On Tuesday, the Taliban announced the formation of an interim government for
Afghanistan, filling top posts with hardiners from their rule in the 1990


<[link removed]>
<[link removed]>
Taliban Announces Interim Afghan Government Comprised Of Hardliners, Known
Terrorists

 

(New York, N.Y.) — On Tuesday, the Taliban announced the formation of an
interim government
<[link removed]>
for Afghanistan, filling top posts with hardiners from their rule in the 1990s
and veterans of the 20-year war against the U.S.-led coalition. The lineup of
senior cabinet positions, which includes former detainees at Guantánamo Bay
Naval Base, members of the U.S.-designated Haqqani network, and subjects of an
international sanctions lists, presents the first snapshot of how the Taliban
intends to lead Afghanistan.

 

Sirajuddin Haqqani
<[link removed]>, who is wanted
by the U.S. State Department and FBI, will serve as acting minister of the
interior—a role in which he will have extensive authority over policing and
legal matters. It is unclear if Haqqani will retain his position as the
operational commander of the Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terror
organization aligned with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Additionally, Sirajuddin
has served as the deputy emir of the Taliban since 2015. He is wanted by U.S.
authorities for planning a 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul that killed six
people, including American citizen Thor David Hesla. The U.S. Department of the
Treasury designated Haqqani as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT)
under Executive Order 13224 on March 11, 2008.

 

Other U.S. SDGTs and U.N. Security Council-designated individuals are also
serving in leadership positions of the Taliban government. Self-appointed chief
of security for Kabul and acting minister for refugeesKhalil al-Rahman Haqqani
<[link removed]> was
designated by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011. Co-deputy prime minister
Abdul Ghani Baradar
<[link removed]> was
sanctioned by the Security Council in the months preceding the al-Qaeda
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

 

Many of the all-male Taliban government are veterans of the group’s hardline
movement in the early nineties.Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada
<[link removed]>
—who served as the head of the sharia courts in the 1990s and held the role of
the Taliban’s top religious leader since2016
<[link removed]>
—was named the supreme leader. The post of acting defense minister is now held
byMawlawi Mohammad Yaqoob
<[link removed]>, the oldest son
of Taliban founderMullah Muhammad Omar
<[link removed]>. Yaqoob is also
head of the Taliban’s military commission, which oversees the group’s military
activities in Afghanistan.

 

To read the Counter Extremism Project (CEP)’s Sirajuddin Haqqani resource,
please clickhere
<[link removed]>.

 

To read CEP’s Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani resource, please click here
<[link removed]>. 

 

To read CEP’s Mohammad Yaqoob resource, please click here
<[link removed]>. 

 

To read CEP’s Abdul Ghani Baradar resource, please click here
<[link removed]>. 

 

To read CEP’s Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada resource, please click here
<[link removed]>
. 

 

To read CEP’s Afghanistan resource, please click here
<[link removed]>. 

 

###

Unsubscribe
<[link removed]>