AS the Taliban prepare to formally take the reins of government in Afghanistan following their rapid advance and the fall of Kabul, attention has turned to the organization’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada. While Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s current second-in-command, is widely expected to become president of the country with a population of nearly 40 million people, Akhundzada remains the Taliban’s top leader and is likely to become the head of the ruling council of Afghanistan, akin to the president. In a statement issued last week he claimed he wanted a political settlement to the bloody conflict in Afghanistan. His statement said: “In spite of the military gains and advances, the Islamic Emirate strenuously favors a political settlement in the country.” Known as the “Leader of the Faithful,” Akhundzada holds final authority over the group’s political, religious and military affairs. Mystery surrounds Akhundzada’s whereabouts after he reportedly disappeared in May 2016 and there has been significant secrecy about where he’s been. The leader’s public profile has been largely limited to the release of annual messages during Islamic holidays. He only occasionally issues written communiques and avoids public appearances due to fears of being assassinated. In February there were reports that Akhundzada had been killed months earlier in an explosion in Pakistan but these reports were not confirmed and a senior Taliban leader, Ahmadullah Wasiq, said they were “false news and baseless rumors.” It remains to be seen if Akhundzada will make any public appearances as the Taliban establish themselves as the government of Afghanistan. Little is known for certain about the current Taliban leader apart from a few facts. Akhundzada is a religious scholar and hardliner from Afghanistan’s Kandahar province and was a senior figure in Taliban courts for years before his elevation to leadership of the group. Born in 1961 in Kandahar, Akhundzada is a Pashtun belonging to the Noorzai, one of Afghanistan’s largest and most influential tribes. His father was a religious scholar who also served as the Imam (priest) at the village mosque. Akhundzada grew up learning the religious scriptures from his father. During the Soviet invasion, his family migrated to Quetta in Pakistan where Akhundzada continued his education. He had been involved in the Islamic resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s but is regarded more as a religious scholar than a military commander. He joined the Taliban in 1994, the year it was formed. When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, Akhundzada was appointed as a member of the Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Soon afterward, he was assigned the task of training over 100,000 students at the Jihadi Madrasa. He then became the chief justice of Shariah courts, who issued most of the extremist Talibani Fatwas (legal policies) on the civil society. After the U.S. invasion of 2001, he is believed to have laid low in Afghanistan itself, before being promoted to the deputy leader in 2015. Before ascending the movement’s ranks, Akhundzada was a low-profile religious figure. He is widely believed to have been selected to serve more as a spiritual figurehead than a military commander. By 2001, when the Taliban were ousted by U.S. forces, he was one of Mullah Omar’s trusted inner circle. Akhundzada became leader of the Taliban — called the emir — in 2016 following the death of the previous leader, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, in a U.S. drone strike near the Afghan-Pakistan border May 21 that year. For 15 years, until his sudden disappearance in May 2016, Akhundzada taught and preached at a mosque in Kuchlak, a town in southwestern Pakistan, associates and students have said. Mansour named Akhundzada as his successor in his will. He had served as Mansour’s deputy until his death. Mansour became leader following the death of the Taliban’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, who died in 2013 but whose death was not announced until 2015. After being appointed leader, Akhundzada secured a pledge of loyalty from al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who showered the religious scholar with praise — calling him “the emir of the faithful.” This helped seal his jihadi credentials with the group’s long-time allies. Akhundzada was tasked with the enormous challenge of unifying a militant movement that briefly fractured during a bitter power struggle following the assassination of his predecessor, and the revelation that the leadership had hid the death of Taliban founder Mullah Omar for years. Akhundzada’s position was cemented the following year after he let his own 23-year-old son volunteer for a suicide bombing at an Afghan army base. He survived an alleged assassination attempt while his son was killed. According to unconfirmed sources, Akhundzada was shot at from close range by a man disguised among his students in 2012. The attempt allegedly failed as the pistol got stuck while the Taliban dealt with the shooter. A former associate told The New York Times in 2016: “During one of his lectures, a man stood among the students and pointed a pistol [at Akhundzada] from a close range, but the pistol stuck.” According to the story, Akhundzada didn’t even flinch. In 2017, it was revealed that Akhundzada’s son Abdur Rahman was killed in a suicide attack on an Afghan military base, though the information was not confirmed by government officials. Two years later, in 2019, the Taliban leader’s brother Hafiz Ahmadullah was killed in a bomb blast. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, unverified reports surfaced that Akhundzada had probably succumbed to the disease. However, another source stated that he had gone to Russia for treatment and has recovered. The rumors were refuted by Taliban spokesman in a June 2020 tweet, claiming that Akhundzada had not contracted COVID. The religious hardliner has the power of “ultimate authority” on religious, political, and military issues concerning the Taliban. Akhundzada’s religious views are known to be hardline and he is unlikely to change the group’s direction. He is likely to leave the day-to-day governing to Baradar and others, and remain more or less in the shadows, reports said. Questions have also been raised about just how hardline Akhundzada is. Some claim that he is against softening the Taliban’s edicts against music and dancing while others say he is open to women’s education. Akhundzada, though, does appear to want to curb the more extreme Taliban brutality. He is once said to have told a group of Taliban officials: “Do you know why people support the government militias? It’s because you people cut off their heads for receiving minor help from an aid agency.” He is said to be rarely in contact with the Taliban delegates in Qatar and has little interest in ordinary politics. Founded in southern Afghanistan by Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban, Pashto Tālebān (“Students”), also spelled Taleban, emerged in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the collapse of Afghanistan’s regime, and the subsequent breakdown in civil order. The political and religious faction took its name from its membership, which consisted largely of students trained in madrasahs (Islamic religious schools) that had been established for Afghan refugees in the 1980s in northern Pakistan. Omar was a member of a Pashtun tribe and became a mujahedeen commander who helped tackle the Soviets out of Afghanistan back in 1989. In 1994, Mullah Omar formed the group in Kandahar with nearly 50 followers, who eventually emerged to challenge the instability, corruption and crime that had engulfed the nation at the time of post-Soviet-era civil war. (SD-Agencies) | 