Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, who is known for his close ties with Pakistan’s military intelligence, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has replaced Mullah Hassan Akhund, the Taliban’s prime minister.
According to credible sources, four days ago Mullah Hassan held his farewell ceremony in Kandahar in the presence of the Prime Minister and the head of Qatar's intelligence agency, while the news about his resignation from the Taliban premiership was published on Tuesday.
Recently, Mullah Hasan Akhund held fewer meetings with the people and officials, and instead, it was Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, who as the Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs, had more meetings with foreign officials and the Afghan public.
A decree which was attributed to the Taliban leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, announced the appointment of Abdul Kabir, as the new Prime Minister while Mullah Hassan Akhund quietly handed over his position to his former deputy.
According to the decree, Mullah Hassan Akhund has resigned from the position of Prime Minister due to illness.
While many in the Taliban and international powers such as the United States, consider Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the founders of the Taliban and a close ally to the group’s former leader, Mullah Omar, as the top choice to have succeeded Mullah Hasan Akhund, he still remains on the side lines and didn’t become the Prime Minister of the group. The Taliban’s other deputy prime minister, Abdul Salam Hanafi, also has a symbolic position.
In fact, Mullah Baradar has once again become a victim of past tense relations with Pakistan and his close relationship with former and current US officials such as Zalmay Khalilzad, Thomas West, and Rina Amiri.
Mullah Baradar is now officially a deputy to Mawlawi Abdul Kabir and this is an interesting development of the Taliban that should be closely watched.
Probably, in the coming days, we will see changes in the Taliban's caretaker cabinet, based on which those Taliban members with close ties to Pakistan and Al-Qaida may get appointed to senior positions.
Mawlawi Abdul Kabir is from Paktika province and it is said that he belongs to the Zadran tribe; one that is shared by the Taliban interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani. However, unlike Haqqani, he does not have armed forces or operational capability and has been present mostly in political positions within the Taliban.
Since being appointed as the deputy prime minister, Kabir has been conducting most of the political meetings with the opposition forces of the Taliban, representatives of the international community, and the United Nations in Sapidar Palace, and has shown more moderate position than the extremist circle of Kandahar.
He was previously the governor of Nangarhar during the former Taliban regime in the 1990s. It is said that after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, he was the head of Peshawar Council.
Kabir was later a member of the Taliban's negotiating team in Qatar, and after the fall of the Ghani government, he first became an assistant to Mullah Baradar, who has held the post of the deputy prime minister for economic affairs.
Mawlawi Abdul Kabir remains on the blacklist of the United Nations, and he, like more than ten other members of the Taliban, is not allowed to travel outside of Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations report, he was involved in terrorist activities and drug trafficking in Afghanistan.
He is originally from Paktika, but has lived in northern Baghlan province for many years. He is said to have been a landlord in Baghlan and was behind the bombing attack in Baghlan in 2007, which killed many members of the Afghan parliament, including Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, a former Shia Jihadi commander.
