Breaking News 15/09/2021

Where are the Taliban’s missing leaders? Rumors swirl over fate of two top officials

The Taliban’s leaders are rarely seen at public events and do not readily grant interviews or hold news conferences. Many of them move in the shadows, their whereabouts unknown, inevitably generating rumors about their health and about possible internal disagreements.

Those rumors gained so much traction in recent days that the Taliban’s spokesmen have been forced to fend off questions about whether one of the most prominent figures in the group, Mullah Baradar, was injured or even killed in a dispute in Kabul in the past week with the powerful Haqqani network, which holds key positions in the interim government.
Similarly, Taliban officials have repeatedly said that the movement’s supreme leader and commander-in-chief, Haibatullah Akhundzada, would soon make a public appearance. He hasn’t — fueling rumors that he is sick or even dead.
In other countries, a politician subjected to such speculation would call a news conference or make a television appearance to set the record straight. In Baradar’s case, a 39-second audio recording of modest quality was released Monday, along with a hand-written note from his assistant. No video or images were forthcoming. The last time Baradar was seen was in a fleeting appearance at a Kabul hotel in the first week of September.
In the audio clip, Baradar purportedly says: “There are some talks in in media. I had been out on a trip during these days. I had gone somewhere and praises to God we are all well. Some of these media networks do this kind of propaganda and tell such shameful lies. Reject this talk with courage. There are no issues no problems, praises to God. I am assuring you 100%.”
Baradar is the head of the Taliban’s political office and led the Doha negotiations with the former government and the United States. Some expected he would be named prime minister, but after prolonged negotiations on the shape of the new government, Baradar was named a deputy prime minister.
Rumors of internal rifts were fed by Baradar’s absence from the delegation which met Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Kabul on Sunday. Taliban officials explained that he was not in Kabul but had gone to Kandahar, where the supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada is said to be based.
The invisibility of the Taliban leadership is not a new phenomenon. This is not a group that feels the need to communicate with the outside world. In many ways, the Taliban’s PR effort has become much more sophisticated in the last couple of years, with social media accounts in several languages and spokesmen like Zabihullah Mujahid holding news conferences. The Taliban produced a prodigious volume of video as its fighters stormed across the country in August.
But that more assertive communications strategy does not extend to leaders who have spent much of their lives fighting guerrilla warfare and in some cases years in prison. The Taliban remain a secretive organization.
Azaz Syed, a Pakistani journalist who has reported on the Taliban for years, told CNN: “Most of the key Taliban leaders — particularly from Haqqani family — avoid public exposure or appearance as they are convinced that their identity would help the ‘enemy’ to target them.” Old habits, it seems, die hard.

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Breaking News 15/09/2021

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