Taliban jihadists confirmed the death on Thursday of Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani, a Taliban cleric known for confronting the terrorist organization on its anti-women’s education stance, at the hands of a suicide bomber reportedly packing explosives in his prosthetic leg.
Haqqani – who is reportedly not a member of the Haqqani Network, the al-Qaeda liaison that has taken up multiple senior cabinet positions in the Taliban “government” – had prominently supported the jihadists for years and, as a result, attracted violent assaults by anti-Taliban jihadists. Haqqani had argued in the past that women should be allowed to receive an education on the grounds that the alternative would lead to haram behavior such as male doctors seeing the bodies of female patients. He had also, however, developed a loyal following by promoting the radical interpretation of Islamic sharia that the Taliban is currently enforcing in Afghanistan after falsely promising to create an “inclusive” state.
Haqqani’s death arrives days before the Taliban marks the one-year anniversary of its overthrow of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, which occurred on August 15 after then-President Ashraf Ghani fled. Ghani abandoned the country for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) immediately after Taliban terrorists reached Kabul city limits and his government did not attempt to fight the Taliban’s conquest of the country. The suicide bombing on Thursday served to raise questions, however, regarding the Taliban’s effectiveness in limiting the activities of other terrorist groups in the country such as the Islamic State, which reportedly took credit for the attack.
Taliban spokesmen have repeatedly claimed to have subdued any Islamic State threat in the country, often immediately before the Islamic State took responsibility for yet another attack.
Afghanistan’s Khaama Press cited Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi as confirming Haqqani’s death on Thursday.
Taliban’s deputy spokesperson, Bilal Karimi, confirmed the veracity of the incident and stated that the explosion happened in the Shash Darak area of Kabul’s Police District 2 ‘martyred’ Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani,” the outlet reported. “According to four Taliban sources, the assailant had previously lost a leg and had stashed the explosives in a plastic prosthetic leg, Reuters reported.”
Karimi posted an homage to Haqqani on Twitter.
“He whose heart is alive with love never dies,” Karimi wrote. “It is with sadness that we receive the news that the country’s great personality and academic figure, Sheikh Sahib Rahimullah Haqqani, has reached the highest position of martyrdom in a brutal attack by the merciless enemy.”
هرگز نمیرد آنکه دلش زنده شد بعشق
ثبت است بر جریدهٔ عالم دوام ماپه ډیرې خواشینۍ سره مو خبر تر لاسه کړ، چې د هیواد ستره هستي او علمي شخصیت شیخ صاحب رحیم الله حقاني د نامرده او نامراده دښمن په ناځوانمردانه حمله کې د شهادت لوړ مقام ته رسیدلی، انالله و انا الیه راجعون. pic.twitter.com/hg1wFBzr1N
— Bilal Karimi(بلال کریمي) (@BilalKarimi21) August 11, 2022
Karimi did not identify an enemy, but Khaama Press noted that the Islamic State had claimed several prior attacks against Haqqani.
“Sheikh Haqqani was a steadfast opponent of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K), and a supporter of the Taliban administration,” the outlet observed.
The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that Islamic State terrorists on the encrypted messaging phone application Telegram had taken credit for the attack, though Taliban officials had not confirmed their involvement. The anonymous tips that the attacker had hidden a bomb in a prosthetic leg should, if true, narrow the potential list of suspects down, but Reuters’ report has yet to be corroborated on the record by Kabul officials at press time. The ISIS claim of responsibility on Telegram, according to Dawn, contradicted Reuters, claiming that the bomber had worn an explosive vest.
Karimi, the Taliban spokesman, had dismissed the existence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan at all in remarks in November.
“Bilal Karimi has said that ISIS-K is just a phenomenon and does not exist at all in Afghanistan leave alone recruiting people in the country,” Khaama Press reported at the time. “Spokesperson of the Taliban said that their intelligence has strictly been following the group and they are being suppressed wherever they pose a potential threat.”
Last month, top Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid similarly said that concerns about increasing Islamic State activity in the country were “incorrect and far from reality.”
A profile of Haqqani in the Pakistani outlet Voice PK published in 2020 described him as hailing from the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan and rising to prominence as one of the Taliban’s most vocal supporters. Voice PK noted at the time that he had survived an assassination attempt in 2013 and another in 2o2o, both in Pakistan.
“According to unconfirmed local news reports, Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani was once affiliated as a member of the Taliban military commission in Nangarhar province,” Voice PK detailed at the time. “He was imprisoned by the US military forces in Afghanistan at the Bagram jail for many years. Local sources say Haqqani has been living in Pakistan for the past nine years.”
Haqqani appears to have returned to Afghanistan upon the rise of the Taliban to power last year, though reports have not confirmed when he moved out of Pakistan. Voice PK identified him as “quite a vocal speaker” against the Islamic State and noted he had “dedicated facebook [sic] pages and youtube [sic] channel with following in thousands.”
The BBC described Haqqani as being based in Peshawar as recently as this May, when he offered the British broadcaster an interview. In it, he defended the right of women and girls to an education, though the BBC noted he abstained from criticizing the Taliban, which has banned girls and women from going to school.
“There is no justification in the sharia [law] to say female education is not allowed. No justification at all,” he said in the interview. “All the religious books have stated female education is permissible and obligatory, because, for example, if a woman gets sick, in an Islamic environment like Afghanistan or Pakistan, and needs treatment, it’s much better if she’s treated by a female doctor.”
Haqqani issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in favor of girls’ education.
Taliban officials banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade in March, contradicting their own promises to the international community last year that they would not interfere with girls’ education. Jihadists insisted it was necessary to shut down all schools that took in girls above sixth grade because they “must be standardized and in line with Islamic and Afghan values.”
“We are not against education,” Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told reporters in January. “In many provinces, the higher classes (girls’ school) are open, but in some places where it is closed, the reasons are economic crisis and the framework, which we need to work on in areas which are overcrowded. And for that we need to establish the new procedure.”
He promised that schools would reopen by March, the month that Taliban officials indefinitely shut them down.
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