Who are the actors in the Taliban’s seizure of power?


In the rain, an American helicopter evacuates the last diplomats from the embassy from the United States in Kabul this Sunday. The strong image, which evokes the disaster in Vietnam, symbolizes the failure of Uncle Sam in Afghanistan, twenty years after the American invasion and the fall of the Taliban regime.

“The Taliban have won”, summed up Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, forced to flee his country to avoid a “bloodbath”. In his place now, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, whose supporters settled on Sunday
in the presidential palace of the capital before the eyes of the whole world. 20 minutes takes stock of the players in this power grab.

Haibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader

Undated photo provided by the Afghan Taliban on May 25, 2016 of the new mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada – STR Afghan Taliban

He is said to be Afghanistan’s new strongman. Haibatullah Akhundzada has been the leader of the Taliban since the death of his predecessor Mansour, killed by an American drone in Pakistan in 2016. Sixty-year-old mullah is a discreet man, more a specialist in legal and religious issues than weapons, at least before he took power. Son of a theologian, originally from Kandahar, the heart of the Pashtun country in southern Afghanistan and the cradle of the movement, Akhundzada quickly received
an oath of allegiance from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, who called him an “emir of the believers”.

Enjoying great influence for his scholarship, some analysts believed that his role would be more symbolic than operational. But Akhundzada managed to take the country in a few weeks, after unifying the Taliban, long fractured by a violent struggle for power.

Baradar, Haqqani, Yaqoub, the other figures of power

Mollah Baradar, center.
Mollah Baradar, center. – EPN / Newscom / SIPA

Akhundzada will not lead alone, other officials should have important powers, such as Mullah Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban and head of their political office, located in Qatar, who led the negotiations with the Americans. Another important element: Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of a famous anti-Soviet jihad commander. The number two Taliban is the head of the powerful network bearing his name, accused of having assassinated certain senior Afghan officials and of having held Westerners hostage.

Mullah Yaqoub, finally, is the son of the famous mullah Omar and head of the powerful Taliban military commission, which decides strategic directions in the war against the Afghan government. However, some analysts believe that his appointment as head of this commission in 2020 is only symbolic.

Ashraf Ghani, the fugitive president

Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani during the Afghanistan Conference in Geneva, November 27, 2018.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani during the Afghanistan Conference in Geneva, November 27, 2018. – Denis Balibouse / AP / SIPA

In a few years it will have become the very image of the bankruptcy of Afghanistan. After a career in the United States as a professor of political science and anthropology in the 1980s, he returned to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban at the end of 2001, and became Minister of Finance under President Hamid Karzai. He was elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2019, controversially, on the promise to turn the country around and end the corruption. Ashraf Ghani, will not have finally kept either of these two promises.

Its relations with the United States deteriorate when the Americans decide to start bilateral negotiations with the Taliban in Doha. He is excluded but refuses to resign. “No power in the world will be able to force me to take a plane and leave this country. It is a country that I love and I will die defending it, ”he said during an interview in May in Spiegel. Three months later, he left his country by plane after a ten-day Taliban lightning offensive.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American diplomat

Zalmay Khalilzad, the negotiator.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the negotiator. – / AP / SIPA

Zalmay Khalilzad, born in Afghanistan, served as US Ambassador to the UN, Iraq and Afghanistan under the presidency of Republican George W. Bush. It was he who tried, in vain, to put the peace process, threatened by violence, back on track.

Appointed by Donald Trump to keep his campaign promise, this career diplomat was the architect of the agreement signed by Washington with the Taliban in February 2020 in Doha which provided for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan by May. . Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed in his functions at the end of January Joe Biden, was still meeting in recent days with Taliban leaders in Qatar to try to find a peace agreement.

Ismail Khan, “the Lion of Herat” defeated

Ismail Khan.
Ismail Khan. – Massoud Hossaini / AP / SIPA

It is another symbol of the military defeat of the Afghan forces. A month ago, Ismail Khan, one of Afghanistan’s most famous warlords, pledged to defend his land against the Taliban, calling on the people to join the fight. But at 75, “the Lion of Herat”, which held the country’s third largest city for decades, was finally forced to lay down its arms.

On Thursday, the Taliban issued a video of the old warchief, calling for “an end to the fighting”, while the insurgents have promised to ensure his safety. As in other cities that fell to the Taliban last week, the authorities say they have given up to avoid a bloodbath to civilians.





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