All participants of the Taliban’s Ulema gathering pledged allegiance to the group’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada on Friday, according to Bakhtar, a Taliban-controlled news agency.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, Taliban’s acting interior minister, at the beginning of the second day’s meeting, announced the presence of Hibatullah Akhundzada at the Loya Jirga tent in Kabul, the venue of the gathering.
However, no photo or video recording of the meeting depicting the presence of the group’s leader has been released, so far. The Taliban has banned reporters from attending the gathering.
The presence of Akhundzada is significant as no photos or videos of the group’s supreme leader have been released in the ten months since the Taliban's dominance over Afghanistan.
To add to the mystery, recently, former Afghan spy chief Rahmatullah Nabil, published a Taliban video and claimed that the group portrayed a man named Mullah Hamdullah as Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Based on his sources, Mr. Nabil claimed that Mullah Hamdullah was the same person who delivered a speech during Eid al -Fitr on April 30th earlier this year and appeared in the role of the Taliban’s supreme leader at the Hakimia School of Kandahar last year.
The former spy chief said that the same person may appear in the Taliban Ulema gathering under the false guise of Mullah Hibatullah.
