Afghanistan. The Supreme Leader of the Taliban was seen for the first time in months

Ahondzadeh has not appeared in public since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August.

A prominent Taliban leader who was accompanied by Undzadeh told Reuters that the supreme leader visited a religious school in Kandahar on Saturday.

According to the agency, Ahunzadeh had appeared before, according to some officials, but it was not announced.

Who is Ahunzadeh?

Ahunzadeh is the supreme leader of the Taliban, the supreme authority in political, religious and military affairs, as of 2016. He is believed to be around 60 years old.

Ahondzadeh of Kandahar, he was never a partisan. In the eighties, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he spent in exile in Pakistan, where with his father, also a Muslim cleric, he founded several madrassas (religious schools) for Afghan refugees. He returned to Afghanistan in the 1990s and joined the Taliban who were waging a civil war for power in Kabul at the time.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the collapse of the Taliban government, Ahunzadeh traveled to Pakistan again and became one of the most important religious and legal authorities of the Taliban. Mullah Mansour appointed him as his deputy and successor. After seizing power, Akhundzadeh strengthened the movement, which splintered after Mansour’s death. Little is known about Ahundzadeh’s life and activities, and his public activity is usually limited to issuing annual messages on major Islamic holidays.

Reuters notes that it was only able to verify one photo of the commander, which was posted on Twitter in May 2016.