As part of its efforts to track down the mysterious Akhundzada, the Indian government has been scrutinising information given by foreign intelligence agencies and listening in on internal discussions inside the group’s members.
The Pakistan Army, according to a senior government official, may be holding him, and he has not been seen by the Taliban’s senior officials or fighters in the past six months, according to the official. His most recent public remark was made in May, to commemorate Eid al-Fitr, a holiday that marks the conclusion of Ramadan.
Officially, India is also quite interested in how Pakistan will deal with this situation, according to the official.
After former Taliban commander Akhtar Mansour was assassinated in a US drone attack in May 2016, Haibatullah Akhundzada was appointed as the group’s new leader, which took effect in June 2016. The group released a video statement announcing his promotion, which said he was one of Mansour’s two deputies and that he was promoted at a meeting in Pakistan.
According to AFP, Akhundzada, 50, is a legal scholar rather than a soldier, and he is credited with delivering many of the group’s more extreme interpretations of Islam, according to the report.
“The commander of the faithful” has also been referred to as “the Emir al Mumimeen,” or “the commander of the faithful,” an epithet bestowed upon him by Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who pledged his loyalty to him in 2016.
Among the seven Taliban leaders largely expected to either head or be involved in the governance of Afghanistan following the group’s effective takeover on Sunday is Akhundzada, who is considered to be one of the country’s most powerful figures.
Members of terror organisations including as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed have reportedly begun mixing with Taliban fighters, according to reports that have reached Delhi.
India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar spoke at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council yesterday, for the first time since the Taliban captured and took control of Afghanistan, regarding the country’s concerns about terrorism.
The president charged that “groups like Lashkar and Jaish continue to operate with impunity and encouragement…,” whether in Afghanistan or against India, and accused unnamed countries – widely interpreted as a reference to Pakistan – of providing “state hospitality” to “those with blood on their hands.”
When asked how India views and intends to deal with the Taliban leadership, Mr Jaishankar did not provide a straight response, instead stating that it is still “early days” in the process.
Recently, sources reported that signals from the Taliban’s political office in Qatar had pushed the Indian government to reconsider its decision to evacuate its diplomats earlier in the week. The messages, which were interpreted as an outreach effort, stated that India need not be concerned about assaults on its embassy or its workers by groups such as the Lashkar or the Jaish.
The administration, on the other hand, elected to ignore these signals and withdraw diplomatic personnel from Afghanistan nevertheless, claiming that it had received information about possible attacks by these groups.
Over 1,000 Indian citizens remain in various Afghan cities despite the evacuation of all diplomatic employees, according to a Home Ministry official, and tracing their whereabouts and conditions has proven to be difficult due to the fact that not all of them had registered with the embassy.
