Mullah Baradar's passport reveals Pak support for Taliban

Pakistan has been long accused of covertly providing support to the Taliban militarily, financially and with intelligence in their fight against Afghan defence forces, which Islamabad has repeatedly dismissed as baseless.

Updated on: Sep 10, 2021, 22:19:30 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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With the lifetime Pakistani passport and identity card of the Taliban deputy prime minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar surfacing under a fake name, it is now quite evident that the Pakistani ISI is the driving force behind the military occupation of Kabul by the Sunni Pashtun forces. Pakistan had issued Baradar’s national identity card in the name of Muhammad Arif Agha, son of Syed M Nazeer Agha.

Taliban deputy prime minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar's lifetime identity card, with serial number 42201-5292460-5, was issued on July 10, 2014.

The lifetime identity card, with serial number 42201-5292460-5, was issued on July 10, 2014. Baradar’s date of birth has been mentioned as the year 1963. The national identity card was duly signed by the registrar general of Pakistan. The Pakistani passport number of Baradar is GF680121. The issue date of passport and national identity card was the same.

Pakistan has been long accused of covertly providing support to the Taliban militarily, financially and with intelligence in their fight against Afghan defence forces, which Islamabad has repeatedly dismissed as baseless.

According to Kabul watchers, Mullah Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban with Mullah Omar, use to stay in Pakistan’s Quetta and was part of the leadership council, or Shura, of the Islamist force. Mullah Baradar, also known as Muhammad Arif Agha, along with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, was heading the negotiating team at the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Qatar. The duo was negotiating with another Afghan origin Pashtun and US national Zalmay Khalilzad with the support of the Qatari government.

While it is understood that many of the Taliban leaders carry Pakistani passports and identity cards, it is still not clear whether the Taliban’s chief Hibatullah Akhundzada had Pakistani citizenship. Despite reports of Mullah Akhundzada being in Kabul, no one has seen the shadowy cleric. Akhundzada used to live in Pakistan cantonment in Karachi under heavy protection. On the other hand, Mullah Baradar, a UN-designated global terrorist, was captured by American intelligence forces in Karachi in 2010 and remained in Pakistani custody for several days.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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