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Karol Cummins

17 Aug, 8 tweets, 3 min read

Taliban co-founder & de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Afghanistan for the first time in more than a decade, returning to the group’s birthplace in the southern city of Kandahar just days after his fighters swept to power across the country. washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/…

Meet the next leader of Afghanistan: Abdul Ghani Baradar is veteran resistance fighter who saw off the Russians and was FREED from a Pakistani jail by Donald Trump as part of deal with Taliban

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…

2/20/20: Trump & Pompeo negotiated a deal for a prisoner swap. Some 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 Afghan security force prisoners.
The US will also lift sanctions against the Taliban & work with the UN to lift its separate sanctions against the group.

bbc.com/news/world-asi…

Abdul Ghani Baradar was deputy leader under ex-chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose support for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden led to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…

Baradar set up an Islamic school in Kandahar with his former commander Mohammed Omar.

The two mullahs helped to found the Taliban movement, an ideology which embraced hardline orthodoxy and strived for the creation of an Islamic Emirate.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…

Fuelled by religious fervour, widespread hatred of the warlords and substantial support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the Taliban swept to power in 1996 after a series of stunning conquests of provincial capitals …

irishtimes.com/news/world/asi…

that took the world by surprise, just as the movement has done in recent weeks.

📌Baradar, Mullah Omar’s deputy who was widely believed to be a highly effective strategist, was a key architect of those victories.

irishtimes.com/news/world/asi…

In 2018, Donald Trump’s Afghan envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, asked the Pakistanis to release Baradar so he could lead negotiations in Qatar, based on the belief that he would settle for a power-sharing arrangement.

theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…

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