The United States added the brother of the head of the Haqqani Network to its list of "specially designated global terrorists," the State Department said on August 25.
Based in Pakistan, the Haqqani Network has close ties to Al-Qaeda and has been blamed for many of the most deadly attacks against targets in Afghanistan.
This deadly Taliban faction is named after Jalaluddin Haqqani. Now in his 70s, he is known to have been in ill health in recent years and has given up most day-to-day control of his militant network to his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani.
He has long been targeted by Washington. Sirajuddin now is joined by his brother, Abdul Aziz Haqqani.
The Haqqanis are viewed as being close to hard-line elements in Pakistani military intelligence. Sirajuddin was recently named as a deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban.
"For several years, Aziz Haqqani has been involved in planning and carrying out improvised explosive-device attacks against Afghan government targets and assumed responsibility for all major Haqqani Network attacks after the death of his brother, Badruddin Haqqani,” the State Department said.
Aziz already had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. Now, assets he owns that are in areas under U.S. control can be seized and Americans are banned from doing business with him.
