Afghanistan, the Taliban today: who are the heirs of Mullah Omar

Black turbans again in the palaces of power. It is Afghanistan after 20 years of international forces operations. Today’s Taliban galaxy responds to Haibatullah Akhundzada, has the face of mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and a leadership of ‘heirs’ of mullah Omar, founder of the movement that dominated the country from 1996 to 2001, and of Jalaluddin Haqqani, ‘father’ of the infamous Haqqani network. Read also Haibatullah Akhundzada He was appointed leader of the Taliban (‘Ameer-ul-momineen’, the ‘commander of the faithful’), in May 2016 after the killing in a US drone raid in Pakistan of his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who rose to the top of the movement in 2015 following the death of Mullah Omar which was confirmed two years after his death. Respected as an expert on religious issues rather than as a military commander, Akhunzada had been the head of Taliban ‘justice’ at the time of the regime (1996-2001) and today is expected to be 60 years old. Shortly after his appointment, al-Qaeda swore allegiance to him. For the movement’s hierarchy, he has the last word on political, military and religious issues.Mullah Abdul Ghani BaradarAlias ​​Baradar Akhund, is Akhundzada’s deputy ‘political’, he fought against the Soviets and from a madrasa he would have created in Kandahar with Mullah Omar would later come to help found the Taliban movement. He would have been one of Mullah Omar’s most trusted commanders. He was her deputy and would also be her brother-in-law. Born in the province of Uruzgan in 1968, he was Deputy Minister of Defense at the time of the fall of the Taliban regime. He was arrested in 2010 by the Pakistani authorities in Karachi. In the following years many rumors about its history had been running around. And in 2018, the Afghan Taliban announced his release with analysts who at the time linked those developments to American attempts to restart peace talks between the movement and the Kabul government. The following year he was appointed head of the Taliban political office in Doha, Qatar. In 2020 he participated in the signing of the Doha agreement with the US. At the end of last July, he met with the foreign minister of the Asian giant, Wang Yi, in Tianjin, China. In a video released in the past few hours, Mullah Baradar (which literally means ‘brother’) promised “services to our country” and “serenity to the whole nation.” “military commission”. In past years he made headlines when he initially refused to swear allegiance to Mullah Mansour.Sirajuddin Haqqani Another deputy of the Taliban, he is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani (one of the protagonists of the anti-Soviet resistance, who died three years ago) and head of the Haqqani network believed linked to al-Qaeda and responsible in the past for bloody attacks in Afghanistan. He was among the ‘eligible candidates’ for the succession to Mansour.