United States (US) President Joe Biden sent off America’s top spy to meet the head of the Taliban on Monday, reported The Washington Post.
This high-level diplomatic encounter comes prior to the deadline of August 31 set to airlift Americans and their allies out of Afghanistan.
Biden warned that the evacuation was going to be “hard and painful” and much could still go wrong. US troops might stay beyond an August 31 deadline to oversee the evacuation, he said.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns met Taliban Leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday as the Biden administration continues efforts to evacuate US citizens and other allies amid chaos at the airport in Kabul.
“Biden’s spymaster is also his most seasoned diplomat. For Baradar, playing counterpart to a CIA director comes with a tinge of irony 11 years after the spy agency arrested him in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation that put him in prison for eight years,” writes journalist John Hudson.
However, the CIA declined to comment on the secret meeting.
