Mawlawi Saaduddin Saeed was appointed as the Deputy Director-General of Finance and Administration at the National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) in early July 2024. Before assuming this position, he served as the Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Information and Culture, overseeing financial and administrative affairs.
During the Afghan resistance against Soviet forces, he aligned himself with the Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami party under the leadership of the late jihadi leader, Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. Later, he transitioned to the party's breakaway faction led by the late Mullah Nasirullah Mansoor. During the 1980s, Saaduddin Saeed's family relocated to Quetta, Pakistan, where he spent most of his life. He received his early education from his father, Mawlawi Abdul Latif Akhundzada, a cleric. He then pursued Islamic studies at Farooqia madrassa in Kandahar, an institution affiliated with the Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami party. In Kandahar, he also studied under Sheikh Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the current Chief Justice of the Taliban's Supreme Court. During the 1990s, Saaduddin Saeed joined the Taliban, initially active in Spin Boldak in Kandahar province and later serving as the deputy commander in the Taliban's 16th Brigade and as provincial director of rural rehabilitation in Kandahar. In subsequent leadership roles, he served as Minister of Rural Rehabilitation, Mayor of Kabul city for nearly two years, Minister of Economy, and Minister of Public Works under the Taliban's regime.
After the fall of the Taliban's regime in 2001, he fled to Pakistan and remained active in the Taliban's insurgency. From 2012 onward, he served as an advisor to the Taliban's Leadership Council. Notably, Saaduddin Saeed is the brother of Abdul Haq Akhund, who presently serves as the Deputy Minister of Counternarcotics in the Taliban's Ministry of Interior. Additionally, among his three brothers, the youngest, Ihsanullah, was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Zhari district, Kandahar province. Born in the late 1960s, Saaduddin Saeed has four sons and a daughter. He is on the UN's sanctions list under the designation TAi.087.
