{"id":30630,"date":"2019-01-26T05:23:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T05:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30630"},"modified":"2019-01-26T05:23:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T05:23:06","slug":"profile-abdul-ghani-baradar-talibans-political-head-in-qatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30630","title":{"rendered":"Profile: Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban’s political head in Qatar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of Taliban<\/a>‘s cofounders, has been named as the leader of its political office in Qatar<\/a> amid talks with the United States<\/a> to end the 17-year war.<\/p>\n

Baradar is expected to join the talks, which appear to be gaining momentum, between Taliban representatives and US envoy to\u00a0Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0Zalmay Khalilzad in Doha\u00a0<\/span>to end what has been the US’s longest-running military engagement so far.<\/p>\n

Baradar, formerly a number two of the group, helped Mullah Omar – who died in 2013 – to found the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in 1994. He served in several key positions when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.<\/p>\n

He fled to Pakistan after the US invasion in 2001 and was arrested in 2010 in an operation then considered to have dealt a fatal blow to the movement.<\/p>\n

Baradar\u00a0was released from a prison in Pakistan in October last year after the first meeting in Doha – never confirmed by the US – between the Taliban and Khalilzad. He later joined his family in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

His release, according to security experts, was part of high-level negotiations led by Khalilzad\u00a0with the Taliban.<\/p>\n

David Sedney, deputy US assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan and Pakistan under former President Barack Obama, called Baradar’s appointment “a startling change … that bodes very well for peace”, adding that\u00a0he was “more than cautiously optimistic” about the outcome of the talks in Doha.<\/p>\n

“Ten years ago, Mullah Baradar led a dissident faction of the Taliban that wanted peace talks with the [Afghan] government of then President Hamid Karzai,” Sedney told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

“The government of Pakistan was opposed to those talks; they arrested Mullah Baradar and held him in prison until last fall during which time he was allegedly treated very roughly and perhaps even tortured.”<\/p>\n

Sedney said that following Baradar’s release at the request of the US, “many people thought he would fade into the distance, but instead he has taken advantage of a fractured Taliban leadership and the desire of many Taliban for peace to reassert his authority”.<\/p>\n

“So this is a major, major change for the Taliban, and one that bodes very well for peace. Mullah Baradar has been on the side of peace for over a decade and this is a sign that there is great hope,” Sedney added.<\/p>\n

“Many things could go wrong, but there has been no such hope for peace in Afghanistan for almost the last 20 years.”<\/p>\n

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\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Renewed hopes for talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban? – Inside Story (25:00)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of Taliban’s cofounders, has been named as the leader of its political office in Qatar amid talks with the United States to end the 17-year war. Baradar is expected to join the talks, which appear to be gaining momentum, between Taliban representatives and US envoy to\u00a0Afghanistan\u00a0Zalmay Khalilzad in Doha\u00a0to end what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}