Taliban appoint hardline battlefield commanders to key Afghan posts

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers introduced a number of senior appointments on Tuesday, naming two veteran battlefield commanders from the motion’s southern heartlands as deputies in necessary ministries.
Main Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid mentioned Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir will likely be deputy defence minister, whereas Sadr Ibrahim was named deputy minister for the inside. Both males had been anticipated to take main positions within the new authorities however neither was named in the principle checklist of ministers introduced this month.
The two have been recognized in U.N. experiences as being amongst battlefield commanders loyal to the previous Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour who have been urgent the management to step up the battle towards the Western-backed authorities.

The appointments add to the roster of hardliners in the principle group of ministers, which included figures like Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the militant Haqqani community, blamed for a string of assaults on civilian targets.
But the appointments additionally seem to replicate concern throughout the Taliban to safe unity by balancing the regional and private variations which have surfaced because the motion transitions from a wartime guerrilla drive to a peacetime administration.
According to a U.N. Security Council report from June, each Zakir and Sadr commanded vital forces of their very own, referred to as mahaz, that historically operated throughout a number of provinces.

They have been thought of so highly effective and unbiased that there have been considerations throughout the management that this might stoke rigidity over the loyalties of sure teams, notably within the south and southwest of the nation.

Zakir, a former detainee within the U.S. navy jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, was a detailed affiliate of late Taliban founder Mullah Omar. He was captured when U.S.-led forces swept by way of in Afghanistan in 2001 and was incarcerated in Guantanamo till 2007, in keeping with media experiences.
He was launched and handed over to the Afghan authorities and was broadly tipped to turn out to be defence minister within the new authorities earlier than Mullah Omar’s son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, was appointed to the publish.
Sadr, a former head of the Taliban navy fee from the southern province of Helmand, will likely be deputy to Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose household comes from the japanese borderlands with Pakistan.