CAIRO: Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani visited Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Sunday and met Taliban-appointed Prime Minister Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, Doha-based news channel Al Jazeera reported.
Qatar is considered one of the countries with the most influence over the Taliban, which took control of Afghanistan last month as U.S. troops were preparing to finally withdraw from the country after 20 years.
It played a pivotal role in the massive U.S.-led airlift of its own citizens, other Western nationals and Afghans who helped Western countries.
The Taliban drew from its inner high echelons to fill top posts in Afghanistan’s new government on Tuesday, including an associate of the militant group’s founder as premier and a wanted man on a U.S. terrorism list as interior minister.
Mullah Hasan Akhund, named as prime minister, like many in the Taliban leadership derives much of his prestige from his close link to the movement’s reclusive late founder Mullah Omar, who presided over its rule two decades ago.
Akhund is longtime chief of the Taliban’s powerful decision-making body Rehbari Shura, or leadership council. He was foreign minister and then deputy prime minister when the Taliban were last in power and, like many of the incoming Cabinet, is under U.N. sanctions for his role in that government.
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