Daily US Times: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban’s co-founder and Afghanistan’s acting deputy prime minister, has appeared in a video to deny reports of leadership row and that he was injured in a clash with a rival faction of the Taliban.
Mr Baradar had not appeared publicly for several days.
In the last two days, there have been reports about a row of leadership between Mr Baradar and a rival faction loyal to the powerful Haqqani network.
But Mr Baradar denied reports of internal strife in the interview.
The Taliban leader siad when being asked about wheater he had been hurt: “No, this is not true; I am OK and healthy. I was out of Kabul and I didn’t have access to the internet to reject the fake news.”
The short interview clip showed him seated on a sofa next to a state television interviewer, apparently reading from a sheet of paper. The clip was posted on Twitter by the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
He said: “Thank God we have good relations with each other and we respect each other. Our relations are even better than a family.”
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was the first Taliban leader to communicate directly with a US president, in a telephone conversation with President Donald Trump in 2020. Before that, he signed the Doha agreement on the withdrawal of US forces on behalf of the Taliban.
The new video of Mr Bradar comes after senior Taliban officials, without revealing their names, said that supporters of the Taliban leader brawled with a faction loyal to Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani – the minister for refugees and a prominent figure within the militant Haqqani network.
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