© Reuters
Abdul Ghani Baradar
Abdul Ghani Baradar
The wrangling has taken place behind the scenes, but rumors quickly began circulating about a recent violent confrontation between the two camps at the presidential palace, including claims that the leader of the pragmatic faction, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was killed.
The rumors reached such intensity that an audio recording and handwritten statement, both purportedly by Baradar himself, denied he had been killed. The Pashto-language letter had a stamp from the office of Baradar, who had served as the chief negotiator during talks between the Taliban and the United States. Those negotiations had paved the way for the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed in late August, two weeks after the Taliban overran the capital of Kabul.
Shortly after the Kabul takeover, Baradar had been the first senior Taliban official to hold out the possibility of an inclusive government, but such hopes were disappointed with the formation of an all-male, all-Taliban lineup last week.
Comment: Hopefully, what is important will remain and what is not will sift out as Afghanistan begins the giant task of governing a broken country that suffered decades of fighting, occupation, contention and deception.