Taliban leaders responsible for today's mayhem

The Taliban leaders who have waged war for most of their adult life have been plotting their return to power ever since they were toppled in 2001. Their founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, died in April 2013 and his successor, Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a US drone strike near the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2016. The third figure to take control of the Afghanistan Taliban has been remorseless in his aim to defeat the US-led coalition and to bring the Taliban back into power. The leader for the last five years who, like his predecessors, is rarely seen in public, is Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada. About 60 years old, he is known as the Leader of the Faithful. An Islamic legal scholar he rules over all the group’s political, religious and military activities, and is believed to be in hiding in Quetta in Pakistan. Other key members of the top echelon of Taliban leaders include Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the co-founders of the Taliban and deputy leader in charge of the group’s political office. He is a member of the negotiating team which led to the ill-fated deal between the insurgents and the US, signed on February 29, 2020 in Doha, capital of Qatar. Two other deputy leaders are Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the son of the late Mullah Omar, in his 30s, who is in charge of military operations, and Sirajuddin Haqqani who is head of the Haqqani terrorist network which is allied to the Taliban. Mullah Abdul Hakim, a former chief justice in the Taliban courts, is the head of the negotiating team in Dohaand is one of the most trusted associates of the overall Taliban leader. The biggest coup for the Taliban leadership came in 2014 when the US agreed to release five of their most experienced figures from the US Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba where they had been held without charge as suspected “war combatants”. They won their freedom in return for the release by the Taliban of the US Army’s Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier taken prisoner by the insurgents. The five former Guantanamo detainees, Khirullah Sai Wali Khairkhwa, former interior minister in the Taliban government, Mohammad Fazi, ex-Taliban army chief, Norullah Noori, a former provincial governor, Abdul Haq Wasiq, ex-deputy chief of intelligence, and Mohammad Nabi Omari who is closely linked to the Haqqani network, were selected to join the negotiating team in Doha.