A top Taliban leader has said he’s alive, denying rumours of his killing that surfaced following reports of an indoor split within the Taliban group nearly a month after it took over Kabul.
The Taliban’s deputy prime minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar appeared in an interview with the country’s national broadcaster on Wednesday and revealed he was “travelling from Kabul so had no access to the media so as to reject this news”.
This news isn’t true. Thank God i’m absolutely fine and healthy,” he told Radio Television Afghanistan, consistent with the Associated Press.
“The news about our internal conflict the media are reporting is additionally not true. we’ve compassion among ourselves, quite a family. We assure the Afghan nation, Mujahideen, elders, and youth don’t worry and there’s no reason to be worried.”
The Taliban also released video footage purportedly showing Baradar at meetings within the southern city of Kandahar.
Baradar served because the chief negotiator during talks between the Taliban and therefore the US that paved the way for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan which was completed in late August, fortnight after the Taliban took over the capital.
Internal rivalries
The denials follow days of rumours that Baradar’s supporters clashed with those of Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani network that’s based near the border with Pakistan and was blamed for a few of the worst suicide attacks of the war.
The Taliban have repeatedly denied the speculation over internal divisions.
Baradar, once seen because the likely head of a Taliban government, had not been seen publicly for a few time and wasn’t a part of the ministerial delegation which met Qatari secretary of state Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Kabul on Sunday.
Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada, has also not been seen publicly since the armed group seized the capital on Assumption , although he issued a public statement when it named the group’s new government last week.