regime since its return to power.

US President Joe Biden’s decision to send Burns, often touted as his most experienced diplomat, to Afghanistan, illustrates the severity of the crisis for his government, which is evacuating thousands of Americans and Afghans against the clock.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who headed the Taliban political bureau in Qatar, is the new strongman of the regime who took power in Kabul.

The Washington Post did not disclose the content of the conversations, but it is likely that they revolved around the delayed evacuations from the airport in the Afghan capital, where thousands of people terrorized by the Islamists’ return to power are waiting to board a plane to leave the country.

The Americans stepped up their evacuation efforts on Tuesday following warnings from the Taliban that they would no longer tolerate these operations after a week.

Nail G7 virtual summit this Tuesday, he will also discuss the matter.

Biden has received express requests in recent hours from various allied governments not to complete the troop withdrawal on time, in an effort to buy time to complete the evacuations before handing over control of Kabul entirely to the Taliban.

US forces are critical to the security of the airport, the epicenter of these transfers, but for now the US president is sticking to the plan. The situation in Afghanistan will be the only point of a meeting of the leaders of the G7 summoned urgently this Tuesday.

Washington estimates that since August 14 it has evacuated or facilitated the transfer of 58,700 people to other countries.

In the past 24 hours, the evacuation of 21,600 people has been managed, of which 12,700 correspond to the operations of 37 US military planes, according to White House sources.

Taliban leaders pledged to restore security and tried to project an image of restraint, but many Afghans are skeptical and they rush to leave the country, causing chaos at Kabul International Airport.

Amidst scattered reports he was difficult to determine the extent of abuse and whether they think the Taliban leaders say one thing and do another, or whether the fighters on the ground are doing justice themselves.

With information from AFP and DPA agencies