Afghanistan: Taliban supreme leader Akhundzada makes first public appearance
In his first public appearance since his appointment in 2016, Taliban supreme leader mollah Haibatullah Akhundzada participated in a gathering at a Koranic school yesterday in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, after it was rumored the militant leader had been killed, while others said he was hiding in Pakistan.
The Afghan government statement said the that Taliban leader “appeared in a large gathering at the famous Dar al Uloom School of Governance and spoke for 10 minutes to soldiers and students”, AFP reported.
The Government attached its statement to a sound recording to confirm the information, claiming that it was the voice of Mullah Akhundzada.
According to a local source, mollah Akhundzada arrived at the Koranic School in Kandahar in a two-car convoy under heavy guard. No pictures of him were allowed.
With the exception of rare annual messages during Muslim holidays, mollah Akhundzada was kept as discreet as to his personality as he was. Until the US withdrawal from the country, no one knew where he was or whether he was still alive.
Last September, the movement announced that its supreme leader had been living from the beginning in Kandahar, confirming at the time that he would appear “soon in public”. It recently distributed only one picture of him showing him with a gray beard wearing a turban.
Underscoring the importance of mollah Akhundzada to the movement, Kandahar Governor mollah Yusuf Wafa said in a mid-week press statement: “We have regular meetings with him on monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and how our government is run”.
“He gives advice to all the leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and we follow his rules and advice,” he said.
“If our government is making progress, it is because of his advice,” mollah Yusuf said, adding that a “seminar” was held in a secret location that brought together senior Taliban officials for days since Friday in Kandahar, an AFP correspondent reported.
The Taliban leader was relatively unknown before taking over as leader in 2016, succeeding Mollah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour who was killed in a US drone strike on a US rally in Pakistan. Akhundzada was more concerned with judicial and religious affairs than military matters. He is son of a cleric from Kandahar, the heartland of Pashtun territory in southern Afghanistan and birthplace of the Taliban, wields considerable influence within the movement before being appointed as its leader and manages its judicial system.
Immediately after he assumed the leadership of the movement, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, pledged allegiance to him and called him the “Commander of the Faithful”, which helped strengthen his credibility in the jihadist world.
As the “commander in chief”, Akhundzada is responsible for maintaining “unity” within the Islamist movement, a complex task; given that internal conflicts have fractured the jihadi movement in recent years.
