The head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns held a secret meeting with the Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday, according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is expected to decide as soon as Tuesday on whether to extend an Aug. 31 deadline to airlift Americans and their allies to safety.
The Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid at a press conference on Tuesday said they would not agree to an extension of a looming August 31 deadline to evacuate Afghans from Hamid Karzai International Airport, even as the US President Joseph Biden is expected to soon announce his decision on the extension of the US forces’ presence in Kabul.
The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was about counterterrorism. Had it not been for a traumatic terrorist attack in the United States, 20 years of U.S. warfare in Afghanistan never would have occurred. Most Americans would have been oblivious to events there, and U.S. policymakers would have given the country only the minimal attention it had received ever since U.S.-aided mujahedin chased out the Soviets in 1989. During those 20 years of war the United States did pick up some obligations to individual Afghans who aided it, but otherwise everything else about refashioning the internal affairs of Afghanistan represented mission creep.
Biden is getting attacked on all sides for putting its ‘credibility’ on the Taiwan issue at risk. Will he cave to it?
In an interview on Wednesday, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked President Biden whether the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan called into question the credibility of America’s commitment to its allies and partners, particularly Taiwan. “Look, America cannot be trusted now,” Stephanopoulos suggested. “America does not keep its promises.”
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, on Monday received Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Florence Parly, Minister of Defence.
During the meeting at Al Shati Palace in Abu Dhabi, they discussed the current developments in Afghanistan.
His Majesty King Abdullah held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in Moscow, covering the deep-rooted bilateral relations, as well as the latest regional and international developments.
The talks, attended by HRH Prince Ali, addressed bolstering ties between the two countries and peoples, and stepping up cooperation across various fields, according to a Royal Court statement.
Prince Khalid bin Salman, Russian DM meet to ‘explore ways to strengthen the military and defense cooperation’
Saudi Arabia said it signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia on Monday, according to a tweet by Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman.
The Qatirji company and Syrian Democratic Forces are discussing the possibility of increasing oil shipments between SDF-controlled areas to government-held areas.
Representatives of the Qatirji company and leaders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) met in the Tabqa Civil Council — affiliated with the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria — in early August to discuss the possibility of increasing oil shipments that the company, which is listed on the US sanctions list, transports between government-held areas and those controlled by the SDF in northeast Syria. Qatirji demanded to raise the weekly number of tankers to 400, from 250, while the SDF demanded that the Syrian government provide it with 100 tankers of diesel and gasoline, instead of 50.
Turkish forces have been leading security campaigns on the border with Syria, where they were able to destroy a number of tunnels used to smuggle people from Syria into Turkey.
Turkish forces have intensified their deployment on the border strip north of the Idlib governorate in northwest Syria in their search for tunnels used by smugglers to bring people illegally from Syria into Turkey.
The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan was widely welcomed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which offered sweets in the streets of Idlib.
Islamists of various shades have hailed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as a major victory for global jihad. Leaders of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the powerful extremist Sunni group that rules over broad swathes of the northwestern province of Idlib and used to pay fealty to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), are no exception, airing hope that a similar scenario will unfold in Syria with the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and his “criminal regime.”