{"id":13227,"date":"2023-03-10T08:19:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T08:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=13227"},"modified":"2023-03-10T08:19:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T08:19:59","slug":"afghanistans-taliban-ruler-faces-rare-internal-criticism-revealing-divisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=13227","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan&#8217;s Taliban ruler faces rare internal criticism, revealing divisions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"mpu-plus-native-top\" data-ad=\"mpu-plus-native-top\" class=\"ad-mpu-plus-native-top ad-wrapper \" data-ad-unit='\"mpu-plus-native-top\"'>\n    <\/div>\n<p>There has been speculation for many years about internal rifts within Afghanistan&#8217;s Taliban, but the Islamic extremist group that retook power over the country in 2021 has largely managed to act as a cohesive military and political entity. Its commanders and politicians take their orders from a powerful leadership council based not in the capital of Kabul, but in the Taliban&#8217;s traditional homeland of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. <\/p>\n<p>Behind this powerful entity is a reclusive supreme leader, Mawlavi Hibatullah Akhundzada. Since the group came back to power with the U.S.-led military coalition withdrawal a year and a half ago, he has issued a series of draconian edicts dragging Afghanistan back toward the stone age.<\/p>\n<p>During the two decades of war with the West between the Taliban&#8217;s previous reign and its current one, women gained a huge foothold with access to education and the workplace. Those basic rights have been all but erased in less than two years by Akhundzada, despite a huge international backlash that has seen the Taliban regime shunned by the international community.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>But the leader&#8217;s obstinance appears to have created, or at least brought into the light, a power struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Influential figures in Afghanistan, seemingly frustrated by Akhundzada&#8217;s refusal to consider Western demands to restore women&#8217;s rights in exchange for desperately needed financial support, have issued rare public criticism aimed at the supreme leader.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<div id=\"leader-plus-outstream-middle\" data-ad=\"leader-plus-outstream-middle\" class=\"ad-leader-plus-outstream-middle ad-wrapper \" data-ad-unit='\"leader-plus-outstream-middle\"'>\n    <\/div>\n<p>Last week, the Taliban&#8217;s powerful acting Minister of Interior, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is also the leader of the Haqqani network and a deputy to the supreme leader, publicly criticized his boss for damaging the government and monopolizing power. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today we consider ourselves so entitled that targeting, challenging and defaming the entire system have become common,&#8221; Haqqani said in a speech at a graduation ceremony for religious students in his own powerbase, in the eastern Khost province. <\/p>\n<p>He did not name Akhundzada in the address, which CBS News has obtained video of, but said &#8220;this situation cannot be tolerated any longer &hellip; Today I have a different responsibility, and that is to make myself closer to the people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Despite being the leader of a brutal terror network that killed hundreds of innocent civilians and dozens of U.S. soldiers in suicide attacks during the war &mdash; and having a $10 million FBI bounty on his head &mdash; Haqqani is said to be in favor of restoring at least some of the rights to education and work that Afghan girls and women had prior to the Taliban&#8217;s takeover in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>After his remarks, more criticism came from the office of Afghanistan&#8217;s Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi. Last weekend, he also publicly expressed disapproval of the supreme leader&#8217;s edicts. He said the Taliban could not claim to lead an independent nation without ensuring a robust education system.<\/p>\n<div id=\"leader-plus-inc4\" data-ad=\"leader-plus-inc\" class=\"ad-leader-plus-inc ad-wrapper \" data-ad-unit='[\"leader-plus-inc\",4]'>\n    <\/div>\n<p>&#8220;The duty of a mufti &mdash; a Muslim scholar who gives rulings on religious matters &mdash; is not only to say prohibited, prohibited, prohibited,&#8221; he said at a gathering at Kabul University. Without naming the supreme leader, he said: &#8220;When you prohibit something, you should also state the solution for it.&#8221;&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Although the position Hannafi holds within the Taliban regime is largely a symbolic role, his criticism clearly indicated discontent with the supreme leader. <\/p>\n<p>The third noteworthy criticism within a week came from the Taliban&#8217;s acting Minister of Defense, Muhammad Yaqoob Mujahid. In an event celebrating the anniversary of the former Soviet Union&#8217;s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the powerful Taliban figure said, &#8220;we should never be arrogant and should consider the legitimate demands of people.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Mujahid is the son of the Taliban&#8217;s founder, the late Mullah Omar, and is one of the group&#8217;s most influential figures in southern Afghanistan. