Akhtar Mansour

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor (Pashto: اختر محمد منصور‎ Akhtar Muḥammad Manṣūr; pronounced /ɑːktɑː mɑːnsjʊər/ or /æktɑː mænsjʊər/; born probably 1968, although possibly 1963 or '65) (also spelled Mansur and Mansour, also, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour Khan Muhammad, and possibly, Naib Imam) is the Emir (leader) of the Ṭālibān, an Islamic fundamentalist political movement in Afghanistan.

Early life

Mansoor is thought as born, either in a village named Kariz, or another named Band-i-Taimoor (source: I.E.A.), both in the Maiwand District of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, sometime during the 1960s. The biography released by the Talibans' Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan website shows 1347 according to the solar Hijri calendar, corresponding to 1968, a date corroborated by S. Mehsud, of the C.T.C. West Point; although other sources give 1960, 1963 and 1965 as his birth years. According to Ahmed Rashid, Mansoor belongs to the Alizai tribe, but other sources claim that he belongs to the Ishaqzai tribe, in any case, both the Alizai and the Ishaqzai are of the Durrani line of the Pashtun people. Mullah Mansoor was educated at a village mosque and joined primary school at about the age of seven (source: I.E.A.).