The Taliban’s leader this week reportedly appeared in public for only the second time in six years — but there has been speculation that he is actually deceased and the face of the person who spoke was not visible. 

Hibatullah Akhundzada was said to have delivered a short address at a mosque in Kandahar to mark the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The speaker reportedly told worshippers that the Taliban had enjoyed “victory, freedom, and success” since the repressive Islamic fundamentalist group’s second takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Although Kabul is the Afghan capital, Kandahar is considered to be the chief Taliban stronghold in the country. 

While the Taliban representative congratulated himself on “this security and for the Islamic system,” the situation in Afghanistan has been anything but secure. Agence France-Presse and the Daily Mail reported that attacks in the county soared over the final two weeks of the fasting month of Ramadan, which ended Saturday for Afghans. 

Dozens of civilians have been killed in what are seen as mainly sectarian attacks — with some claimed by the Islamic State group — targeting members of the Shiite and Sufi Muslim communities. A bombing at a Sunni mosque in Kabul reportedly killed at least 10 people on Friday. 

Was it actually Mr. Akhundzada who addressed the crowd of faithful hardliners? A correspondent for the AFP reported that the voice said to be Mr. Akhundzada’s actually came from the front rows of worshippers; Taliban officials prevented journalists from approaching the speaker. Social media posts reported that the speaker did not turn his face to the crowd. 

That raises the possibility that the event was orchestrated as a ploy to show the world that the Taliban is well and truly in charge of Afghanistan, even if the group’s grip on power is uneven. Parading the putative supreme leader before the cameras, face or no face, could be seen as a move to shore up the Taliban’s flagging legitimacy in many quarters, particularly outside of Kandahar.  

In recent months clashes between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front in Badakhshan and other provinces beyond Kabul have erupted, resulting in many Taliban casualties that have received little news coverage. Few Western journalists have been inside the country since last summer. 

There are indications that even some Afghan women have taken up arms against the Taliban. On Sunday a spokesman for the MRF, Sibghatullah Ahmadi, tweeted that “the heroic women of the country, in addition to defending civil rights and civil liberties, raised their voices against … the Taliban.” He indicated that two resistance fighters who fell in clashes with the Taliban in Afrin were women. 

The head of the NRF’s foreign relations, Ali Nazary, tweeted that “recently some of our brave sisters have taken arms and are actively fighting against the Taliban terrorists.” He referenced an operation in Tala and Barfak in Baghlan in which “both men and women fought bravely against the Taliban terrorists and inflicted heavy casualties on them.”

As for Mr. Akhundzada, there has been much speculation that the elusive figure is actually dead. Last month Mr. Nazary told the Sun that “Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban supreme leader, is not alive.”  According to Mr. Nazary, the so-called emir died or was killed in March or April 2020. “No one has seen or heard him for the past two years,” Mr. Nazary said. 

In his estimation, Pakistan’s intelligence service “has done this before. The previous Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, died in 2013 but they announced that at the end of 2015. So for two or three years he was ruling the Taliban in name only and now the same thing is happening with Hibatullah.”

Some of the indications that Monday’s happening was staged came from the worshippers themselves. According to the Daily Mail’s report, one of them, Aziz Ahmad Ahmadi, said that “I cried when I heard the voice of Sheikh Saheb [Akhundzada] … to hear him is like achieving my biggest dream.” He added that he had failed to spot the leader among the crowd.

The Taliban’s prime minister, meanwhile, has criticized Washington for seizing billions of dollars’ worth of Afghan assets after its hasty withdrawal from the country last  August. “We call on foreign countries to not create problems for Muslims, and to keep your promises,” Mohammad Hassan Akhund said on Sunday. The so-called promises he was referring to were not immediately clear. The West has been in something of a bind over the assets seizure, as it is generally accepted that while doing so informs a principled stance against the Taliban, it has deepened a humanitarian crisis throughout the country.