Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, born in the early 1960s, has been serving as the Taliban's Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and head of the Economic Commission since early September 2021. As a co-founder of the Taliban movement alongside Mullah Mohammad Omar, Baradar—a surname reportedly given to him by Mullah Omar, meaning "brother"—has held prominent positions within its leadership. From 1996 to 2001, he served as the Deputy Minister of Defense during the first Taliban regime. Earlier, in the 1980s, he fought alongside the Harakat-e-Inqilabi Islami jihadist group, led by Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
After the U.S. ousted the Taliban regime in 2001, Baradar fled to Pakistan. In February 2010, he was arrested in a joint U.S. and Pakistani intelligence operation in Karachi and subsequently imprisoned by Pakistani authorities for nearly eight years. Although the former Afghan government requested his extradition to Afghanistan, it was never granted.
In 2019, the Trump administration secured Baradar's release to lend credibility to its negotiations with the Taliban. Following his release, Baradar led the Taliban's negotiating team in Doha, Qatar, and played a crucial role in finalizing the 2020 U.S.-Taliban Doha agreement. The agreement facilitated the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ultimately set the stage for the Taliban's takeover of the country in August 2021. Since 2001, Mullah Baradar has remained on the United Nations sanctions list under the designation TAi.024.
