An explosion in Afghanistan’s capital on Wednesday killed a Taliban official who was a member of one of the country’s most powerful political families, government officials said.
The death of the minister, Khalil ur Rahman Haqqani, was the highest-profile killing in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover of the country. It was a strike at the heart of the Taliban’s power structure after years of essentially unchallenged dominance.
Mr. Haqqani, the minister of refugees and repatriation, was a senior member of the Haqqani Network, an influential faction within the Taliban. The United States and the United Nations have designated the Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. Treasury had named Mr. Haqqani a “specially designated global terrorist,” and the U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information about him.
His nephew Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting interior minister, has led efforts to reshape the Taliban’s global image. Since the Taliban’s new rise to power, the Haqqanis have appeared eager to reach out to the West for recognition — to little effect so far.
That effort has at times also seemed at odds with the dictates of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, who has returned Afghanistan to an uncompromising marginalization of women in education.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. The government blamed an Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K, which has been one of the few remaining antagonists to the Taliban.
Khalil Haqqani was a crucial Taliban fund-raiser, according to the U.S. Treasury. He also led military operations and was an ally in Al Qaeda’s operations, according to a report by the United Nations Security Council.
As a special representative of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mr. Haqqani played a public role in establishing the Taliban’s authority as they established their new government.
The ISIS branch, named for the historical region of Khorasan, was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban. The group captured international attention with a suicide bombing during the U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021. It has since struck at Taliban-controlled Afghanistan multiple times in a bid to destabilize the country’s new leadership.
The group has also launched attacks outside Afghanistan, including a massacre at a concert hall in Moscow, seen widely as retribution for Russia’s relationship with the Taliban.
The Haqqani Network emerged in Afghanistan’s conflict against the Soviet Union. Founded byJalaluddin Haqqani, the family patriarch, the group formed a relationship with Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, according to the U.N. Security Council. The elder Haqqani also cultivated relationships in the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies, and built a network of fighters, sustained by a lucrative criminal operation.
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