RASC News Agency: New firsthand accounts from within the Taliban’s first period of rule once again expose a system of power that bore little resemblance to a functioning state. Governance under the Taliban was not grounded in institutions, law, or accountability, but in the physical absence of the leader, rigid security rings, and opaque decision-making. Testimony by Dr. Tareq Osman, a former staff member of Mullah Mohammad Omar’s office in Kandahar, offers a rare and unsettling portrait of a deeply securitized, distrustful, and fundamentally anti-administrative power structure one that did not even trust its own inner circle.
According to Dr. Osman, he was sent to Kandahar to work in Mullah Omar’s office at the recommendation of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef (Mutawakil), then the Taliban’s foreign minister. From the outset, however, he encountered intense suspicion from the group’s intelligence apparatus. Mullah Wasiq, now the head of Taliban intelligence and at the time its deputy chief, reportedly labeled Osman as “affiliated with Hekmatyar” and warned internal meetings that he should not be allowed access to Mullah Omar. This episode illustrates a defining Taliban trait: the normalization of exclusion, paranoia, and the monopolization of power patterns that would later re-emerge in different forms.
Osman recounts that he was explicitly advised not even to attempt meeting Mullah Omar, as doing so could result in his assassination by Taliban intelligence operatives themselves. He ultimately completed his entire assignment without ever seeing the Taliban leader in person. Communication between the office and the leader followed a method that resembled the practices of a clandestine cult rather than a government: written proposals and documents were placed in a cabinet inside a mosque adjacent to Mullah Omar’s residence, and later returned with approvals or rejections. No meetings, no deliberation, no accountability. This method symbolized the complete erasure of transparency and responsibility at the apex of Taliban power.
According to Osman, only a handful of individuals including Sayed Tayyab Agha and Mullah Mutawakil were permitted direct access to Mullah Omar. Such extreme concentration of authority within an exceptionally narrow circle rendered collective decision-making or expert consultation virtually impossible. International analytical bodies have repeatedly noted that the Taliban both during their first rule and after their return to power have lacked coherent institutional structures, relying instead on personalized, ideologically driven decrees.
Osman also highlights the Taliban’s contradictory relationship with technology another indicator of structural hypocrisy and administrative irrationality. He says only a few computers existed in Mullah Omar’s office, and their use had been explicitly banned by the leader himself. Yet, in practice, Taliban officials secretly used those same computers to type official documents. The contradiction became more blatant when Tayyab Agha and others close to Mullah Omar reportedly used the computers to watch videos of Osama bin Laden’s son’s wedding. When Osman objected, he was told dismissively: “Don’t get involved in these things.”
This seemingly minor anecdote reflects a much larger truth: under Taliban rule, prohibitions are not universal principles but tools of control imposed on others. What is declared “forbidden” or “un-Islamic” for the public is often exempted within the ruling circle. International human rights organizations have consistently identified this dual legal and moral standard as a defining feature of Taliban governance.
In conclusion, Dr. Osman’s account suggests that had remnants of the previous state’s professional, administrative, and technical cadres not remained during the Taliban’s first rule, governance would have collapsed even more catastrophically than it did. The Taliban were entirely captive to the personal decisions of Mullah Omar, and the now-infamous “cabinet in the mosque” functioned as the symbolic nerve center of the country’s administration. Today, despite changes in personnel and rhetoric, the same closed, opaque, and authoritarian logic continues to shape Taliban rule different faces, but an unchanged system.
