Is Islamic terrorism coming to the U.S. again?

“Anticipating a reduced U.S. government presence, the CIA has been working with partners to build intelligence capabilities in the region,” a U.S. official who is privy to the effort told Foreign Policy this week. Among these new potential partnerships is an asset that would surely constitute one of the strangest bedfellows in U.S. intelligence history: the Taliban, America’s sworn enemy for the last two decades.

U.S. officials are actively pursuing a dialogue with the Taliban on many levels—most immediately, of course, in ensuring the safe departure of Americans and U.S.-allied Afghans from the country in the coming weeks. But the discussions are going further than that, informed sources say. On Monday, CIA Director William Burns met in Kabul with the Taliban’s presumptive leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, whom the CIA once helped detain, landing him in prison for eight years. While the administration has been silent on what the two talked about, U.S. officials are hoping that they can develop an ongoing relationship by exploiting the Taliban’s enmity with the Islamic State inside Afghanistan and the Taliban’s professed aim—part of its signed pact with Washington—to prevent attacks on the United States and other countries from Afghan soil. But transnational attacks are just what the local branch of the Islamic State, known as the Islamic State-Khorasan, is working toward.

“It’s going to be hard but not impossible,” said Earl Anthony Wayne, a former U.S. ambassador with deep experience in Afghanistan. “That’s the job of intelligence agencies. We try to build relationships even with your rivals and past enemies.” Wayne noted that in at least one instance, in Kunar province in 2020, “there were coordinated attacks against ISIS bases, when the United States attacked from the air and the Taliban went in afterwards. At the time, people were saying maybe this will be a basis for establishing a dialogue with the Taliban going forward.”