Taliban adds ‘familiar faces’ in its Cabinet: Here’s all you need to know



After the swift takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban is switching its focus from military conquest to running a country in crisis.

Keeping governance in mind, Taliban leaders have decided to form a 12-man council and have already appointed interim heads of several ministries.

As of date, the Taliban has appointed a new finance minister, an intelligence chief, and an acting interior minister in Afghanistan, the Pajhwok news agency reported on Tuesday.

Who’s who in the Taliban Cabinet:

Based on the reported information, Gul Agha has been selected as the new interim finance minister.

Gul Agha would be Gul Agha Ishakzai, the head of the Finance Commission for the militant group. According to Interpol, he is a childhood friend of late Taliban founder Mullah Omar.

As head of the Finance Commission, Agha will be responsibile for collecting taxes. He has organised funding for suicide attacks in Kandahar. A number of countries and international organisations, including the United States, the United Nations, have implemented sanction against him.

Al Jazeera, citing a Taliban source, said that the group has selected Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir as the acting defence minister.

Zakir started his military career by joining the Taliban in 1997 and later took part in the Afghan civil war.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, he was detained by US forces and was kept in the high-security Guantanamo Bay prison till 2007 after which he was transferred to Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Afghanistan.

He was later released in May 2008.

Najibullah has been appointed as Afghanistan’s intelligence chief. Other than the fact that he’s a Taliban commander, there is no information about him.

Sadr Ibrahim has been made the acting interior minister. He is believed to be a powerful and trusted figure within the Taliban.

According to a declassified 2006 document from the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Sadr, “Iriginally from Kandahar province, is living in Charsada, in Pakistan’s Peshawar and controls Taliban fighters in the area”.

As per the document, Ibrahim was also responsible for distributing monthly stipends to regional Taliban leaders involved in anti-coalition attacks in Afghanistan.

Ibrahim has been with the Taliban since its emergence in 1994. An extreme hardliner in his religious views, Ibrahim used his days in the previous Taliban government to develop close contacts with jihadist or terrorist groups and became quite close to Al-Qaeda.

In 2014, he was appointed as Taliban’s military chief and is credited for transforming the group into a well-trained guerilla force that can carry out large-scale urban attacks.

Eventually, he became all too powerful and branched out on his own. However, fearing his power, the Taliban in February 2021 banned splinter groups and Ibrahim was ordered not to operate in other provinces.

The latest move by the Taliban may thus be a step to placate him.

On Monday, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid took to Twitter to announce the appointment of Haji Mohammad Idris as the acting head of Afghanistan’s central bank. In the post, Mujahid said that Idris will be addressing the “looming banking issues and the problems of the people”.

A senior Taliban official said Idris, from the northern province of Jawzjan, had long experience working on financial issues with the previous leader of the movement, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a drone strike in 2016.

While Idris has no public profile outside the movement and no formal financial training or higher education, he was head of the movement’s finance section and respected for his expertise, a senior Taliban leader said.

Commenting on the appointment, Amrullah Saleh, the acting president of Afghanistan, in an exclusive to CNN-News18, said, “A money launderer who was facilitating transactions between Al-Qaeda sympathisers and Taliban has become governor of Afghan central bank, Haqqanis are running Kabul… needless to explain who Haqqanis are. This is a shame and betrayal and I don’t want to be a part of that shame and betrayal.”

Familiar names

According to experts, these appointees are known faces within the group.

“They are familiar names,” said Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups at the Overseas Development Institute in Oslo, referring to the appointments.

“They (the Taliban) are not exactly showing a lot of diversity or demonstrating the desire for a civilian government.”

It seems that the Taliban also intends to offer to some members of the previous US-backed government ministerial posts in the new Cabinet.

They want to create a government that would seem as inclusive as possible in order to increase its chances of gaining international recognition.

Inputs from agencies



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