Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
For the first time since the death of al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri due to an American strike, two top Biden Administration officials had face-to-face meetings with Taliban leaders.
Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) David Cohen and State Department negotiator Tom West met with Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban’s chief of intelligence, in Doha, Qatar according to The New York Post. There has been no official comment from the CIA or the State Department on the meeting.
The U.S. accused the Taliban of a “clear and blatant violation of the Doha agreement,” brokered by the Trump administration after Zawahiri was killed in a strike according to CNN’s report. The Doha agreement stated that the Taliban would not harbor terrorists if U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, which they did in August 2021.
After a U.S. drone shot and killed Zawahiri, U.S. officials claimed that Taliban leaders from the Haqqani network knew where he was, and the Taliban vehemently denounced the action.
A U.S drone attack killed the terrorist leader on July 31 in his opulent Kabul apartment, but Republicans were outraged by his continued presence in the country, with lawmakers calling out President Joe Biden for allegedly lying about terror groups in the area.
“The American people were lied to by President Biden,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in August according to The New York Post. “Al Qaeda is not ‘gone’ from Afghanistan as Biden falsely claimed a year ago. And worse, the head of al Qaeda, who was one of the masterminds behind 9/11, was given safe harbor in the capital city of Kabul — just as al Qaeda was given safe harbor there before 9/11.
“Our chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan opened the door for al Qaeda to operate freely inside the country to conduct external operations against the United States and our allies again,” the lawmaker said.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a former Green Beret that served in Afghanistan, also weighed in at the time, asking why al-Zawahiri felt confident enough to go into a city with a population of 4 million people weeks prior to his death.
”Number one, what was the leader of al Qaeda doing in Kabul?” Waltz asked on Fox News. “And from what I’m hearing from a number of folks, both in Afghanistan and in the intelligence community, he’s been there for some time. So what did the Taliban promise him? Why did he feel so comfortable to really be out in the open?”
From the upper chamber of Congress, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that while al-Zawahiri might be gone, Americans should still regard the threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan as a serious one.
“Contrary to what President Biden is saying tonight, our abilit[ies] to combat growing terrorist threats in Afghanistan are on the margins. There are al Qaeda training camps emerging in Afghanistan like before 9/11,” the senator said in a Twitter posting.
“As I said when the Biden Administration withdrew all of our forces from Afghanistan, it was only a matter of time before the country became a safe haven for terrorism once again,” Graham added.
After learning that the ruling faction in Afghanistan had been hosting al-Zawahiri, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, in the Afghan capital for months, the U.S. ended direct negotiations with the group saying it was a clear violation of the Doha Agreement, which the Taliban had promised would prevent Afghanistan from harboring members of al Qaeda.
As a demonstration that American trust had been betrayed, the White House stopped the transfer of $3.5 billion — a portion of the Afghan government funds frozen in US banks — to the Taliban in August.