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When the taliban took Kabul in mid-August, coming to power Afghanistan for the second time, the mystery about the whereabouts of their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada it got even deeper.
Many Afghans doubt whether the elderly cleric is dead or alive. Even the nation’s most dedicated analysts wonder who is really leading the movement Islamist radical.
On October 30, two months after a Taliban spokesman assured that Akhundzada was in good condition in Kandahar, rumors surfaced that the “emir” had delivered a speech at a madrasa in this southern city.
The Taliban leaders wanted to demonstrate the authenticity of his appearance by releasing a sound recording of more than ten minutes that recorded his speech.
In one of Kandahar’s poorest districts, between a garbage-strewn stream and a dusty road, two Taliban fighters stand guard outside the blue and white door of the Hakimia madrasa.
The location has attracted crowds of curious and Taliban supporters since October 30.
The need for Taliban leaders to maintain low-key profiles has been heightened during the last decade of war, with the multiplication of deadly US drone strikes.
Akhundzada took over the reins of the movement after a bombing killed his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansur, in 2016. He quickly gained the backing of Al Qaeda chief Ayman az Zawahirí, who called him “the emir of the faithful.”
The backing of Osama bin Laden’s heir assured his jihadist credentials with longtime allies of the Taliban.
The Islamist movement has published only one photograph of Akhundzada five years ago when he assumed its leadership. And that image, where he appears with a gray beard, a white turban and a defiant gaze, was from two decades ago, according to the Taliban.
Leaders of the defeated Afghan government and many Western analysts are skeptical and believe that the leader died years ago. For them, the visit to the madrasa was an organized deception.
It would not be new. For two years, the Taliban pretended that its founder, Mullah Omar, was alive after his death in 2013.
Akhundzada “has been dead for a long time and has had no role in taking Kabul,” a former government security official told AFP. He died with his brother in a suicide attack in Quetta (Pakistan) “about three years ago,” says a source. This theory, with some variations, is considered credible by several foreign intelligence agencies.
Another regional security source assures AFP that “no one will confirm and no one will deny” the alleged death of the Taliban supreme leader.
The Pentagon and the CIA did not respond to AFP requests on this issue.
According to his official biography, his rise was meteoric after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996. He ran a local madrasa, served as a judge at the Kandahar provincial court, then headed a military court until 2000. When the Taliban were deposed in 2001 , was in command of the Kabul military court.
Akhundzada fled to Pakistan, finding shelter in Quetta. His knowledge of Islamic law made him head of the judicial system in the shadow of the Taliban.
If he were dead, the rivalry with the local branch of the Islamic State group, ISISI-K, would explain why the Taliban are hiding his death. “If they announce that Akhundzada is gone and they are looking for a new emir, it would split up the Taliban and ISIS-K could take advantage of it,” says a source.
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