Jamaat Ansarullah Commander Tajik Taliban:
Mahdi Arsalan aka Muhammad Sharipov (20211007)

2. Previous Function:
Tajik Taliban

3. Biodata:
Mahdi Arsalon, aka Muhammad Sharipov, was born 1995 in Tajikistan. He is a 27-year-old Tajik citizen from the Nurabad district who the Taliban put in charge of managing the border along the Darvaz district. Arsalon has been wanted by the Tajik authorities for eight years on terrorism charges. Officials say Arsalon and more than 200 Tajik citizens are in the ranks of the Taliban, forming a group known as the “Tajik Taliban.

Background:
When the Taliban captured a strategically important security checkpoint near Afghanistan's border with Tajikistan in September 2021, it assigned a Tajik militant to raise the Taliban flag on the site. The militant goes by the alias Mahdi Arsalon and has a group of fighters from Tajikistan under his command, an eyewitness to the flag-raising and other sources reported.

The Taliban also put Arsalon and his group in charge of security in five districts the Taliban seized near the Tajik border in recent months, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to personal security concerns. The districts are Kuf Ab, Khwahan, Maimay, Nusay, and Shekay -- all parts of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province.
 

In Afghanistan, Arsalon and other Tajik militants are known as the “Tajik Taliban.” But in reality they are members of Jamaat Ansarullah, which is banned in Tajikistan as a terrorist group.
 

Jamaat Ansarullah -- also known as Ansarullah or Ansorullo -- was founded by a rogue former Tajik opposition commander a decade ago with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the government in Dushanbe.
 

According to several sources in Tajikistan, Mahdi Arsalon’s real name is Muhammad Sharifov. Sharifov, 25, was born in the village of Sherbegiyon in Tajikistan’s eastern Rasht Valley.