TALIBAN PACKS NEW GOVERNMENT WITH HARDLINERS
Terrorist with $10M bounty given key role
KABUL • A terrorist with a $10-million US bounty offered for his capture has been made Afghanistan's interior minister as the Taliban announced a caretaker government packed with the movement's old guard.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, the movement's deputy leader, is accused of overseeing some of the worst atrocities of the militants' insurgent campaign, but will now take control of a key ministry.
His position was announced as the Taliban set out a cabinet entirely staffed by the group's members despite promises to set up a broad-based government.
The 33-strong lineup contains no women and is dominated by Taliban stalwarts from the Pashtun group.
Hibatullah Akhundzada, the secretive supreme leader of the Taliban, made his first statement since his movement's stunning takeover of Afghanistan, saying that the government would “work hard towards upholding Islamic rules and sharia law.”
The administration will be led by Mullah Hasan Akhund, interim prime minister, a low-profile Taliban veteran who was a close associate and political adviser to Mullah Omar, the founder of the movement and its first supreme leader.
Mullah Omar's son, Mullah Yaqoob, was named as defence minister.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who had led talks with the United States and signed the deal that led to America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, will be one of Akhund's two deputies.
But it is the appointment of Haqqani, who carries a $10 million US State Department reward for information leading to his arrest, that is most likely to cause alarm.
The head of the notorious Haqqani network faction for more than a decade, he is blamed for indiscriminate bombings and assaults that have killed hundreds of civilians.
He reportedly oversaw a 2018 suicide bomb attack in Kabul that killed 103 people using an ambulance filled with explosives.
Analysts said it was difficult to see how the cabinet choice would reassure international donors enough to resume frozen foreign aid.
Asked why the government did not appear to be inclusive, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said: “The cabinet is not complete, it is just acting. We will try to take people from other parts of the country.”
The cabinet also revived the ministry for vice and virtue, which was notorious for enforcing restrictions on women and men through public beatings and imprisonment.
The department beat women publicly for crimes including showing their wrists, hands, or ankles.
Meanwhile, judges and officials have told The Daily Telegraph that Taliban courts would resurrect the practice of chopping the hands off thieves.