Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) forces will not allow anyone in the country or abroad to undermine security, the acting defense minister, Mullah Yaqoob Mujahid, said on Sunday.

“Inshallah, all your evil plans will be thwarted and you will be routed,” Mujahid said at a ceremony in Kabul on Sunday to mark the death anniversary of IEA’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar.

“We will not allow anyone in Afghanistan to undermine security or threaten it from the outside,” said Mujahid who is also the son of the late IEA founder.

“We will respond courageously to anyone, and we are not afraid,” he said.

First Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar meanwhile said that preserving the Islamic system is the duty of all the forces of the IEA.

“We have followed in Amir-ul-Momin’s footsteps and we are here because his stances were effective,” Baradar said. “May Allah guide us to further pursue his path.”

Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi, second deputy prime minister, said that with the return of the IEA, all ethnic groups in Afghanistan are now living together “like brothers”.

“We don’t want Afghanistan’s soil to be used against neighbors and others, and we expect others also not to allow anyone to undermine the security of Afghanistan,” Hanafi said.

He said that IEA leaders would “spare no sacrifice to ensure safety of every Afghan.”

IEA’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the objective of IEA’s struggles were to establish a “real Islamic government” in Afghanistan.

He said that preserving the system requires strong protection efforts.
Mullah Omar was an Afghan religious scholar, partisan fighter and political leader. In the 1980s, he joined the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and went on to establish the IEA in 1994.

By 1995 he had captured much of southern and western Afghanistan and after the IEA seized the Afghan capital of Kabul in September 1996, Mullah Omar was proclaimed the head of state of Afghanistan.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Mullah Omar secretly fled his residence in Kandahar and is believed to have gone into hiding in December 2001 in Zabul province.

He died of tuberculosis in Zabul on 23 April 2013.