Afghanistan: the Taliban announced the establishment of an intransigent cabinet | Radical Islamist group reneged on pledge to include women and ethnic groups

The new government of the insurgent regime will have no women and will be made up entirely of Taliban. Mullah Hassan Akhund will be its president and the mule Abdul Ghani Baradar, who for three years led the negotiations in Doha, will be his right-hand man and chief of the cabinet of ministers. Among the names unveiled this Tuesday by the main spokesperson for the fighters, is one of the men most wanted by the FBI..

New wardrobe

The main spokesperson for the Taliban regime, Zabihullah Mujahid, announced the composition of the new Afghan cabinet. Leading the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name by which the insurgents baptized the Central Asian country after taking Kabul last month, will be Mohammed Hassan Akhund, born in the Afghan province of Kandahar. The new prime minister was a close collaborator and political advisor to the founder of the Taliban movement, Mullah Omar.

Despite being in the leadership of the Taliban movement for 20 years and serving in the insurgent cabinet in his first government, Akhund is not as well known as the rest of the appointed ministers. Even if for the UN Security Council, the new president is on the list of those sanctioned for “acts and activities of the Taliban” and is considered one of the “most effective Taliban commanders”.

Founders

Number two in the new Taliban government will be Abdul Ghani Baradar, 53, one of the figures best known for his role in negotiations with the United States, which pushed for the Taliban leader to be released in 2018. In 2001, after the American invasion and NATO countries and the fall of the first Taliban regime, Baradar was part of an insurgent group that was ready to recognize the new government in Kabul. The United States rejected the initiative and the intervention in Afghanistan lasted twenty years until August 30. Another of the leaders who participated in the dialogue in Qatar, Amir Khan Muttaqi, will also join the new cabinet. Muttaqi will be the new Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Heirs

Meanwhile, a second generation of Taliban, sons of prominent radical Islamist leaders, will also make up the cabinet which was announced on Tuesday. One of them, Sirajuddin Haqqani, 48, son of Jalaludin Haqqani, founder of the Haqqan networkI will be in charge of the Interior portfolio. The Haqqani Network is a Taliban guerrilla faction linked to Al Qaeda. For the United States it is a terrorist organization, and assures us that this is one of the most dangerous factions that the Afghan troops have faced and, therefore, the new Home Secretary is one of the FBI’s most wanted men.

While thMullah Yaqub, hijo of Mullah Omar, which the United States presumed dead in 2013, will be in charge of the Ministry of Defense. Yaqub headed the Taliban military commission that defined the insurgents’ strategy against the Afghan government. The lineage of the new Minister of Defense, whose father is revered as leader of the Taliban, made him a unifying figure among the combatants.

After the announcement of the formation of the cabinet, the spokesman of the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, named vice-minister of Information and Culture, specified that “the government is not complete”. The new government in which 30 of the 33 officials are of Pashtun origin, the ethnic group to which the majority of the Taliban belong, has not turned out to be inclusive as the insurgents had promised three weeks ago.

Protests in Kabul

Protests continue in the Central Asian country, more recently several people were injured when the Taliban opened fire on protesters to disperse the crowd that took to the streets to reject a security meeting between Pakistan and the insurgents. air, then started shooting at the demonstrators, several were injured, ”said one protester.

Fawzia Wahdat, one of the organizers of the protests in Kabul, said hundreds of women were being temporarily detained. “The women, who were held by the Taliban, were released and the Taliban told us that they had been taken to safety and had not been arrested,” said Wahdat, who also assured that “many of our brothers and sisters have been beaten“in the demonstrations. “Despite the violence, shootings and beatings, we were able to bring our protests to a close and taught the world that we were not the stupid ones twenty years ago.”, he stressed.

Afghan Signal Tolo News reported in a statement that one of its cameramen, Wahid Ahmadi, was beaten by the Taliban while covering the protests and then held for hours until his release.