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Hibatullah Akhundzada
Supreme Leader of Afghanistan since 2021 · Afghanistan · Politicians · Born 1967 · age 59
Hibatullah Akhundzada is read about 3,123 times a day, in 67 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 23 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 398 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He has almost no digital footprint - two photographs, a handful of audio recordings - yet he rules Afghanistan as supreme leader of the Taliban, having led the movement to victory over U.S.-backed forces in 2021 and imposed a totalitarian Islamist government that has drawn an ICC arrest warrant for the persecution of women.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 1
In their own words 6
During Mullah Omar's rule, there was no internet, yet affairs progressed smoothly.
For those cases that have met the Sharia conditions of and , you are obliged to implement Hudud and Qisas. This is the order of the Sharia and my order and it is obligatory.
We ask God to save our poor people from trials and harms.
About this person
Born 19 October 1967, Akhundzada rose not through combat but through Islamic jurisprudence, serving as a Sharia judge during the Taliban's 1996-2001 government. When the Taliban insurgency began, he was chosen to lead its shadow court system, issuing fatwas that shaped the movement's religious backbone. In May 2016 he was elected supreme leader, a position reinforced when al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri backed him as Amir al-Mu'minin. In 2019 he appointed Abdul Ghani Baradar to lead peace talks with the U.S., culminating in the 2020 Doha Agreement that set the terms for American withdrawal. While that withdrawal was still underway, Akhundzada directed a 2021 military offensive that toppled the Afghan government and made him Afghanistan's absolute ruler. Under his orders, the Taliban administration has barred most teenage girls from secondary school and imposed sweeping restrictions on women's work and education - actions that led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for him in July 2025.
Politicians from Afghanistan 6
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