Afghan Caretaker Government

Taliban have appointed Mohammad Hasan Akhund, a close aide to the group’s late founder Mullah Omar, as head of Afghanistan’s new caretaker government. The list of cabinet members announced by Chief Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Tuesday was dominated by members of the group’s old guard, with no women included.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of Taliban’s political office, will be the deputy leader.

 Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the founder of Haqqani Network, has been named Interior Minister.

Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Mullah Omar has been named Defence Minister.

Hedayatullah Badri is Finance Minister.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, a Taliban negotiator in Doha, is named Foreign Minister.

“The Islamic Emirate decided to appoint and announce a caretaker cabinet to carry out the necessary government works,” said Mujahid, who named 33 members of “the new Islamic government” and said the remaining posts will be announced after careful deliberation.

Speaking at a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Mujahid stressed the cabinet was an “acting” government and that the group will “try to take people from other parts of the country”.

Akhund, the acting Prime Minister, is on a United Nations sanctions list. Hailing from Kandahar, Akhund was previously the Foreign Minister and then Deputy Prime Minister during the group’s last stint in power from 1996 to 2001. He is the longtime chief of the Taliban’s powerful decision-making body Rehbari Shura, or leadership council.

Haqqani, the new Interior Minister, is the son of the founder of the Haqqani network, designated as a “terrorist” organization by the United States. He is one of the FBI’s most wanted men.

Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford said many of the appointments involved “old faces”.

“It’s also important to say that a lot of these names, the vast majority of them are actually Pashtun and are not taking into consideration, arguably critics would say, the vast great ethnic diversity of this country.”

Commenting on the Taliban’s announcement, Obaidullah Baheer, of the American University of Afghanistan, said it did not do “their cause for international recognition any favours”.

“The amount of time spent wasn’t on discussing or negotiating inclusivity or potential power sharing with other political parties. That time was spent on knowing how to split that pie amongst their own ranks,” Baheer told Al Jazeera from Kabul.

The group had promised an “inclusive” government that represents Afghanistan’s complex ethnic makeup – though women are unlikely to be included at the top levels.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, said the new government will work towards upholding Shariah law in Afghanistan.

“I assure all the countrymen that the figures will work hard towards upholding Islamic rules and Sharia law in the country,” Akhundzada said.

He told Afghans the new leadership would ensure “lasting peace, prosperity and development”, adding that “people should not try to leave the country”.

“The Islamic Emirate has no problem with anyone,” he said.

“All will take part in strengthening the system and Afghanistan and in this way; we will rebuild our war-torn country.”

In response to Taliban announcement, the United States said it was concerned about the “affiliations and track records” of some of the people named to government.

“We also reiterate our clear expectation that Taliban ensure that Afghan soil is not used to threaten any other countries and allow humanitarian access in support of the Afghan people,” a State Department spokesman said in a statement.

United Nations spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters in New York that only a “negotiated and inclusive settlement will bring sustainable peace to Afghanistan”.

Who is Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar?

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban’s top political leader, who made a triumphal return to Afghanistan this week, battled the US and its allies for decades but then signed a landmark peace agreement with the Trump administration.

Baradar is now expected to play a key role in negotiations between the Taliban and officials from the Afghan government that the group deposed in its blitz across the country. Taliban say they seek an “inclusive, Islamic” government and claim they have become more moderate since they last held power.

But many remain skeptical, and all eyes are now on Baradar, who has said little about how the group will govern but has proven pragmatic in the past.

Baradar’s biography charts the arc of the Taliban’s journey from an Islamic militia that battled warlords during the civil war in the 1990s, ruled the country in accordance with a strict interpretation of Islamic law and then waged a two-decade insurgency against the US. His experience also sheds light on the Taliban’s complicated relationship with Pakistan.

Baradar is the only surviving Taliban leader to have been personally appointed deputy by the late Taliban commander Mullah Mohammed Omar, giving Baradar near-legendary status within the movement. He is far more visible than the Taliban’s current supreme leader, Maulawi Hibatullah Akhunzada.

On Tuesday, Baradar landed in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement he helped found in the mid-1990s. Ending 20 years of exile, he was thronged by well-wishers as he stepped off a Qatari government aircraft and drove off in a convoy.

Baradar, who is in his early 50s, was born in the southern Uruzgan province. Like others who would eventually become Taliban leaders, he joined the ranks of the CIA- and Pakistan-backed Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet Union during its decade long occupation of the country that ended in 1989.

