Hibatullah Akhundzada

In August 2019, Akhundzada's brother Hafiz Ahmadullah was killed in a bomb blast. Ahmadullah succeeded Akhundzada as leader the Khair Ul Madarais mosque, which had served as the main meeting place of the Quetta Shura, after Akhundzada was appointed as the Taliban emir. More of Akhundzada's relatives were later confirmed to have died in the blast as well.

Yousef Ahmadi, one of the Taliban's main spokesmen, stated on 20 July 2017 that Akhundzada's son Abdur Rahman was killed while carrying out a suicide attack on an Afghan military base in Gereshk in Helmand Province. An Afghan government official said that they were investigating the incident but could not confirm if Rahman was killed.

As a religious scholar, he has written many books and articles, including the May 2017 release Mujahedino ta de Amir ul-Mumenin Larshowene (Instructions to the Mujahedeen from the Commander of the Faithful).

Akhundzada reportedly issued the majority of the Taliban's fatwas, and was the head of the Taliban's Islamic courts. Unlike many Taliban leaders, Akhundzada is believed to have remained in the country during the War in Afghanistan. He became the leader of the militant group in May 2016 following the killing of the previous leader, Akhtar Mansour, in a drone strike. The Taliban also bestowed upon Akhundzada the title Emir-al-Momineen (Commander of the Faithful) that his two predecessors had carried.

Akhundzada was appointed as the Taliban supreme commander on 25 May 2016 as the replacement for Mullah Akhtar Mansour. Mansour and a second militant were killed when munitions fired from a drone hit the vehicle in which they were riding. The strike was approved by U.S. President Barack Obama. Akhundzada was previously a deputy for Mansour. According to sources from the Taliban, Mansour had already named Akhundzada as his successor in his will.

Mullahs Abdul Razaq Akhund and Abdul Sata Akhund pledged their support to Emir Akhundzada in December 2016.

After his promotion to deputy leader of the Taliban in 2015, Akhundzada put in place a system under which a commission would be formed under the shadow governor in every province that could investigate abusive commanders or fighters, according to Mullah Abdul Bari, a Taliban commander in Helmand.

Mawlawi Akhundzada was later appointed as Chief Justice of the Shariah Courts of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Rather than a warlord or military commander, he has a reputation as a religious leader who was responsible for issuing most of the Taliban's fatwas and settling religious issues among members of the Taliban. Both Mullah Omar and Mullah Mansour are known to have consulted Akhundzada on matters of fatwa. Unlike his predecessors who were educated in Pakistan—and who were also believed to have moved permanently east across the Durand Line after the U.S. invasion in 2001 and during the resulting war—Akhundzada is believed to have lived in Afghanistan throughout the 2001–2016 period with no travel record, though he has close ties with the Quetta-based Taliban Shura.

Because the reported assassination attempt occurred in Quetta, it contradicts reports that Akhundzada did not travel outside of Afghanistan after September 2001.

When the Afghan Taliban captured the capital Kabul in 1996, one of religious scholar Akhundzada's first jobs was in Farah Province as a member of the Department of the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice paramilitary enforcers. He later moved to Kandahar and was made an instructor at the Jihadi Madrasa, the seminary of about 100,000 students that Mullah Omar personally looked after.

Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada (Pashto: هبت الله اخونزاده ‎; Arabic: هيبة الله أخوند زاده ‎ Haibatullāh Aḫūnd Zādah; born 1961) is a hardline religious scholar and the leader of the Taliban, an armed militant group that was the former government of Afghanistan.

Akhundzada was born in 1961 in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province in the Kingdom of Afghanistan. A Pashtun, he belongs to the Noorzai clan or tribe. His first name, Hibatullah—which is more commonly used as a girl's name—means "gift from Allah" in Arabic. His father, Mullah Mohammad Akhund, was a religious scholar as well as the imam of their village mosque. Not owning any land or orchards of their own, the family depended on what the congregation paid his father in cash or in a portion of their crops. Akhundzada studied under his father. The family migrated to Quetta after the Soviet invasion and Akhundzada continued his education at one of the first seminaries established in the Sarnan neighborhood.