A senior UN official has said that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has maintained close ties with the Taliban despite the Taliban’s assurance to the United States to cut ties with the group.
“Senior figures remain in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of armed operatives,” the coordinator of the United Nations monitoring team for Daesh, al-Qaida and the Taliban, Edmund Fitton-Brown, said Friday during a webinar on the future of Afghanistan as quoted by VOA.
According to the UN official, the Taliban consulted on regular basis with al-Qaeda during the peace negotiations with the US.
