According to the Washington Post, CIA Director William Burns came to Kabul this week to meet with the Taliban's de facto head. President Joe Biden is anticipated to make a decision on whether or not to extend the evacuation deadline beyond August 31.

According to the Washington Post, Burns met with the Taliban's de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday, according to US sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The CIA did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations. Last Monday, a CIA official told Axios that Burns was "fully engaged on Afghanistan." The CIA director traveled to Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, and the West Bank for a six-day trip to the Middle East.

The discussion was not reported in detail in the paper, but the revelation comes amid fears that the US would not be able to evacuate all of its citizens and allied Afghans from Kabul by the US army exit date of August 31.

If American soldiers overseeing the evacuation stay until the deadline, the Taliban have threatened “consequences.” Meanwhile, US Vice President Joe Biden has refused to rule out the possibility that the evacuation will need to continue until August 31.

On Monday, a White House official told Reuters that Biden will decide whether or not to prolong the evacuations within 24 hours.

Biden confessed that the speed with which Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan fell to the militants took his government off guard. In recent days, the US military has increased evacuations by enlisting the assistance of six commercial airliners.

According to the White House, some 48,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since August 14.