Who are the leaders of the Taliban movement that took power again in Afghanistan?

(CNN Spanish) – The rapid advance of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who in a few days captured the country’s main cities one by one until finally taking most of Kabul, the capital, on Sunday, surprised much of the international community and even the president of the United States, Joe Biden.

But who exactly are the leaders of this Taliban movement that returns to power after being overthrown in 2001?

Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, the leader

On May 25, 2016 the Taliban they named their new leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, after his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was killed in an airstrike in Pakistan.

Akhundzada thus became the third supreme leader of the Taliban, after Mansour and Mohammed Omar, the founder of the group that died of an illness in 2013.

Close to Mansour and Omar, Akhundzada is a respected clergyman within the organization who belongs to the generation of the movement’s founders.

Although he participated in the Mujahideen resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, it is believed that his role he was not a military man, Mohammad Akbar Agha, a founding member of the Taliban, told CNN. Following the first Taliban seizure of power in 1996, he devoted himself to judicial work in the regime and became the group’s chief judicial officer after its overthrow in 2001.

After the death of Omar and the rise of Mansour, he became the deputy leader of the latter.

Akhundzada is about 52 years old, according to taliban, and comes from Kandahar province, one of the Taliban strongholds, in southern Afghanistan.

Abdul Ghani Baradar, Co-Founder and Chief Negotiator

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban alongside Omar, the group’s deputy leader and main negotiator in Doha, returned to Afghanistan this week, a Taliban source familiar with his movements told CNN.

“Mullah Baradar, along with several high-ranking Taliban officials, left Doha for the Afghan province of Kandahar,” the source said, without giving further details.

Mullah Baradar, who heads the Taliban’s political bureau, has not set foot in Afghanistan in 20 years.

Pakistani security forces captured Baradar in 2010 in Pakistan, then released him in 2013 when the United States stepped up its efforts to get out of Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump and Baradar, who was the Taliban’s top negotiator in Doha, spoke on the phone last year, after the United States and the Taliban signed a landmark deal in Qatar in March 2020. Trump called it a good one. conversation.

“The relationship I have with the mullahs is very good. They want to stop the violence,” Trump said.

Baradar also met with the Chinese Foreign Minister in Tianjin China in July.

The deputy leaders

Akhundzada’s rise in 2016 also meant the promotion of two other deputy leaders, representing the younger generations within the Taliban, agree to analyst Thomas Ruttig of Afghanistan Analysts’ Network.

This is Mawlawi Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the powerful Haqqani terrorist network -of great autonomy but loyal to the Taliban-, and Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqoob, son of the late Mohammed Omar.

Haqqani leads a family clan with a presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the United States has offered $ 10,000,000 for his capture.

While Yaqubb is seen as a figure that provides legitimacy due to his kinship with the founder of the group, and in May 2020 he was appointed head of the Taliban’s Military Commission, according to the UN.

With information from Vasco Cotovio, Masoud Popalzai, Euan McKirdy, Tim Lister, Tim Hume, Nick Paton Walsh, Peter Bergen, Jason Hanna, Paul Cruickshank, Nic Robertson and Ashley Fantz