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CIA Director Meets With Taliban Leader Ahead of G7 Gathering

CIA Director William Burns met with the Taliban’s top political leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Kabul yesterday, the Washington Post reports, as Washington tries to gauge whether to extend the August 31 deadline to complete evacuations from Afghanistan.

CIA Director William Burns met with the Taliban’s top political leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Kabul yesterday, the Washington Post reports, as Washington tries to gauge whether to extend the August 31 deadline to complete evacuations from Afghanistan. France and the United Kingdom have called for more time (FT) for evacuations, which will be debated during a virtual Group of Seven (G7) meeting today.

G7 leaders are also expected to discuss plans (WaPo) for resettling Afghan refugees. The United States has evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of around forty-eight thousand people (CNBC) from Afghanistan since August 14, the White House said. Many of the evacuees will be temporarily housed on U.S. bases in Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Qatar, and Spain, among other countries. Meanwhile, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said at an emergency session of the Human Rights Council today that she had received credible reports of summary executions (Reuters) by the Taliban. She called for a mechanism to monitor the group’s actions.

Analysis

“The crisis in Afghanistan raises once again the question that has dogged [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] virtually since the end of the Cold War: Will there be any serious shift in the way the alliance operates, with the United States leading and Europe following behind?” the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger writes.

“Not only does the [U.S.] withdrawal send a clear message to the world’s terrorists that wars of attrition are a winning strategy; it also tells America’s existing and would-be allies that the U.S. isn’t capable of being a reliable ally—reinforcing America’s similar abandonment of Syria’s Kurds. Next time the U.S. needs local alliances, we may be hard-pressed to find them,” CFR’s Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware write for NBC.

The Global Conflict Tracker follows the war in Afghanistan.

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