India, Feb. 5 -- The Taliban's acting deputy foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, has left Afghanistan weeks after criticising top leaders over restrictions on women, giving rise to speculation about divisions within the group.

This is not the first time that Stanekzai, the former deputy head of Taliban's political office in Qatar who trained for several years at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in the early 1980s, has tangled with the group's senior leadership over the handling of issues such as the education of girls and women's rights.

Officially, Stanekzai said in an audio statement last week that he had travelled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to rest and recuperate as he had been "infected with a coronavirus-like d...