In the 1990s, the country slid into civil war, with rival Mujahideen battling one another and carving out fiefdoms. Warlords set up brutal protection rackets and checkpoints in which their forces shook down travelers to fund their military activities.

In 1994, Mullah Omar, Baradar and others founded Taliban, which means religious students. The group mainly consisted of clerics and young, pious men, many of whom had been driven from their homes and had known only war. Their unsparing interpretation of Islam unified their ranks and set them apart from the notoriously corrupt warlords.

Baradar fought alongside Mullah Omar as he led Taliban through its seizure of power in 1996 and its return to an insurgency following the 2001 US-led invasion.

During the group’s 1996-2001 rule, the president and governing council were based in Kabul. But Baradar spent most of his time in Kandahar, the spiritual capital of Taliban, and did not have an official government role.

The US invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, which had been planned and carried out by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida while it was sheltering under Taliban rule. Baradar, Omar and other Taliban leaders fled into neighboring Pakistan.

In the ensuing years, the Taliban were able to organize a potent insurgency based in rugged and semi-autonomous tribal areas along the border. Baradar was arrested in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi in 2010 in a joint raid by the CIA and Pakistan’s counterterrorism forces.

At the time, he had been making peace overtures to Afghanistan’s then-President Hamid Karzai, but the US was bent on military victory and it appeared that Pakistan wanted to ensure control over any political process. Baradar’s removal empowered more radical leaders within the Taliban who were less open to diplomacy.

Karzai later confirmed the overtures to The Associated Press and said he had twice asked the Americans and the Pakistanis to free Baradar but was rebuffed. Baradar himself refused an offer of release in 2013, apparently because the US and Pakistan conditioned it on his cooperation.

Karzai, who is now involved in talks with the Taliban about shaping the next government, could once again find himself negotiating with Baradar.

By 2018, Taliban had seized effective control over much of Afghanistan’s countryside. The Trump administration, looking for a way out of America’s longest war, persuaded Pakistan to release Baradar that year and began pursuing peace talks with Taliban.

Baradar led the Taliban’s negotiating team in Qatar through several rounds of those talks, culminating in a February 2020 peace agreement. He also met with then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Under the deal, the Taliban agreed to halt attacks on international forces and prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a haven for terror groups in return for a full U.S. withdrawal, now planned for the end of the month.

Last week, Taliban pushed into the country’s cities, seizing nearly all of the country in matter of days and then rolled virtually unopposed into the capital, Kabul.

In his first comment after the capture of Kabul on Sunday, Baradar acknowledged his surprise, saying that “it was never expected that we will have victory in Afghanistan.”

Wearing a black turban and vest over a white robe, the bespectacled Baradar looked straight into the camera.

“Now comes the test,” he said. “We must meet the challenge of serving and securing our nation, and giving it a stable life going forward.”

Iranian Foreign Minister meets Taliban delegation in Tehran

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met on Sunday with a Taliban delegation led by deputy head of the group’s political bureau Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. In the meeting, Zarif welcomed the idea of formation of an all-inclusive government with the participation of all ethnic and political groups in Afghanistan, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Political decisions could not be made in a vacuum, and the formation of an all-inclusive government must take place in a participatory process and by taking into account the fundamental structures, institutions and laws, such as the Constitution,” the statement quoted Zarif as saying in the meeting.

The chief Iranian diplomat expressed Iran’s readiness to facilitate dialogue among the Taliban, the Afghan government and other Afghan groups, noting, “The noble people of Afghanistan have been wronged. The war and occupation of Afghanistan have dealt heavy blows to the Afghan people.”

He expressed hope that the Taliban would focus efforts on an immediate end to the pains and problems of Afghan people so that the establishment of peace in Afghanistan would strip the outsiders of a pretext for occupation.

According to a Tasnim report, Zarif also voiced support for an all-inclusive Islamic government in Afghanistan.

“We support the formation of an all-inclusive Islamic government with the participation of all ethnicities and sects and consider it necessary for Afghanistan,” Zarif was quoted by Tasnim as telling the Taliban delegation. He underlined the need for the Taliban to avoid targeting the people of Afghanistan.

Zarif also told the Taliban delegation that the United States is not a good mediator.

The Taliban delegation, for its part, gave a report of the Afghan peace process and the intra-Afghan negotiations.

“Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar also noted that the relations between Afghanistan and Iran are based upon friendship and good neighborliness, expressing hope for the expansion of relations between the two countries with the establishment of peace and calm in Afghanistan,” the statement noted.