The Taliban are designing a government based on Iran’s model through appointing the group’s leader Hibatullah Akhundzada as the Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, CNN-News18 reported on August 31.
While Iran has a president and a cabinet, the supreme leader is the religious authority who holds the highest office in the country with powers to dictate policy, overrule laws and override the president. He has the final say in all matters of state.
“Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada — who has never made a public appearance and whose whereabouts have largely remained unknown — will most likely be the Supreme Leader, presiding over a Supreme Council of 11 to 72,” CNN-News18 said citing sources.
CNN-News18 added that Akhundzada, who has led the Taliban since 2016, will mostly work out of Kandahar, which was the birthplace of the group and the epicenter of the Taliban’s iron-fisted government in the 1990s.
Recall, the Taliban announced on Sunday that Akhundzada is in Afghanistan. “He is present in Kandahar. He has been living there from the very beginning,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said.
Mujahid also told Reuters on Saturday that the group will announce a complete cabinet within a week, and it will include not just ministers but leaders as well.
Despite Taliban’s big public promises of granting amnesty to those who worked with the former regime, the reality on the ground is reportedly pretty different and coincide with the one the Taliban practiced years ago when it ruled Afghanistan, and what its citizens had feared after their second coming this time, CNN-News18 said citing sources
At least 2,000,000 people have reportedly left Afghanistan since the Taliban took over on August15.
