Supreme commander is a title given to a person who controls and runs a militant, insurgent or terrorist organization, especially in South Asia.
The title is often used for the head of a supreme council in many organizations, such as Tehrik-i-Taliban. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist and Pashtun nationalist militant political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country. However, its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.
MullahMuhammad Omar was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Following the ouster of his government by the United States in 2001, he went into hiding and avoided capture until his reported 2013 death from tuberculosis.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was a militant Islamist group formed in 1998 by Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani; both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley. Its original objective was to overthrow President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of Al-Qaeda. The group also maintained relations with Afghan Taliban in 1990s. However, later on, relations between the Afghan Taliban and the IMU started declining.
Jaish-e-Mohammed is a Pakistan-based Deobandi Jihadist militant group active in Kashmir which is widely considered as a terrorist group. The group's primary motive is to separate Kashmir from India and merge it into Pakistan.
Mohammed Abdul Kabir is a senior member of the Taliban leadership and the acting Prime Minister of Afghanistan since 17 May 2023. He previously already was the acting Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 16 April 2001 to 13 November 2001, and the acting Third Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs of Afghanistan from 4 October 2021 to 17 May 2023.
Maulvi Faqir Mohammed is an Islamist militant and, until March 2012, a deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. He was reported as killed on 5 March 2010 during a helicopter gunship attack on militants by the Pakistani military although he denied the reports as false. In July 2011, he resurfaced on the air broadcasting radio shows out of Afghanistan. He was captured in Afghanistan on 17 February 2013, and released by the Afghan Taliban in 2021.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is an Afghan warlord who is the first deputy leader of Afghanistan and the acting interior minister. He has been a deputy leader of the Taliban since 2015, and was additionally appointed to his ministerial role after the Taliban's victory over Western-backed forces in the 2001–2021 war. He has led the Haqqani network, a semi-autonomous paramilitary arm of the Taliban, since inheriting it from his father in 2018, and has primarily had military responsibilities within the Taliban.
A series of occasional armed skirmishes and firefights have occurred along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border between the Afghan Armed Forces and the Pakistan Armed Forces since 1949. The latest round of hostilities between the two countries began in April 2007. Militants belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar also use Afghanistan's territory to target Pakistani security personnel deployed along the border. The Diplomat says that the presence of terrorists belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan on Afghan soil is the reason for sporadic shelling of Afghanistan's territory by Pakistani security forces.
Fazal Hayat, more commonly known by his pseudonym Mullah Fazlullah, was an Islamist militant who was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, and was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Swat Valley. On 7 November 2013, he became the emir of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and presided over the descent of the group into factions who are often at war with each other. Fazlullah was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council in 2015, and was added to the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice wanted list on 7 March 2018. Fazlullah was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan on 14 June 2018.
The Pakistani Taliban, formally called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban and have assisted them in the 2001–2021 war, but the two groups have separate operation and command structures.
Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi is a Islamic extremist militant group that follows the Salafi & Wahhabi doctrines of Sunni Islam. The group swore an oath of loyalty to Baitullah Mehsud, the founder & leader of the Pakistani Taliban and become the part of Pakistani Taliban aftermath the siege of Lal Masjid in 2007. The group's stated objective is to enforce Sharia law in Pakistan.
Maulvi Nazir was a leading militant of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan. Nazir's operations were based in Wana.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction based in North Waziristan. Upon the formation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007, he was announced as the militant group's overall naib amir under Baitullah Mehsud, who was based in South Waziristan, but has largely distanced himself from the TTP due to rivalries with Mehsud and disagreements about the TTP's attacks against the Pakistani state.
The Leadership Council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, also translated as the Supreme Council, is an advisory council to the supreme leader of Afghanistan. The supreme leader convenes and chairs the council at his sole discretion. He has ultimate authority and may override or circumvent it at any time. It played a key role in directing the Taliban insurgency from Quetta, Pakistan, which led to it being informally referred to as the Quetta Shura at the time.
Sami ul Haq was a Pakistani religious scholar and senator. He was known as the Father of Taliban for the role his seminary Darul Uloom Haqqania played in the graduation of most Taliban leaders and commanders, He had close ties to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was a terrorist organization that split away from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in August 2014. The group came to prominence after it claimed responsibility for the 2014 Wagah border suicide attack. In October 2017, there were unconfirmed reports that Omar Khalid Khorasani, the leader of the JuA, had died from injuries sustained in a US drone strike in Paktia Province, Afghanistan. In August 2020, it merged back to TTP.
Khyber was the code-name for a 2014–2017 military offensive conducted by Pakistan's military in the Khyber Agency in four phases; Khyber-1, Khyber-2, Khyber-3 and Khyber-4.
Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, also known as Abu Mansoor Asim, is a Pakistani Islamic scholar, cleric and jurist who is the 4th emir of the Pakistani Taliban. On 22 June 2018, Mehsud was appointed as the emir of TTP after the assassination of former emir Mullah Fazlullah in a US drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan.
The supreme leader of Afghanistan, officially the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and also styled by his religious title Amir al-Mu'minin, is the ruler, head of state, and national religious leader of Afghanistan, as well as the leader of the Taliban. He has unlimited authority and is the ultimate source of all law.
The Taliban is a militant Islamist organisation, which have ruled Afghanistan several times in the last 30 years. As of August 2021, they have again taken control of the country, and established a form of government. As of late 2022, no country recognizes them as legitimate rulers, but de facto they are in control. This article is about the international relations with the Taliban.