Who are the leaders of the Taliban movement, who have just announced a new provisional government in Afghanistan?

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

Following the departure of the last American soldier on August 30, the Taliban have been consolidating their power over Afghanistan and announced the formation of a new interim government at a press conference on Tuesday. Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a low-profile Taliban leader, as Acting Prime Minister of the Taliban government and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as his deputy.

While Mawlawi Mohammad Yaqub will be the acting Defense Minister.

The leadership structure of the Taliban has long been a mystery, and little is known about how it functions beyond the group’s most influential figures. But who exactly are these men, leaders of the Taliban movement that has returned 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.

The lonely 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 Yaqub (also seen as 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 Yaqub 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.

Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesperson

For years the spokesman for the Taliban has been Zabiullah Mujahid, a man who has maintained dialogue for more than a decade with the media in the region and the West. Was interviewed by CNN in 2009.

“Afghanistan will be Vietnam for them. I want to tell them clearly that we will win, and they will die,” he said at the time.

Mujahid, who does not usually show his face, showed up this Tuesday in front of the cameras during the group’s first press conference after taking control of Afghanistan.

With information from Vasco Cotovio, Masoud Popalzai, Euan McKirdy, Tim Lister, Tim Hume, Nick Paton Walsh, Peter Bergen, Jason Hanna, Paul Cruickshank, Nic Robertson, Ashley Fantz, Saleem Mehsud, Kara Fox, Natalie Croker and Henrik Petterson.