CIA chief in secret mission to Kabul

The head of the CIA was sent on a secret mission to Kabul on Monday by President Biden to meet the de facto head of the Taliban regime, US sources have confirmed to The Times. William Burns, a career diplomat appointed by Biden to be director of the CIA, flew to the Afghanistan capital and held discussions with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban co-founder who was one of the principal negotiators in the talks with the US in Doha, Qatar that ended with a signed agreement on February 29 last year. Baradar was released from the US Guantanamo Camp detention centre in Cuba in 2014 after being imprisoned for eight years as a suspected “war combatant”. He was one of five former Guantanamo detainees to be in the Taliban negotiating team in Qatar. One of the key clauses in the Doha agreement was a pledge by the insurgents to give up all links with al-Qaeda which, during the Taliban rule from 1996-2001, had enjoyed safe sanctuary in Afghanistan and established terrorist training camps. In return the then Donald Trump administration confirmed it planned to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by May 1 2021. It is believed that Burns would have raised this issue with Baradar with a message from the Biden administration to remind the Taliban leader of the promise made in Qatar and the importance of relinquishing all assistance and refuge to al-Qaeda. The US sources said that the decision to send Burns to Kabul was made at the highest level. He was effectively acting as a special envoy from the president to the Taliban leadership. His arrival in Kabul would have been pre-arranged with the Taliban and Burns’s movement from Hamid Karzai international airport to the presidential palace in the capital would have been protected by US special operations troops and CIA paramilitary officers. Burns is the highest-ranking US official to meet with the Taliban since the insurgents took over Kabul and the country ten days ago. However, the Pentagon has confirmed that senior commanders in Kabul have been in regular contact with the Taliban during the current mass evacuations of Americans and Afghans who had worked for the US during the 20-year war. The arrival of Burns in Kabul on Monday was 24 hours before the G7 was due to meet by video link to discuss the possibility of extending the troop withdrawal deadline of August 31 set by Biden by a few more days or weeks to allow the evacuations to be completed. Burns warned in an interview last month that he was concerned about a resurgent al-Qaeda in Afghanistan if the Taliban seized power. He told US National Public Radio that although al-Qaeda didn’t pose the same threat as 20 years ago when they launched the terrorist attacks in the US on 9/11, there was a danger the organisation could be “reconstituted” in Afghanistan. “We have to stay sharply focused on it,” he said. Other senior US figures who have in the past travelled to Qatar to confront the Taliban negotiators, including Baradar, with warnings about continuing to support al-Qaeda, included General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and General Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command. The CIA declined to comment on the report first published in The Washington Post that Burns had met with Baradar in Kabul.