In one of the only known photographs of supreme Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, he looks directly at the camera: an expressionless face between a white turban and a long, gray beard.
When the Islamist movement unveiled its new government on Tuesday after coming to power when U.S.-led forces withdrew last month, the mysterious Akhundzada retained the role of supreme leader, the highest authority on political, religious matters. and military of the group he has maintained. since 2016.
“We will rebuild our war-torn country,” Akhundzada said in a written statement released by the Taliban after Tuesday’s appointments, his first comments since the group recaptured Afghanistan.
Akhundzada said the Taliban were committed to all international laws, treaties and commitments that did not conflict with Islamic law, which would henceforth regulate all governance in Afghanistan.
A harsh cleric whose son was a suicide bomber, Akhundzada has spent most of his leadership in the shadows, leaving others to take the lead in negotiations that eventually saw the United States and its allies abandon the Afghanistan after 20 years of ground war against insurrection.
Even basic details like your age are hard to verify. He is believed to be around 60 years old.
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Still, some analysts who have studied the Taliban say it was a guiding hand, which cured the movement’s divisions and managed the handling of international allies and enemies before the military victory.
“Through ingenuity, deception, manipulation and patience, he was able to bring the Taliban back to power,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a professor of security studies at Nanyang University of Technology in Singapore.
Others, however, say he is rather a front-line character, chosen as a candidate for engagement during a period of flux in the movement, while real power is held by the military factions of the Taliban.
“There is very little information available about him. You don’t see him saying anything in person. And combined with the circumstances of his appointment, this feeds on the position marker argument,” said Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy, a security expert. ‘South Asia. the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, a think tank in New Delhi.
A lot of strength
Born into a strict religious family in Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar, Akhundzada was one of the first members of the Taliban, a movement that emerged in the surrounding Helmand province south of the ashes of the Afghan civil war.
When the Taliban ruled between 1996 and 2001 with a strict interpretation of sharia law banning women from working and imposing punishments such as stoning, Akhundzada was the head of the judicial system, according to the United Nations.
Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the ouster of the Taliban following the 9/11 attacks, Reuters exclusively reported that Akhundzada fled to Pakistan where he taught and preached in a mosque for 15 years.
Colleagues and students at this mosque described Akhundzada as a disciplinary scholar and a fierce speaker.
“He spoke very loudly about the US and the war and that we would not give up our jihad,” a former student said, recalling a speech he gave at a public rally in Quetta in 2014.
Akhundzada was not the obvious selection when senior Taliban members met in 2016 to appoint a new leader after the death of leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in a drone strike in the United States.
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While Akhundzada came from the large and powerful Noorzai tribe, his actions within the regime were considered more scholarly than soldiers, unlike previous leaders.
But it was a compromise between the young and inexperienced son of the late Taliban founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was wanted by the United States in connection with a deadly 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel, they reported. then sources in Reuters.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri pledged allegiance to Akhundzada in an online audio message shortly after the Taliban leader took office, Reuters reported.
Unlike other Taliban leaders, Akhundzada is not on the UN sanctions list. However, his son Abdur Rahman was killed when he carried out a suicide attack on an Afghan military base in Helmand in July 2017, according to a Taliban spokesman.
At the beginning of his leadership, Akhundzada instituted reforms that consolidated his influence over an insurrection weakened by division and defection.
But he kept a low public profile. The only photo Reuters has been able to check on him was an undated image posted in a Taliban feed on Twitter in May 2016. It was identified separately by several Taliban officials, who declined to be named.
This shady existence has led to constant speculation about his whereabouts and his health. The Taliban are so secretive about their leaders that the death of movement founder Mullah Omar in 2013 was only confirmed two years later by his son.