Afghan Taliban appoint Mansour as leader: Taliban sources

Afghan officials sat down with Taliban cadres earlier this month in Murree, a holiday town in the hills north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, for their first face-to-face talks aimed at ending the bloody insurgency.

A file picture taken in Kandahar on an undisclosed date in 1996 shows a TV screengrab of footage taken secretly by BBC Newsnight which claims to show the Afghan Taliban’s one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (C) during a rally for his troops in Kandahar, before their victorious assault on Kabul.

Officials in White House also said Wednesday that reports suggesting the death of Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad are credible.

July 29 – Afghan officials say they are investigating claims Omar died. The Taliban has yet to comment officially on his death.

One senior Afghan government official said Omar’s death could be good news for the peace process.

The Taliban Thursday also responded to media reports that talks with the Afghan government would take place soon, either in Pakistan or China.

With Islamic State and other jihadist groups vying for the loyalty of young Taliban fighters, it is unclear whether any leader except Omar can hold the movement together and then get its members to accept a peace settlement.

Criticised for its brutal interpretation of sharia that saw women denied education and work and executions and amputations carried out in public, the Taliban regime ended in late 2001 when the U.S. military launched air attacks to oust it.

Still, both the murky nature of his death and the apparent lack of an immediate successor could cause a setback in the peace process – a priority for Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani.

It remains unclear how wide the knowledge of Omar’s death spread among the Taliban ranks since April 2013. There, he began to attract a band of religious students-“Taliban” means students in Pashto-and former mujahideen to fight the warlords holding sway over much of Afghanistan.

An Afghan shows leaflets dropped by US planes along the Afghan-Pakistan border in March 2003 reading “Chase Murderers” and naming Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

A different official with the agency, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Omar had been “suffering from a disease” at the time of his death.

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security said Omar died in April 2013 in a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

The ministry gave no new date for the talks.

Mullah Omar during a rare TV appearance in 1996.

Omar’s rise was born from frustration at abuses perpetrated by armed factions in the chaotic early 1990s, and he and his hardline Islamist Taliban movement seized power in 1996.

In Washington, the U.S. government said they considered the report of the Taliban leader’s death credible, though it was not confirmed by the Taliban or Pakistan.