The director of the CIA, William Burns, met secretly in Kabul with the leader of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar, according to a report by the Washington Post. From Baradar's standpoint, the meeting with the director of the CIA was very ironic as it came 11 years after the spy agency arrested him in a joint operation with Pakistani intelligence that put him in jail for eight years. 

Burns runs the spy agency that trained elite Afghan Special Forces units. It is not clear what remains of those units, as some of the troops apparently joined the Taliban, some joined the pockets of opposition in the northern part of the country, and others fled for their lives.