Expand interim Cabinet Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers announced several senior appointments on Tuesday naming two veteran commanders from the movement’s southern heartlands as deputies in important ministries.
Main Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir will be deputy defence minister, while Sadr Ibrahim was named deputy minister for the interior.
Both men had been expected to take major positions in the new government but neither was named in the main list of ministers announced this month.
The two were identified in UN reports as being among battlefield commanders loyal to theformer Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour who were pressing the leadership to step up the war against the Western-backed government.
According to a UN Security Council report from June, both Zakir and Sadr commanded significant forces of their own, called mahaz, that traditionally operated across several provinces.
They were considered so powerful and independent that there were concerns within the leadership that this could stoke tension over the loyalties of certain groups, particularly in the south and southwest of the country.
Zakir, a former detainee in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, was a close associate of late Taliban founder Mullah Omar.
He was captured when US-led forces swept through in Afghanistan in 2001 and was incarcerated in Guantanamo
until 2007, according to media reports.
He was released and handed over to the Afghan government and was widely tipped to become defence minister in the new government before Mullah Omar’s son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, was appointed to the post.
Sadr, a former head of the Taliban military commission from the southern province of Helmand, will be deputy to Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose family comes from the eastern borderlands with Pakistan.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid defended the latest additions to the Cabinet at a news conference Tuesday, saying it included members of ethnic minorities, such as the Hazaras, and that women might be added later.
Mujahid bristled at international conditions for recognition, saying there was no reason for withholding it.
“It is the responsibility of the United Nations to recognize our government (and) for other countries, including European, Asian and Islamic countries, to have diplomatic relations with us,” he said.
He also said that the Taliban has funds to pay government salaries ‘but needs time.’
Mujahid was also asked about the recent restrictions imposed on girls and women, including a decision not to allow girls in grades six to 12 to return to classrooms for the time being.
Mujahid suggested this was a temporary decision, and that “soon it will be announced when they can go to school.”
He said plans were being made to allow for their return, but did not elaborate. Boys in grades six to 12 resumed their studies over the
weekend.– Reuters/AP
