Kabul: Talibans formed a caretaker Government in Afghanistan on Tuesday; Mullah Mohammed Hassan Akhund was named as the acting Prime Minister. He is on a UN sanctions list of terrorists.

Talibans announced key posts for their new Government on Tuesday late night. Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar will be one deputy, as well as Abdul Salam Hanafi, who was most recently part of peace talks in Doha. Several cabinet posts are yet to be announced.

        Mullah Mohammed Hassan Akhund is a close associate and political advisor to Mullah Omar, the founder of the movement and its first supreme leader. A member of the group’s Supreme Council, he served as deputy foreign minister in their previous regime, and was placed on a UN Security Council sanctions list connected to the acts and activities of the Taliban. He served as the Taliban Governor from Kandhar key province of Afghanistan.

       Taliban co founder Abdul Ghani Baradar named as Deputy to Hassan was raised in Kandahar. He was believed to have fought side by side with the one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar. The two would go on to found the Taliban movement in the early 1990s during the chaos and corruption of the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal.

Arrested in Pakistan in 2010, Baradar was kept in custody until pressure from the United States saw him freed in 2018 and relocated to Qatar. This is where he was appointed head of the Taliban’s political office, and oversaw the signing of the troop withdrawal agreement with the United States.

     Abdul Salam Hanafi was named as another Deputy to Hassan. A UN travel ban on Hanafi was lifted to allow him to take part in talks as part of the Taliban’s political negotiating team in Doha. Sirajuddin Haqqani He will be Interior Minister in the new regime. The US State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offers a multimillion dollar reward for information leading to his arrest. Mullah Yaqoob was named as Defence Minister.