KABUL—The Taliban unveiled a new government of Afghanistan that didn’t include any other prominent political forces, or women, cementing their hold on the country three weeks after seizing Kabul.

While the movement’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada will oversee the government’s main decisions, the new cabinet will be headed by Mullah Hassan Akhund, who served as foreign minister in the Taliban government of the 1990s.

Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada will oversee the new Afghan government.

Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In one of the most controversial appointments, the interior ministry, responsible for police and security, went to Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network that is designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization because of its links to al Qaeda.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was the face of the Taliban after heading their political office in Qatar, will serve as deputy prime minister, the group said in a nighttime Kabul press conference called with almost no warning.

Earlier Tuesday, Taliban fighters violently dispersed the first sizable protest in the capital since last month’s insurgent victory, showing that Afghanistan’s new rulers won’t tolerate public opposition as they prepared to unveil their administration.

The protest was triggered by the presence in Kabul of Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, who was involved in talks toward forming the new Taliban administration. Pakistan has supported the Afghan Taliban since the Islamist movement was born in the 1990s.

A Taliban member points his gun at protesters in Kabul on Tuesday.

Photo: Reuters

Organized mostly by women, Tuesday’s protests started off peacefully, with several hundred marching down the streets of Kabul and chanting, “Death to Pakistan.” They also expressed support for the anti-Taliban resistance in Panjshir province, whose capital was seized by Taliban forces on Monday.

At first, more disciplined Taliban units along the way didn’t intervene. But once the march reached the city’s central Shahr-e-Naw neighborhood, Taliban fighters started beating the protesters with batons and whips, and firing in the air.

A Taliban propaganda video appears to show fighters raising the group's flag in Panjshir, the last pocket of resistance that had held out against the Taliban’s takeover of the country. The rebels denied the Taliban’s claims. Photo by Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Several windows at the upper floors of a nearby hotel were blown out as some Taliban gunmen failed to control their muzzles when they unloaded volleys of bullets. Several dozen protest organizers were forced into the basement of a nearby bank, and many others were detained. There were no reports of casualties.

“We must continue our protest against dirty Pakistan, which is interfering in Afghanistan. Why is Pakistan not being sanctioned? We will never recognize this government, which is a puppet of Pakistan and attacks our people and violates women’s rights and dignity,” one of the organizers, a women’s-rights activist in her 30s, said when reached by phone in the bank’s basement.

With the advances into Panjshir, the Taliban have essentially extinguished the only remainder of armed opposition to their rule. Tuesday’s demonstrations, however, show that they also have to reckon with simmering discontent within the wider Afghan society, particularly in Kabul, a modern metropolis where many oppose the Taliban’s puritan ways. With the country cut off from the international financial system and most foreign aid, long lines have formed daily at bank branches in Kabul as Afghans try to withdraw at least part of their savings.

Demonstrators protest near the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul on Tuesday.

Photo: Reuters

Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman, mocked Tuesday’s protesters, pointing out on Twitter that all of the leaders of the so-called anti-Taliban uprisings, including those from Panjshir, have fled abroad. “All the Facebook and Twitter instigators live in the West, while their sheeplike followers have come to Kabul for demonstrations, disrupting security and order,” he wrote. Other Taliban officials said that the protesters were trying to build asylum cases so they would be able to emigrate to the West.

Leaders of the deposed Afghan republic have long portrayed the Taliban as Pakistan’s stooges, trying to harness widespread popular resentment of the Pakistani state. No Afghan government has recognized the British-drawn Durand Line between the two nations as an international border, and Afghan nationalists have maintained for decades that Pakistan’s Pashtun-speaking areas should belong to Afghanistan.

In Kabul, opinions were divided about Tuesday’s protests. A shopkeeper along the march’s route said he agreed with the demonstrators. “The Taliban government, we don’t know who is doing what, and whether it is Pakistan that is pulling all the strings,” he said. “The banks have no money, the business is in trouble, everyone is talking about a coalition against the Taliban.”

A woman takes part in Tuesday’s protest from a car in Kabul.

Photo: wana news agency/Reuters

The shopkeeper next door held an opposite view. “The previous government was a government of corruption. They are all out there protesting because they can’t steal anymore,” he said. “The Islamic Emirate brought us security and a true Islamic system.”

Across the street, a bearded Taliban official who was released from Bagram prison in mid-August professed ignorance about the protest that passed the area shortly before. Several pickup trucks with Taliban fighters, white bandannas with the Islamic profession of faith on their foreheads, were parked nearby as he spoke.

“In all of Afghanistan, everyone is happy, and the situation is better day by day,” said the official, Mohammed Zindani. “All the people of Afghanistan want this government.”

Taliban soldiers block protesters in Kabul on Tuesday.

Photo: west asia news agency/Reuters

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com