The Afghan Fracture: The CIA, MI6, and the Taliban — What the Record Actually Supports – Part 3

CommandEleven Intelligence // The Afghan Fracture, Part 3 of 3. Part 1 and Part 2 covered the Moscow Format’s collapse, the Pakistan-Taliban border war, and the real, limited roles Russia and India are playing in Kabul. This part takes on the question we deliberately held back from those pieces: what do the CIA, MI6 and Western intelligence services actually have to do with the Taliban?

The honest answer is that the public record is far thinner than the question deserves. We are publishing this piece specifically to show why, rather than to assert more than the sourcing supports.

Key Judgments

1. [CONFIRMED, DATED] A 2023 UN Security Council Monitoring Team report stated that the Taliban “quietly reached out” to foreign governments for intelligence and logistical support against the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). The report named no specific country or agency.
2. [ASSESSED] Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Group has said Western intelligence officials told him that cooperation with the Taliban against ISKP is ongoing, specifically describing “the sharing of targeting information” that enables Taliban lethal action against militants. Smith is a named, credentialed analyst; the officials he cites are unnamed, and no specific agency or government is identified.
3. [SINGLE-SOURCE, DATED] An April 2024 report describes a CIA-requested meeting in Doha, Qatar, led on the Taliban side by intelligence chief Mullah Abdul Haq Wasiq, with an agenda reportedly centered on expanding US “over-the-horizon” drone operations in Afghan airspace. The claim rests on anonymous sources in Kabul and Peshawar plus one named former Karzai-era official (Syed Abdul Rahim). No outlet has independently confirmed the meeting occurred, and we found no reporting that updates, confirms or follows up on it in 2025 or 2026.
4. [SPECULATIVE] The same 2024 report includes an unverified claim that Wasiq met the head of MI6 in London. This claim has no independent corroboration anywhere in our review and comes from the same anonymously sourced report as the Doha meeting claim.
5. [ASSESSED] Terrorism scholar Tricia Bacon has named Russia, not the United States or the UK, as the “prime candidate” for a government realistically positioned to share intelligence with the Taliban against ISKP. That is speculative on her part, but notable because it points away from, not toward, Western agencies as the likely partner.
6. [DATA DEFICIT] We found no 2025 or 2026 reporting, official statement or credible leak that confirms, denies or updates any CIA or MI6 relationship with the Taliban. The entire public record on this specific question dates from 2023 and 2024.
7. [EXCLUDED] Any claim of a current, ongoing, formalized CIA-Taliban or MI6-Taliban intelligence-sharing arrangement as of October 2026. Nothing in the sourcing we reviewed supports that as an established fact, and we are not asserting it.

What the Record Actually Shows

Strip away the speculation and two things remain on the record, both thin. First, the UN’s own monitoring apparatus noted in 2023 that the Taliban were looking for outside help against ISKP, a rival that has attacked the Taliban government directly and claimed mass-casualty bombings inside Afghanistan and beyond. Second, at least one credentialed regional analyst has said, on the basis of conversations with unnamed Western officials, that some sharing of targeting information against ISKP is happening. Neither establishes which government or agency is involved, what the operational scope is, or whether it continues today. They establish only that outside counter-ISKP cooperation with the Taliban, in some form, has plausibly happened, a considerably narrower claim than “the CIA is working with the Taliban.”

The 2024 Doha Meeting Claim

The most specific claim in circulation, a CIA-convened Doha meeting with Taliban intelligence chief Wasiq in attendance, an agenda built around expanding drone operations, and a side claim that Wasiq also met MI6’s chief in London, traces to a single April 2024 report built on anonymous sourcing plus one named former Afghan official speaking in a personal capacity. Wasiq is a real and relevant figure: a former Guantanamo detainee exchanged for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014 and now the Taliban’s intelligence chief, he is exactly the person such a meeting would involve if it happened. That does not make the meeting confirmed. No other outlet picked up or corroborated the story at the time, and nothing in 2025 or 2026 reporting returns to it. We are naming it here, with its sourcing limitations explicit, rather than pretending it does not exist, but we are not treating it as established fact.

Why the Sourcing Doesn’t Clear Our Bar

Three things would need to change before CommandEleven Intelligence would treat a CIA or MI6 relationship with the Taliban as CONFIRMED, or even ASSESSED rather than SPECULATIVE: a second, independent outlet corroborating the Doha meeting or something like it; an on-record statement from a current or former US or UK official, even a vague one; or current (2025–2026) reporting showing the relationship is active rather than a single data point frozen in 2024. None of the three exists in what we reviewed. Until one does, the responsible position is to say plainly that this is a live, serious question and that the public record does not yet answer it.

What We’d Need to See

A credible update would look like one of the following: a named current or former intelligence official on record; a leaked or declassified document; a second outlet’s independent sourcing on the Doha meeting or a successor to it; or a Taliban-side acknowledgment, however indirect, of security cooperation with a Western government. CommandEleven Intelligence’s own network has not surfaced anything beyond what is already in open-source reporting on this specific question, and we are not going to manufacture certainty the sourcing does not support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the CIA working with the Taliban against ISIS-K?

The public record does not confirm or deny it. A 2023 UN report says the Taliban sought outside help against ISKP without naming a country; one analyst cites unnamed Western officials describing some sharing of targeting information; and a single, uncorroborated 2024 report describes a CIA-convened meeting. No 2025 or 2026 sourcing updates any of this.

Did the Taliban’s intelligence chief really meet the head of MI6?

That claim comes from the same single, anonymously sourced 2024 report as the CIA-Doha meeting claim. It has not been independently corroborated anywhere we found.

Why didn’t CommandEleven Intelligence cover this in Part 1 or Part 2?

Because folding a weakly sourced claim into pieces about confirmed events, the Moscow Format collapse and the border war, would have diluted what we could actually stand behind. We held it for its own treatment instead.

Will CommandEleven Intelligence revisit this if better sourcing emerges?

Yes. This is exactly the kind of question our own network continues to track, and we will publish an update if the record changes.

Sources

• The Media Line, Taliban, CIA To Boost Anti-IS-KP Efforts in Upcoming Doha Meeting
• Iraqi News (Arab News reporting), Taliban’s battle with Daesh opens door to foreign cooperation

The Afghan Fracture Series

Series Introduction: The Afghan Fracture

1. The Afghan Fracture: The Moscow Format Collapse and the Pakistan-Taliban War – Part 1
2. The Afghan Fracture: Russia, India, and the Taliban’s New Balancing Act – Part 2
3. The Afghan Fracture: The CIA, MI6, and the Taliban, What the Record Actually Supports – Part 3 (you are here)