What We Learned Talking to the Taliban’s Most Fearsome Leader

For three years, there was one powerful, elusive figure I wanted to speak with in Afghanistan: Sirajuddin Haqqani.

During the U.S.-led war there, he was known as one of the Taliban’s most ruthless military strategists, deploying hundreds of suicide bombers and raining carnage on the capital, Kabul. He developed ties with terrorist groups across the region and built a mafia-like empire of illicit businesses.

After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Mr. Haqqani became one of the most important figures in the government. But he remained a mystery; he had given only one interview to a Western journalist.

I had been trying for years to arrange an interview of my own. Earlier this year, Mr. Haqqani finally agreed to meet with me.

Here are the biggest takeaways from what I learned:

The Taliban have divisions below the surface

Since the Taliban returned to power, the group has tried to project an image of unity. But out of public view, Taliban officials have been at odds over their competing visions for the country. Those divisions have pitted the Taliban’s ultraconservative emir and head of state, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, against more pragmatic figures like Mr. Haqqani.

The majority of Taliban officials privately oppose Sheikh Haibatullah’s hard-line vision of Shariah law, according to experts and officials. But they are bound by a central pillar of the Taliban: total loyalty to their supreme leader. Those who have privately pushed for reform have been batted down by Sheikh Haibatullah, who has seized total control.

Today, Mr. Haqqani is a lone voice of dissent from behind the scenes. With most of his allies cowed into silence, he has increasingly looked for support outside the country to tip the contest in his favor. He has made diplomatic connections with some countries in Europe and the Persian Gulf, as well as Russia and China. The United States has been less eager to engage and still designates Mr. Haqqani as a wanted terrorist.

Women’s rights are a wedge

Under Sheikh Haibatullah, the Taliban’s evisceration of women’s rights has come to define his government on the world stage.

In the spring of 2022, Sheikh Haibatullah reneged on a public promise made by other Taliban officials to allow girls to attend high school. He has gone on to cement the world’s harshest strictures on women and girls, which some human rights monitors say amount to “gender apartheid.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Haqqani and his allies have privately lobbied for girls to be allowed to return to school beyond the sixth grade and for women to resume work in government offices, according to several Taliban and foreign officials.

For Mr. Haqqani, his stance appears to be less about personal reform and more about pragmatic politics. Promising the restoration of women’s rights may help bring Western countries to his side. It could also help him gain the support of local leaders, particularly in urban areas that have been more resistant to the Taliban’s return.

The Haqqanis have been talking to the U.S. for years

Ties between the Haqqani family and the United States go back decades. Jalaluddin Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s father, cultivated close ties with the C.I.A., which sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and weapons to fight the Soviets.

In the early days of the American invasion of Afghanistan, the Haqqanis tried to leverage those old ties to reconcile with American officials. Their efforts were rebuffed, and years of intense fighting ensued.

Around 2010, the Haqqanis secretly exchanged letters with American officials, and Sirajuddin Haqqani’s uncle, Ibrahim Omari, met with U.S. officials in 2011 in Dubai, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions.

Then, in a previously undisclosed meeting around four years later, Mr. Omari sat down with American officials in a European city in the hopes of finding a path to end the war, according to those people.

Seated in a private lounge of an upscale European hotel, Mr. Omari told American officials that he had been sent by his family to deliver a message. Both the Haqqanis and the United States wanted peace in Afghanistan, he said. The Americans had toppled the Taliban government, killed Osama bin Laden and established a democratic Afghan republic. So why, he asked, was the United States still fighting?

In response, a State Department official admitted that the United States did not have an answer to that question. The war would continue for many years.