Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has served as the Taliban's Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and head of the Economic Commission since early September 2021.
A co-founder of the Taliban movement alongside Mullah Mohammad Omar—who reportedly gave him the name “Baradar,” meaning “brother”—he has held senior leadership roles within the movement for decades. During the Taliban’s first regime (1996–2001), Baradar served as Deputy Minister of Defense. Earlier, in the 1980s, he fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan as part of the Harakat-e-Inqilabi Islami group led by Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi.
After the Taliban’s removal from power in 2001, he fled to Pakistan. In February 2010, he was arrested in Karachi in a joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence operation and remained in Pakistani custody for nearly eight years. Despite requests from the former Afghan government, he was not extradited. In 2019, the Trump administration secured Baradar's release to support the U.S.-Taliban negotiations in Doha, Qatar. Following his release, Baradar led the Taliban's negotiating team in Doha and played a central role in negotiating the 2020 U.S.-Taliban Doha agreement. The agreement facilitated the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which enabled the withdrawal of U.S. forces and set the stage for the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
Baradar holds an Afghan diplomatic passport (D0009751 - issued October 16, 2021 in Kabul; expires October 16, 2026), listing his birthdate as September 29, 1963, and a regular passport (P04999950 - issued February 4, 2025; expires February 2035). Since 2001, he has remained designated on the United Nations sanctions list under TAi.024.
