mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, back in Afghanistan | Taliban co-founder and political leader returned to his roots

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, Head of the Taliban political bureau in Qatar, he arrived in the city of Kandahar in Afghanistan on Tuesday on the first official trip of a Taliban leader to the country after the fall of the insurgent regime in 2001. Just a day ago, Mullah Baradar delivered a speech announcing the end of the war in Afghanistan. and the victory of the Taliban sealed by the flight of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and the capture of the presidential palace in Kabul. The return of the co-founder and number two of the Taliban to Kandahar, the former capital of the Taliban between 1996 and 2001, formalizes the return of the insurgents to the country.

Abdul Ghani Baradar is the chief general of the Taliban and also one of the founders of the insurgent movement. The mullah – a name used to identify people with extensive knowledge of the Quran – was released from a Pakistan prison less than three years ago at the behest of former US President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, he returned to Kandahar province where the Taliban movement was born almost three decades ago.

“A high-level delegation headed by Mullah Baradar left Qatar and arrived in our beloved country this afternoon, landing at Kandahar Airport,” he said on Twitter. Mohamed Naeem, a spokesperson for the Taliban.

the beginning

Mullah Baradar Akhund was born in Uruzgan province in 1968, some 600 kilometers southwest of the capital Kabul. During the 1980s he fought in the Mujahedin against the Soviets. The Mujahedin were Afghan guerrillas with financial support from the United States to lead a rebellion against Russian forces. Following the expulsion of the Russian presence in 1989, Baradar created a madrasa (or religious school) in Kandahar with his former commander and renowned brother-in-law, Mohamed omar (which the Afghan government has declared dead since 2013). The two mullahs founded the Taliban movement, which was to be led by young Islamic scholars dedicated to the religious cleansing of Afghanistan and the creation of an emirate.

In recent days, the insurgent movement has advanced at an accelerated pace on the provincial capitals of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s control over major cities, and ultimately the capital Kabul, took Western governments by surprise. Something similar happened in 1996 when the Taliban unexpectedly occupied provincial capitals. On this occasion Baradar, Mullah Omar’s deputy, was one of the main architects of these victories, with the support of the Pakistani Intelligence Agency (ISI).

Considered a very effective strategist, Mullah Baradar held a number of military and administrative positions during the five years of the Taliban regime. At the time of the American intervention and the overthrow of the insurgent leadership in 2001, Baradar was the Deputy Minister of Defense.

Exile

After his expulsion from Afghanistan, Mullah Baradar retained his reputation as a military leader and political operator. For Western diplomacy Baradar was close to the Quetta Shura wing of the exiled Taliban, a faction lent itself to political dialogue with Kabul and resisted control of Pakistani ISIs.

But in the United States, his military background outweighed his moderate tendencies during exile. In 2010, the CIA located him in the port city of Karachi and in February of the same year, he managed to get Pakistani intelligence agencies to arrest him. But the arrival of Donald trump the White House would change the fate of Mullah Baradar.

The diplomatic side

In 2018, the Afghan envoy from Washington, Zalmay Khalilzad He called on the Pakistanis to release the founder of the Taliban so that he could conduct negotiations in Qatar with the idea of ​​achieving a distribution of power between the insurgents and the fallen Afghan government. The Doha talks increased the diplomatic clout of the Taliban and made Mullah Baradar one of the best-known faces of the deal. In February 2020, Baradar signed the Doha deal with the United States, presented by the republican administration as a step towards peace. In September 2020, he met then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the United States still withdrew its troops with dignity.