Washington: Director of CIA William Burns flew to Kabul for secret talks with Taliban leadership on Monday amid expectations that the US and West Allies would call a guerrilla and extend the August 31 withdrawal time limit to resolve the evacuation of stranded Americans and Afghan allies.
Burns reportedly met Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban leader who led negotiations in Qatar with the US government in the highest-level contact between Washington and extremists who raised Kabul, but the results of the conversation were not immediately known.
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It is not clear whether the meeting is centered on operational problems, logistics related to evacuation or if they include long-term political and diplomatic problems.
Baradar has held talks with the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Doha during the Trump administration and also spoke with President Trump on the telephone.
The Burns secret mission came ahead of the Virtual G7 meeting on Tuesday where US Allies expected President of President Biden to extend the time limit of withdrawal until the Uratfer was completed.
Thousands of Westerners from NATO countries and their Afghan cohorts remained stranded outside the capital even though the evacuation took steps in the middle of what was seen as the Taliban intransigency in allowing access to Kabul airport.
Taliban representatives say that the US will cross “red line” if extending withdrawals outside 31 and warn “consequences” that are not determined, but Britain, France, and other NATO allies urge for more time to evacuate their people going far further From Americans to Evacuees Airlift, in some cases mobilized special forces outside Kabul Airport.
The US itself has carried out a helicopter mission outside the airport to America and the Afghan allies to the airport, but Washington has been guarded in revealing the nature of sorti.
The Pentagon has revealed that three Chinooks soldiers picked 169 Americans trapped at the Baron Hotel outside the Kabul Airport last week, but it did not say whether this was done with Taliban approval or not.
President Biden reportedly told us last week’s military commander that he was reluctant to use US forces outside the perimeter of Kabul’s airport for the concern of the Black Hawk tragedy in Somalia in 1993 when 18 American personnel were burning.
But he later said that the US had “constantly increased rational access to the airport where more people could get there safer.” “It’s still a dangerous operation, but I don’t want to get into detail when we do that,” he added.
Some US allys, the famous Canada has stepped as far as the call for sanctions against the Taliban, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling them terrorists.
But the Biden government is more careful, given that thousands of Americans remain evacuated from Afghanistan.
The CIA director holds secret talks with the Taliban
