Abdul Ghani Baradar, the exiled Taliban co-founder whom experts believe will be named the next president of Afghanistan, stepped foot in Afghanistan Tuesday for the first time in a decade after his troops rapidly gained control of the country, the Washington Post reports.
Baradar landed in Kandahar Tuesday afternoon (local time) after spending years in Qatar as the Taliban’s international diplomat. He had spent more than eight years in a Pakistani jail, but was released in 2018 at the request of the Trump Administration, which wanted to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban.
In February 2020, the Trump Administration signed an agreement with Baradar stating that the US would withdrawal all troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 in exchange for promises that the Taliban would not attack American targets in the country. The Biden Administration pushed back that date to August 31st.