Taliban deny rift within ranks of new Afghan leadership

Mr. Baradar, who headed the Taliban’s political workplace in Doha, Qatar, and signed the February 2020 Doha settlement on the withdrawal of American troops, skipped Sunday’s assembly between the Taliban management and the visiting international minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.

Sheikh Mohammed’s journey was the primary and thus far solely public ministerial-level go to to Kabul because the Taliban seized the Afghan capital on Aug. 15 and proclaimed a restoration of their Islamic Emirate, deposing the Afghan republic established following the 2001 U.S. invasion.

Mr. Baradar, a relative reasonable, was flown again to Afghanistan aboard a Qatari army plane final month, and his absence from the assembly with Sheikh Mohammed sparked a swirl of social-media hypothesis about battle inside the Taliban.

Kabul residents relayed rumors about an alleged shootout within the presidential palace between Mr. Baradar and leaders of the Haqqani household, one other energy middle inside the Islamist motion. It didn’t assist that it had taken days for Mr. Baradar to floor on video since then.

“The media speaking about disputes between us is totally flawed. We’re extra sort to one another than relations,” he mentioned, sitting on a inexperienced sofa in an interview on Afghan state TV that aired Thursday.

The interviewer and Mr. Baradar, who mentioned in an earlier audio launch that he had been touring outdoors Kabul, each learn their scripted questions and solutions from sheets of paper.

“I didn’t know that the Qatari international minister was coming to Afghanistan. If I had identified it, I might have delayed or canceled my journey,” Mr. Baradar mentioned within the TV interview. “We guarantee all Afghans that they need to not fear in any respect.”

Western officers mentioned that Mr. Baradar was upset with the composition of the Taliban’s new authorities, launched on Sept. 7. Belying the guarantees that Mr. Baradar’s workplace had made throughout peace talks in Doha, the brand new administration didn’t embody every other political forces or technocrats.

The highly effective inside ministry went to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the chief of the Haqqani community, who is needed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for his alleged position within the 2008 assault on the Kabul Serena Lodge that killed a U.S. citizen.

That Mr. Baradar, with all his connections in Doha, might have been out of the loop concerning the Qatari international minister’s go to to Kabul spoke volumes about his diminished position inside the Taliban, some international officers mentioned.

In Mr. Baradar’s absence, Mr. Haqqani met on Wednesday with the United Nations particular consultant for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons. She confused the necessity for all U.N. and humanitarian personnel to have the ability to work within the nation with out intimidation and obstruction, in keeping with a U.N. launch. On Thursday, she met with the Taliban authorities’s intelligence chief, Abdulhaq Wasiq.

Sirajuddin Haqqani’s brother Anas Haqqani, in a gathering with a couple of international journalists on the Serena Lodge on Thursday, dismissed reviews of a rift between the Haqqanis and Mr. Baradar as malicious hypothesis planted on social media by the brokers of the previous regime.

“The propaganda elevated to a degree that even shut buddies began doubting,” Mr. Haqqani mentioned. “I swear to God that there’s nothing like this between us. Disputes over energy are not possible within the Emirate. The system is constructed not on personalities however on perception.”