If the Taliban have their way, the evacuation mission in Afghanistan will end at the end of August. It is questionable whether the Allies will be able to fly out all local staff and citizens by then. The CIA chief is now negotiating an extension.
According to a media report, the director of the US foreign intelligence service CIA, William Burns, met with the deputy chief of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, for a personal interview. The two met on Monday in the Afghan capital Kabul, wrote the Washington Post and New York Times on Tuesday, citing government circles. It was the highest-ranking meeting so far between the government of US President Joe Biden and the Taliban since the Islamists took power in Afghanistan just over a week ago. The CIA did not want to comment on request. Baradar is traded as a possible future head of government.
The US government is in regular contact with the Taliban in view of the evacuation mission at the airport in the capital Kabul. The spokesman for the US Department of Defense, John Kirby, had only said on Monday that they were communicating “several times a day” with the Taliban. He did not want to comment on the communication with the Islamists in more detail.
Debate about extending the rescue mission
The question currently arises as to whether the international evacuation operation in Kabul could possibly be extended beyond August 31. Biden had originally promised to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by that date. According to a report in the “New York Times”, it is quite possible that the mission will drag on until the end of September in order to also be able to fly out Afghans with a special foreign visa. Only in the past few days had the United States flown in thousands of US soldiers to secure the airport in Kabul and to support the evacuation mission.
The Taliban insist that the Americans keep this promise and called the August 31 deadline a “red line” that should not be exceeded. Taliban speaker Suhail Shaheen said Monday that extending the deadline would violate the deal with the US.
However, it is questionable whether it will be possible to get all foreign citizens and Afghan aid workers out of the country by then. The topic should also come up at a video call of the heads of state and government of the seven leading western industrial nations this Tuesday.
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