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.”