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is now clear that the rejection [of the Taliban&#8217;s legitimacy] by the international community &mdash; which includes major Islamic countries &mdash; comes from the negative decisions about the status of women the Taliban have taken,&#8221; political analyst Tariq Farhadi told CBS News. &#8220;Those decrees come from the Taliban leader who is based in Kandahar.&nbsp; Important voices of disagreement have now risen from within Taliban.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An independent news channel run by exiled Afghan journalists in Virginia and Canada, Amu TV, has reported that, following the Taliban&#8217;s return to power in 2021, the group&#8217;s leadership has taken on a triangular format, with Akhundzada, Yaqoob and Haqqani all taking on specific roles, but the supreme leader at the top. <\/p>\n<p>Both Yaqoob and Haqqani are said to be in favor of trying to restore relations with the outside world, but they are deputies of Akhundzada within the apparent power-sharing structure, and there&#8217;s no indication that they&#8217;re about to unite to challenge the supreme leader. <\/p>\n<div id=\"leader-plus-inc5\" data-ad=\"leader-plus-inc\" class=\"ad-leader-plus-inc ad-wrapper \" data-ad-unit='[\"leader-plus-inc\",5]'>\n    <\/div>\n<p>Still, their public criticism is significant, and it may herald a difficult phase for the group which, if not checked, could descend into factional in-fighting that would be devastating for the country.<\/p>\n<p>The Taliban&#8217;s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, dismissed the reports of any rift among the group&#8217;s leaders, telling a state-run news outlet Thursday that &#8220;some foreign circles &hellip; misuse the statements of our leaders&#8221; to wrongly portray disunity.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- data-recirc-source=\"chartbeat\" --><\/p>\n<div class=\"component__heading-wrapper\">\n        Afghanistan: The New Reality<\/p>\n<p>            More<br \/>\n            <svg viewbox=\"0 0 32 32\" class=\"icon__caret-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use xlink:href=\"#icon-caret-down\"><\/use><\/svg>\n              <\/div>\n<div class=\"component__item-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"item\" id=\"inline-recirc-item--id-48be7e2c-a1e4-48da-9745-a3f964c46600\">\n<div class=\"item__title-wrapper\">\n                                                On International Women&#8217;s Day, Afghan women say world &#8220;neglected us completely&#8221;\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"item\" id=\"inline-recirc-item--id-c11af3bd-f028-48ee-8b73-eceaea1b2b1e\">\n<div class=\"item__title-wrapper\">\n                                                How U.S. and Afghans failed to adequately train Afghan security forces\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"item\" id=\"inline-recirc-item--id-825b9956-3d4f-4602-bdc9-c71ac02793dd\">\n<div class=\"item__title-wrapper\">\n                                                Could the Afghan Taliban ruler&#8217;s crackdown on women cause a mutiny?\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"item\" id=\"inline-recirc-item--id-c26d0bd6-c135-41ea-a383-db5e9b229895\">\n<div class=\"item__title-wrapper\">\n                                                House Republicans begin probe into Biden&#8217;s withdrawal from Afghanistan\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"item\" id=\"inline-recirc-item--id-19f7e55b-9047-4006-b6b8-7aadb7f71cc2\">\n<div class=\"item__title-wrapper\">\n                                                Suicide bomber kills dozens in Pakistan mosque attack targeting police\n              <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>          More<br \/>\n          <svg viewbox=\"0 0 32 32\" class=\"icon__caret-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use xlink:href=\"#icon-caret-down\"><\/use><\/svg><br \/>\n            <\/aside>\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\n      .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) {\n        display: none;\n      }<\/p>\n<p>      #inline-recirc-item--id-825b9956-3d4f-4602-bdc9-c71ac02793dd, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-825b9956-3d4f-4602-bdc9-c71ac02793dd {\n        display: none;\n      }<\/p>\n<p>      #inline-recirc-item--id-825b9956-3d4f-4602-bdc9-c71ac02793dd ~ .item:nth-child(5) {\n        display: block;\n      }\n    <\/style>\n<p><!-- tags -->In:<br \/>\n          taliban<br \/>\n          War<\/p>\n<div id=\"placeholder--link-promo\"><\/div>\n<p>Click Here: <a href='https:\/\/www.jerstores.com\/Others-Countries-Nrl\/South-Africa\/sharks-rugby-store' title='sharks rugby jersey'>sharks rugby jersey<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been speculation for many years about internal rifts within Afghanistan&#8217;s Taliban, but the Islamic extremist group that retook power over the country in 2021 has largely managed to act as a cohesive military and political entity. Its commanders and politicians take their orders from a powerful leadership council based not in the capital &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=13227\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Afghanistan&#8217;s Taliban ruler faces rare internal criticism, revealing divisions&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}