Mullah’s rise charts Taliban’s long road back to power

By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press

The Taliban’s top political leader has made a triumphal return to Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar battled the U.S. and its allies for decades but then signed a landmark peace agreement with the Trump administration. Baradar is now expected to play a key role in negotiations between the Taliban and officials from the Afghan government that the militant group deposed in its blitz across the country. Baradar’s biography charts the arc of the Taliban’s journey from an Islamic militia that battled warlords during the civil war in the 1990s, ruled the country in accordance with a strict interpretation of Islamic law and then waged a two-decade insurgency against the U.S.