The Taliban formally declared a caretaker authorities on Tuesday, appointing appearing cupboard ministers who have been largely loyalists from the group’s first years of rule within the Nineteen Nineties.
The record of ministers was the clearest indication but that the group sees energy as one thing to be shared completely among the many victors, slightly than fulfilling their promise of an inclusive authorities that factored within the actuality of a modified Afghanistan the place ladies and ethnic minorities have been represented in resolution making.
Although most of the new authorities’s senior figures have been in related roles inside the Taliban for years, comparatively little is thought about them. Listed below are particulars about a few of them, primarily based on New York Instances reporting.
Mullah Muhammad Hassan, prime minister
Seen as one of many founding members of the Taliban within the Nineteen Nineties, Mullah Hassan will maintain the prime ministerial function that appears after the everyday of governing.
He was a former deputy prime minister and overseas minister in the course of the Taliban’s authorities that took management within the Nineteen Nineties. Through the 20 years of insurgency after the Taliban fell from energy, he remained low-profile and within the shadows, serving to to coordinate and run the Taliban’s management council in Quetta, Pakistan.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy prime minister
Mr. Baradar, who Interpol says was born in Uruzgan Province in 1968, served together with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder, within the struggle in opposition to the Soviet occupation. He held senior posts within the first Taliban authorities, beginning in 1996, and gained a repute as one of the brutal commanders on the battlefield because the Taliban sought to suppress their opponents among the many northern resistance. He was serving as deputy minister of protection in 2001, and like different leaders, he fled to Pakistan.
When the Taliban reformed as an insurgency, Mr. Baradar was Mullah Omar’s principal deputy, and he led the motion’s navy operations. He oversaw a pointy escalation of the insurgency in 2006 however was additionally engaged in secret consultations with the emissaries of President Hamid Karzai and worldwide help organizations.
He was detained in a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid in 2010, which Pakistani officers later mentioned had been to finish his dialogue with the Karzai authorities. Due to his respect inside the Taliban and his earlier openness to dialogue, nevertheless, america pressed Pakistan to launch him so he may assist lead the talks that started in 2019 and reached a troop withdrawal take care of the Trump administration.
Through the talks, he struck up what a number of officers described as a heat relationship with the U.S. envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. And in current days, his actions inside Afghanistan — first to Kandahar, the wellspring of the Taliban motion, after which to Kabul, the place he started conducting management conferences — have been seen as affirmation that the Taliban’s new authorities was close to.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, inside minister
Mr. Haqqani, who’s considered 48 and is the son of the mujahedeen commander and Haqqani community founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, is rising as one of many largest winners within the return of the Taliban to energy. He would be the appearing inside minister, accountable for legislation and order and presumably even native governance, and has additionally ensured his commanders’ positions in different key departments of the federal government.
In 2016, he grew to become one among two deputies to the Taliban’s supreme chief, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, overseeing a sprawling net of fighters and non secular faculties, and main a lot of the Taliban’s navy efforts.
His Haqqani community, recognized for its shut ties to the Pakistani intelligence service, was probably the most dogged opponent of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. It was answerable for hostage-taking, focused assassinations and suicide bombings, together with a few of the large truck bombings that killed civilians in Kabul.
Mr. Haqqani and his community even have a few of the strongest and longest-running ties to Al Qaeda.
“The Haqqanis sit on the nexus between the Taliban and Al Qaeda — they’re one of many key bridges,” mentioned Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow on the Basis for Protection of Democracies and senior editor of the group’s Lengthy Battle Journal.
Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, protection minister
Mr. Yaqoub, who’s considered about 30, is the pinnacle of the Taliban’s navy fee, and is the oldest son of Mullah Omar.
His identify got here to public consideration in the course of the Taliban’s management succession in 2016. Although Mr. Yaqoub had the assist of a few of the motion’s navy commanders, considerations about his youth grew to become an element within the eventual resolution to decide on Sheikh Haibatullah because the insurgency’s total chief.
