Hibatullah Akhundzada
Hibatullah Akhundzada is an Afghan Islamic scholar, cleric, and jurist who is the 3rd and current leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban), serving since 2016. Since the 2021 fall of Kabul, this position has made him Afghanistan's ruler and head of state. However, he has remained a reclusive figure, and his low profile has fueled speculations about his role in the new Taliban government, and rumours that he may be dead. The Taliban call him the (), which was the title of his two predecessors. Akhundzada is well known for his on Taliban matters. He served  as the Islamic judge of the Sharia courts of the 1996–2001 Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Unlike many Taliban leaders, he is not of a militant background. He was elected as the leader of the Taliban in May 2016, following the death of the previous leader, Akhtar Mansour, in a US drone strike in Pakistan. Personal life. Believed to be in his 70s, Akhundzada was born in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province in the Kingdom of Afghanistan. A Pashtun, he belongs to the Nurzai tribe. His first name, Hibatullah, means "gift from God" in Arabic. His father, Muhammad Akhund, was  a religious scholar and imam at the Malook mosque in Safid Rawan village. Not owning any land or orchards of their own, the family depended on what the congregation paid his father in cash or in a portion of their crops. The family migrated to Quetta in the Balochistan province of Pakistan after the Soviet invasion and Akhundzada studied at one of the madrassas (Islamic seminaries) there. In the 1980s, he was "involved in the Islamist resistance" to the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan. Public appearance. In September 2021, it was revealed that Akhundzada had not been seen in public  since the Taliban seized control of Kabul the previous month, giving rise to speculation that he might be dead, and that his decrees were being drafted by a committee. The death of the Taliban's founding leader, Mullah Omar, had been previously concealed for two years, and during that time, the Taliban had continued to issue statements in Mullah Omar's name. On 30 October 2021, Taliban officials said Akhundzada made a public appearance at the Darul Uloom Hakimah madrassa in Kandahar. No photos or videos were released, but a ten-minute audio recording was shared by Taliban social media  accounts, which might have eased rumours of his death. This would be his first public appearance in Afghanistan, if the reports are true. On 1 May 2022, he made a rare appearance at the Eidgah mosque in Kandahar on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, delivering his brief sermon from one of the front rows, without turning his face toward the congregation, according to social media posts. During the two-hour event, two helicopters hovered over the mosque. Taliban officials did not allow journalists to approach him. Role in the Taliban. Early career. He joined the Taliban in 1994, and  became one of its early members. After they gained control of Farah Province in 1995, he was part of the vice and virtue police there. Later, he was the head of the Taliban's military court in eastern Nangarhar Province and then the deputy head of the Supreme Court. He later moved to Kandahar where he was an instructor at the Jihadi Madrasa, a seminary that Taliban founding leader Mohammed Omar looked after. After the Taliban government fell to the US-led invasion in 2001, Akhundzada became the head of the group's council of religious scholars. He was later  appointed as Chief Justice of the Sharia Courts of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and became an advisor to Mohammed Omar. Rather than a military commander, he has a reputation as a religious leader who was responsible for issuing most of the Taliban's "fatwas" and settling religious issues among members of the Taliban. Both Omar and Akhtar Mansour, his successor as supreme leader, consulted Akhundzada on matters of fatwa. Akhundzada was a senior member of the Taliban's Quetta Shura. He was appointed as one of two deputy leaders of the Taliban under Mansour in 2015. He was the  most visible face of the Taliban's top leadership, as Mansour mostly stayed out of public view and did not openly attend meetings for security reasons, and the other deputy, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was mostly involved in military affairs. Akhundzada put in place a system under which a commission would be formed under the shadow governor in every province that could investigate abusive commanders or fighters, according to Abdul Bari, a commander in Helmand Province. Akhundzada was reportedly living in the Ghaus Abad area of Quetta in 2016 and leading up to ten madrassas in Balochistan. As