Taliban Minister’s Rebuke of Supreme Leader Shows Infighting
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Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s powerful interior minister, has lambasted for the first time the group’s reclusive spiritual leader for monopolizing power and damaging their government in Afghanistan.
“Power monopolization and defamation of the entire system have become common,” Haqqani said in an angry speech at the packed graduation ceremony of an Islamic religious school in the southeastern Khost province over the weekend. “The situation cannot be tolerated any longer,” he added, without naming Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada directly.