VOA News August 19, 2021 Taliban fighters captured major areas in quick succession on their way to seizing Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, Sunday, 20 years after U.S.-led forces knocked the group from power. Here are some of its key leaders. Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada He is the Taliban’s supreme leader, a position he took following the death
By Frud Bezhan Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty September 10, 2020 Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai spent years lying low in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta, where the Afghan Taliban leadership has been based since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the extremist group from power in neighboring Afghanistan. A hard-line cleric, Ishaqzai until recently ran an Islamic madrasah,
Tolo News: The Taliban leadership has appointed Mawlawi Abdul Hakim, the chief justice of the group, as head of their 21-member negotiating team in Qatar, making the former chief negotiator Abbas Stanekzai his deputy. Sources close to the Taliban said that most of the fatwas (rulings) of the group, particularly on war, are issued by