the Supreme Leader. Akhundzada  was appointed as Taliban Supreme Leader on 25 May 2016, succeeding Mansour, who had been killed in a US drone strike. Two leading contenders for the role were Sirajuddin Haqqani, Mansour's other deputy, and Mullah Yaqoob, the son of founding leader Mohammad Omar. Akhundzada's appointment surprised some, who saw him as the third ranked candidate, but a compromise choice to avoid resentment if either of the others was appointed. Taliban sources said that Mansour had designated Akhundzada as his successor in his will, though this may have been an invention to try to confer authority on his appointment . Yaqoob and Haqqani were appointed as Akhundzada's two deputies. Abdul Razaq Akhund and Abdul Sata Akhund pledged their support to Akhundzada in December 2016. Yousef Ahmadi, the Taliban's main spokesmen for southern Afghanistan, said that Akhundzada's younger son Abdur Rahman Khalid had died carrying out a suicide attack on an Afghan military base in Gereshk in Helmand Province in July 2017. Taliban officials said that Akhundzada had been aware of his son's intention and approved of it. In 2019, under the leadership of Akhundzada, Taliban won the Battle of Darzab by defeating the Islamic State of  Iraq and the Levant's Khorasan branch. In May 2021, Akhundzada called the Afghan people to unite for the development of an Islamic state once the United States forces withdraw. In August 2021, forces under his nominal command began a general offensive seeking to achieve a final victory in the war. During the leadership of Akhundzada, the United States troops withdrew, and the Taliban gained control of Kabul. On 18 August, it was announced that based on the general amnesty issued by Akhundzada, "it was decided to release political detainees from all prisons of Afghanistan". By the time, the Taliban  has already taken control of key prisons across the country and freed thousands of inmates, including ISIL fighters, al-Qaeda members and senior Taliban figures. With little known about Akhundzada and the lack of any photographs of him in the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, questions were raised whether he was alive and remained leader. There had been rumors in February 2021 that he was killed in an explosion in Pakistan, but this was dismissed by the Taliban. Media reports after the fall of Kabul suggested that he was in the custody of the Pakistani Army. However, on 21  August, the Taliban told "The Sunday Guardian" that Akhundzada was alive and based in Kandahar. On 8 September, Akhundzada issued a statement addressed to the interim government, telling it to uphold sharia in Afghanistan. Assassination attempts. Two attempts have been made to assassinate Akhundzada. During a 2012 lecture by Akhundzada, in Quetta, a man stood among the students and pointed a pistol at Akhundzada from a close range, but the pistol jammed. Mullah Ibrahim, a student of Akhundzada, told "The New York Times" that "Taliban rushed to tackle" and restrain the attacker, before he could clear the jam; Akhundzada reportedly  did not move during the incident, or the chaos that followed. The Taliban accused the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, of the attempted shooting. During the Friday prayer on 16 August 2019, a powerful blast tore through a grand mosque in Balochistan province in Pakistan, killing Akhundzada's brother Hafiz Ahmadullah and their father. Ahmadullah had succeeded Akhundzada as leader of the Khair-ul-Madarais Mosque, which had served as the main meeting place of the Quetta Shura, after Akhundzada was appointed as the Taliban emir. More of Akhundzada's relatives were later confirmed to have died  in the blast. The High Council of Afghanistan Islamic Emirate, a breakaway faction of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, adding that the prime target was Akhundzada. Role in the reinstated Islamic Emirate. On 3 December 2021, Akhundzada issued a decree that stipulated the rights of women under Sharia. It stated that women have a right to marital consent, and cannot be treated as property. It added that widows were allowed to maritally consent to new husbands, payment from her new husband during Nekah, and to inherit property equally among their family. The Ministry of Hajj and Religious  Affairs, the Ministry of Information and Culture, and the Supreme Court were instructed to implement the decree and communicate it to the public. On 3 April 2022, Akhundzada signed a decree banning the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan, with any violators being treated "according to sharia law." The order and transportation of other narcotics was also banned. On 29 April 2022, Akhundzada urged the world to recognise the Taliban government in a message ahead of the Eid holidays.