A00116 - Hibatullah Akhundzada

 Hibatullah Akhundzada (b. 1961) is a political and religious leader who is the third Supreme Commander of the Taliban and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.  He was given the title Emir-al-Mumineen (Commander of the Faithful) by Taliban which is also the title which his two predecessors had carried.

From the Kandahar province, Akhundzada belongs to the Noorzai tribe. Akhundzada has lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan for many years.

Ahundzada is well-known for his fatwas on Taliban matters. He served as the head of the Sharia courts of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Unlike many Taliban leaders, Akhundzada is more of a religious leader than a military leader. In May 2016, Akhundzada was elected as the leader of the Taliban, following the killing of the previous leader, Akhtar Mansour, in a drone strike. 

Akhundzada was born in 1961 in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province in the Kingdom of Afghanistan.  A Pashtun, he belongs to the Noorzai clan or tribe. His first name, Hibatullah, means "gift from God" in Arabic. His father, Muhammad Akhund, was a religious scholar as well as the imam of their village mosque. Not owning any land or orchards of their own, the family depended on what the congregation paid his father in cash or in a portion of their crops. Akhundzada studied under his father. The family migrated to Quetta after the Soviet invasion.  Akhundzada leads a number of  madrasas, or religious schools, in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province. 

In the 1980s, Akhundzada was involved in the resistance against the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan. In 1994, he became one of the early members of the Taliban.  After Farah Province was captured by the Taliban, Akhundzada was put in charge of fighting crime in the area. Later, he was appointed as the head of Taliban's military court in eastern Nangarhar province. Akhundzada also served as the deputy head of the Supreme Court. When the Taliban captured the capital Kabul in 1996, Akhundzada was appointed as a member of the Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. He later moved to Kandahar and was put in charge of the training of 100,000 students at Jihadi Madrasa, a seminary.

After the US-led coalition in 2001, Akhundzada became the head of the group's council of religious scholars. Akhundzada was later appointed as Chief Justice of the Sharia Courts of the Islamic Emirate of Aghanistan. Akhundzada also became the advisor of Mullah Omar. Rather than a military commander, he has a reputation as a religious leader who was responsible for issuing most of the Taliban's fatwas and settling religious issues among members of the Taliban. Both Mullah Omar and Mullah Mansour are known to have consulted Akhundzada on matters of fatwa.

Akhundzada is believed to have lived in Afghanistan throughout the 2001–2016 period with no travel record, though he has close ties with the Quetta-based Taliban Shura.  After his promotion to deputy leader of the Taliban in 2015, Akhundzada put in place a system under which a commission would be formed under the shadow governor in every province that could investigate abusive commanders or fighters, according to Mullah Abdul Bari, a Taliban commander in Helmand. 

Akhundzada was appointed as the Taliban supreme commander on 25 May 2016 as the replacement for Mullah Akhtar Mansour.   Akhundzada was previously a deputy for Mansour. Mohammad Yaqoob and Sirajuddin Haqqani both worked as Akhundzada's deputies. According to sources from the Taliban, Mansour had already named Akhundzada as his successor in his will. Mullahs Abdul Razaq Akhund and Abdul Sata Akhund pledged their support to Akhundzada in December 2016.

Yousef Ahmadi, one of the Taliban's main spokesmen, stated on 20 July 2017 that Akhundzada's son Abdur Rahman was killed while carrying out a suicide attack on an Afghan military base in Gereshk in Helmand Province. An Afghan government official said that they were investigating the incident but could not confirm if Rahman was killed.

In May 2021, Akhundzada invited Afghan people to call for the withdrawal of the United States forces and for the development of an Islamic state. In August 2021, forces under Akhundzada's nominal command began a general offensive seeking to achieve a final victory in the war. During the leadership of Akhundzada, the United States troops withdrew,  and the Taliban gained control of Kabul. On August,18, 2021 it was announced that based on the general amnesty issued by Akhundzada, “it was decided to release political detainees from all prisons of Afghanistan”. By that time, the Taliban had already taken control of key prisons across the country and freed thousands of inmates, including ISIS fighters, Al-Qaeda members and senior Taliban figures.