Within the years since, Mr. Yaqoub has risen in prominence. And in current days he took an more and more public function in attempting to maintain order among the many group’s triumphant rank and file, warning that anybody caught looting “might be handled,” and any theft of presidency property could be a betrayal of the nation. “There isn’t a permission to take a automotive or a home from somebody or anything,” he mentioned.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, overseas minister
Mr. Muttaqi, who till lately was the pinnacle of the Taliban’s highly effective Invitation and Steering Fee answerable for persuading many members of the Afghan military and police forces to give up in current months, has been rewarded with the important thing submit of overseas minister.
He served as info and tradition minister, then training minister, within the first Taliban authorities. Through the 20 years of the Taliban insurgency, he helped form the group’s technique for propaganda and psychological warfare, earlier than serving as chief of employees to the supreme chief and as a member of Taliban political delegation in Qatar.
Perceive the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
Who’re the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that got here after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, together with floggings, amputations and mass executions, to implement their guidelines. Right here’s extra on their origin story and their document as rulers.
In a motion recognized for its shadowy methods, Mr. Muttaqi has been one of many few constant public faces for the reason that Nineteen Nineties. He was among the many Taliban leaders who held back-channel talks with American officers over time and was among the many first senior Taliban figures seen assembly with former Afghan officers, together with Mr. Karzai, the previous president, in addition to Abdullah Abdullah, the previous chief govt officer of the federal government, after the autumn of Kabul.
Abdul Haq Wasiq, intelligence chief
Mr. Wasiq was one of many 5 Guantánamo Bay prisoners launched in trade for the final U.S. prisoner of warfare, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Upon his launch, he arrived in Doha, Qatar, and have become a key member of the Taliban’s talks with the U.S., spending months negotiating together with his former captors their departure from Afghanistan. He’s a local of Ghazni Province and is believed to be in his early 50s.
Whereas all 5 of the detainees who have been a part of the Bergdahl trade have gotten senior positions within the new authorities — three of them ministerial roles, one deputy minister and one governor — Mr. Wasiq steps into the important thing function of main the identical intelligence company the place he served as deputy within the Nineteen Nineties. The intelligence company was central to the Taliban’s maintain on energy as a police state that ran extensive networks of informants.
His interrogation information from his time in Guantánamo accuse Mr. Wasiq of shut ties to Al Qaeda, together with arranging for the terrorist group to offer coaching for intelligence brokers of the Taliban authorities.
Zabihullah Mujahid, deputy info and tradition minister
Mr. Mujahid, who says he’s 43 and a local of Paktia Province, has been the Taliban’s predominant spokesman and chief propagandist for years, answering reporters’ calls and maintaining a barrage of social media posts. However the world didn’t see his face till Aug. 17, when he carried out the Taliban’s first in-person information convention in Kabul.
Since then, he has performed a major function in attempting to induce Afghans and the world to simply accept the Taliban as professional rulers of Afghanistan, and in saying that the group was turning away from a few of the harsh insurance policies of its first tenure in energy.
“We don’t need Afghanistan to be a battlefield anymore — from immediately onward, warfare is over,” he mentioned on the information convention.
Khalil Haqqani, minister for refugees
Mr. Haqqani is a particular consultant of the Taliban’s supreme chief, and an uncle of the Taliban’s deputy chief. He has lengthy been an vital fund-raiser for the Haqqani community, with shut ties within the Gulf area, and he’s included on U.S. and U.N. lists of worldwide terrorists.
In current days, he has performed a public function in establishing Taliban authority in Kabul. Only a few days after Kabul’s fall, he appeared at a distinguished mosque inside the metropolis and informed a cheering crowd that the Taliban’s “first precedence for Afghanistan is safety — if there is no such thing as a safety, there is no such thing as a life.”
He has been the first Taliban determine in securing bayat, an Islamic oath of allegiance, from distinguished Afghan figures over the previous two weeks.
Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall, Mujib Mashal, Jim Huylebroek, Matthieu Aikins, Adam Nossiter, Julian E. Barnes and Ruhullah Khapalwak.