One Of These Men Is Likely Afghanistan's Next Ruler

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/ [login to see] /next-afghanistan-leader-taliban-haibatullah-baradar
The biographies of top Taliban leaders are vague for a reason: secrecy has often been the key to survival.

Take the one-eyed cleric who founded the movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar. After a U.S.-led invasion toppled his government, he was on the run for years, hunted relentlessly by American forces. Omar reportedly died in 2013 in either Afghanistan or in neighboring Pakistan, but his death was not even publicly confirmed for another two years.

Omar's successor as the Taliban supreme commander, Mullah Mohammad Mansour, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2016. And, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement's current second-in-command, spent eight years in a Pakistani prison.

Following the Taliban victory over Afghan security forces that culminated earlier this week with the fall of Kabul, Baradar, and Mansour's successor, Haibatullah Akhundzada, are poised to become the country's new rulers.