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Taliban Announces New Afghanistan Government Filled With "Old Faces"

September 7, 2021

The Chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid on Tuesday also told a press conference that Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar will be the deputy leader and Sirajuddin Haqqani has been named as interior minister.

Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund has been annouced as the leader of their new government in Afghanistan by the Talibans.

The Chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid on Tuesday also told a press conference that Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar will be the deputy leader and Sirajuddin Haqqani has been named as interior minister.

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Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Mullah Omar, has been named as defence minister.

Al Jazeera’s Kabul correspondent, Charles Stratford said many of the names announced were “old faces”.

He noted that there was no evidence of non-Taliban members in the lineup, a big demand of the international community.

Mujahid explained that the cabinet was an “acting” government and that the group will “try to take people from other parts of the country.”

SaharaReporters had earlier reported that United States Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham stated that the country’s military will be going back to Afghanistan in the future due to the threat of terror.

This is in spite of the fact that President Joe Biden ended the 20-year war with Afghanistan in August.

He noted that the Taliban will “impose a lifestyle on the Afghan people that I think is going to make us all sick to our stomach".

He then suggested the US should arm the resistance fighting in Panjshir so that Afghanistan will not have a central government.

“But most importantly, they’re going to give safe haven to Al-Qaeda who has ambitions to drive us out of the Mideast writ large and attack us because of our way of life. We will be going back into Afghanistan as we went back into Iraq and Syria,” he added.

Following this statement, BBC host Stephen Sackur asked, “You seriously think the United States will once again, in the foreseeable future, put troops back into Afghanistan?”

“We’ll have to because the threat will be so large,” Graham responded.

Citing the situations in Iraq and Syria, he predicted that Afghanistan will be a “cauldron for radical Islamic behaviour.”

“Here's my solution, support the resistance in the Panjshir Valley to avoid the fracture of the country that would create a perfect storm for Western interests to be attacked and to hit them before they hit you.”

Graham, a US foreign policy war hawk, previously criticised President Biden’s decision to follow up on Trump’s planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

“We’re leaving thousands of Afghan allies behind who fought bravely with us. We’re going to leave hundreds of American citizens behind.” he said last month in an interview.

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