8am: Following the escalation of anti-Taliban front activities, Mohammad Yusuf Wafa, the Taliban’s governor in Balkh, who is known as “Hibatullah’s Shadow” in the north, has traveled to the mountainous districts of Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Samangan, and Bamiyan and has inspected conditions there firsthand. In his most recent move, during a meeting with Taliban military commanders in the north, he ordered full alert. At the same time, the Taliban’s governor in Badakhshan has also threatened the people of the province into obeying Hibatullah Akhundzada, warning that those who defy the order of the group’s leader will be killed. This comes as attacks by the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) in Nuristan and Zibak have increased over the past month, and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) announced yesterday that it had killed the Taliban’s deputy intelligence chief for Badakhshan in the city of Faizabad. Click here to read more (external link).