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For 15 years until his sudden disappearance in May, the new leader of the Afghan Taliban insurgency openly taught and preached at the Al Haaj mosque in a dusty town in southwestern Pakistan, associates and students told Reuters.
Details of Haibatullah Akhundzada's life in Kuchlak, near the city of Quetta, have not previously been reported, and could put further pressure on Pakistan to do more to crack down on militants openly living there.
The row over how far Islamabad will go to get rid of jihadi fighters and leaders has hurt relations between Pakistan and Washington, in part because nearly 10,000 American soldiers are in Afghanistan supporting the war against insurgents.
A spokesman for the US State Department's South Asia bureau said it was not "not in a position to confirm Haibatullah Akhundzada's whereabouts, past or present."
Akhundzada is now believed to be in hiding after crossing the long and porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but not before going untouched in Kuchlak, located in Balochistan province, as he rose up the ranks of the Afghan Taliban.
"Once he became emir, he left with his whole family," said Hafiz Abdul Majeed, who runs the Al Haaj mosque, adding that he himself studied for several years under Akhundzada.
Pakistan says it does all it can to go after militants.
Analysts say Pakistan has historically backed the Afghan Taliban as a hedge against Indian influence in its backyard. Pakistan denies this.
"I strongly reject any organised presence of Taliban in Balochistan," said Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of the province.
At the Al Haaj mosque, scores of teenaged boys attended classes at a religious school, typical of remote parts of Pakistan, where they provide education for millions of boys.
On a recent visit, the metal door of the room where Akhundzada is said to have rested between lessons was padlocked and the curtains on the windows almost fully drawn.
But Akhundzada's name could be seen painted on a wall inside in large calligraphic text.
Majeed, the mosque administrator, said Akhundzada taught students from 8 am to noon every morning at the mosque, and was paid a monthly salary of 10,000 Pakistani rupees ($100).
"We are sad that he is gone because he was a great teacher and a great asset for this mosque," he said.
Asked how someone closely associated with the Taliban could live so openly, Majeed replied: "He was just a man of faith. He was a 'Sheikh-ul-Hadith' (scholar of Islam's Hadith texts). And when he became emir, he left here. That's all we know."
Several associates said Akhundzada lost family members in the Afghan war following the US-led military intervention to drive the Taliban from power in 2001.
One former pupil at Al Haaj, Pai Khan, says he heard Akhundzada speak at a public rally in Quetta in 2014 commemorating the death of an Afghan Taliban commander.
"He spoke with a lot of force about the US and the war and that we would not give up our jihad, that we would never negotiate with the puppet government in Afghanistan or talk to the US," said Khan, now an activist for a pro-Taliban party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, in Quetta.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that, after fleeing Afghanistan, Akhundzada lived for years in the Kuchlak mosque and religious school while he was the movement's shadow chief justice.
However, he disputed the timeline given by Akhundzada's associates, saying he left Kuchlak soon after being named deputy leader in 2015.
There are no known photographs or written records of Akhundzada's tenure in Kuchlak. Reuters could not independently verify the accounts given of his time there.
Elsewhere in Balochistan province, supporters of the Afghan Taliban said Akhundzada was well-known.
Western diplomats believe some seminaries in the Quetta area have long been fertile ground for Islamist militancy.
In Quetta itself, pro-Taliban jihadist ideology is openly embraced, and Taliban sources say the group's "Quetta shura", or council, has met sporadically in recent years to make important decisions including choosing new leaders.
Pakistan, however, denies the Taliban leadership operates openly.
He said authorities cannot keep track of up to 4 million Afghan refugees who have lived in Pakistan, some for decades.
"It is not possible for us to predict who among the refugees will become the president of Afghanistan or the leader of the Taliban," Bugti said.
(This article has been published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
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