THREE weeks after taking power in a blitzkrieg that stunned the international community, the Taliban have finally announced an interim government in Afghanistan.

The new government in Kabul is seen as a huge step for the group that is keen to re-establish their political control of a country, which witnessed an invasion by the U.S. and its allies, following the 9/11 terror attacks.

A 20-year-long war, suffused with unmitigated suffering, ended with the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan on Aug. 31, 2021.

There has been an intense speculation in the last two weeks regarding the formation and composition of the new government in Afghanistan.

While speculations and rumors swirled in Kabul and most Afghan experts put their money on Abdul Ghani Baradar as the next leader, the Taliban sprang another surprise with the announcement of Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a lesser-known leader of the group, as the interim prime minister.

It appears that the new leader is a compromise candidate between opposing factions within the Taliban.

Although he held several important positions during the group’s previous government (foreign minister and deputy prime minister), Akhund is not exactly a military man, neither is he considered among the A-listers within the highest echelons of the Taliban.

Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, in his first public statement since the group captured Kabul, said the group was committed to all international laws, treaties and commitments not in conflict with Sharia. Under the new dispensation, Mullah Baradar, a popular face of the Taliban, will serve as Akhund’s deputy.

The candidature of Akhund seems to have received a boost because of his general acceptance to all major factions within the Taliban.

Seen as more of a religious scholar, who has authored several books, Akhund’s lack of military credentials seems to have worked in his favor.

He is among the few notable names in the group who hasn’t participated in the original Afghan Jihad against the Soviets.

Considered close to the Taliban’s spiritual and supreme leader Akhundzada, Akhund was the head of the Taliban’s top decision-making body, Rehbar-e-Shura (leadership council) — which serves much like a government Cabinet running all the group’s affairs subject to the approval of the top leader — when he was named Afghanistan’s new leader.

As the group’s multiple factions wrangled over the shape of the new government in the last few weeks, there appeared to be a stalemate between the Kandahar faction of Taliban and the semi-independent Haqqani Network, which operates in eastern Afghanistan. Eventually everyone came around to agree on Akhund’s name.

Akhund is a fascinating but relatively enigmatic figure in the Taliban.

He has studied in Pakistan and keeps a relatively low profile. He is among the earliest members of the Taliban, and has served as the governor of Kandahar also.

Originally from Kandahar, Akhund was one of the founding members of the armed movement. He worked for 20 years as head of Rehbar-e-Shura.

Akhund has a formidable reputation within the Taliban as a religious leader. During the Taliban’s first stint in power (1996 to 2001), Akhund served as the foreign minister and later as the deputy prime minister under Mullah Mohammad Rabbani Akhund.

At the time of the U.S. invasion in 2001, his name was added to the terror list of the United Nations.

Like many in the Taliban leadership, Akhund derives much of his prestige from his proximity to the movement’s first lone leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

A U.N. sanctions report describes him as having been a “close associate and political adviser” to Omar, and one of the Taliban’s most effective commanders.

Some observers viewed Akhund as a more political than religious figure, and his control over the leadership council also gives him a voice in military affairs.

Akhund is highly respected within the movement, especially by its supreme leader Akhunzada, a Taliban source said.

Akhund is believed at least in his mid-60s and possibly older. A European Union sanctions notice puts him as old as 76.

“He is very old in age, he is the oldest person in [senior] Taliban ranks,” said a Taliban source.

Akhund is also well regarded across the organization and is particularly close to Akhundzada, a Taliban source said.

“People respect him very highly, especially Amir al-Mu’minin [Commander of the Faithful],” he said, using Akhundzada’s honorific title.

At the same time, as an ethnic Pashtun from the southern province of Kandahar, from which the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s and where it draws some of its strongest support, he is likely to appeal to the movement’s core base.

Akhund has a Pashtun lineage from Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of modern Afghanistan (around 1700).

He played a crucial leadership and guiding role in the Quetta Shura council of leaders, formed after the Taliban were ousted from power in a U.S.-led military invasion in 2001. He is the author of several works on Islam.

He has been an influential figure in Afghanistan since the inception of the militant group in the 1990s. But unlike other Taliban leaders from that period, he was not involved in the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s. While Taliban founder Omar and his deputies fought with the mujahedeen – a loose network of anti-Soviet Afghan fighters – Akhund did not.

Instead, he is seen much more as a religious influence in the Taliban. He served on the Taliban’s shura councils, the traditional decision-making body made up of religious scholars and mullahs – an honorific given to those trained in Islamic theology.

Akhund is probably best known as one of the architects of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the giant cliff statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

Initially, Omar had no intention of destroying the statues. But the Taliban founder was angered at seeing conservation money being made available for the UNESCO world heritage site while failing to secure humanitarian aid from the United Nations for Afghanistan.

As such, Omar sought out the advice of his shura, and Akhund was part of the council that ordered the destruction of the sixth-century statues.

Akhund held a political role in the Taliban government of the 1990s, serving as foreign minister; however, his importance lies more in the development of the group’s religious identity. He, like Omar, was schooled in a brand of strict Islamist ideology, known as Deobandism.

After the Taliban were ousted from Afghanistan in 2001, Akhund remained an influential presence, operating mostly from exile in Pakistan.

From there he would give spiritual and religious guidance to the Taliban throughout the 2000s and 2010s. In this role, he provided the ideological justification for the ongoing insurgency against the United States and the U.S.-backed Afghan Government.

Today, there are broadly two factions in the Taliban – a military wing that carries out the day-to-day campaigns, and a conservative religious elite grounded in Deobandism that acts as its political wing. Akhund aligns very much with the religious faction of the Taliban.

In the 1990s, the Taliban were very much an insular, nationalist group with the aim of bringing its brand of Islamist rule to Afghanistan.

Now, Akhund seems to be looking to position the Taliban alongside international partners — an ambition that can also be seen in the Taliban’s recent diplomatic outreach with the governments of Qatar, the U.A.E. and Pakistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference Tuesday that Baradar and Abdul Salam Hanafi were named as the acting deputy prime ministers, while Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of the late Taliban co-founder Omar, was appointed as the acting defense minister.

(SD-Agencies)