Top Biden administration officials held an in-person meeting with the Taliban on Saturday, the first such summit since the United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in a missile strike on his safe house in Kabul over the summer.
David Cohen, deputy director of the CIA, and Tom West, a State Department negotiator, met with a delegation led Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban’s intelligence chief, in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, according to multiple reports. CNN was first to confirm the meeting, which comes nearly three months after the U.S. broke off direct talks with Afghanistan’s ruling faction for harboring the al Qaeda leader. While the U.S. continued to engage in negotiations with the Taliban, Saturday’s summit marked the first time that senior U.S. officials met face-to-face since a few days before Zawahiri’s death.
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Neither the State Department nor the CIA commented on the meeting.
Zawahiri, the U.S. government’s most wanted man, was taken out in July while on a balcony at his Kabul, Afghanistan, safe house. The 71-year-old Egyptian, who was described as Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 deputy and eventual successor, was living in the wealthy Sherpur neighborhood of downtown Kabul. The CIA launched two deadly Hellfire missiles at the balcony, killing Zawahiri as his family was inside.
News of Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul revealed the Taliban’s willingness to create an environment that would allow terrorist groups to rebuild their ranks. It would be highly unlikely for a fugitive of Zawahiri’s rank to feel safe enough to show his face in Afghanistan’s largest city if he was there without the Taliban’s permission.
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The Taliban vowed as the U.S. withdrew troops from Afghanistan that they would not harbor terrorists. That pledge came at a time when organization leaders were attempting to build a functional government in Kabul and thus tried to appear more secular for financial purposes.
Taliban officials denounced the July strike, which came weeks before the anniversary of the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, as a violation of the withdrawal agreement and denied accusations they were providing Zawahiri safe harbor. Biden administration officials, however, have asserted that senior Taliban leaders knew he was in Afghanistan.
