Afghan Taliban denounce ‘propaganda’ against their movement

Those who are suspicious of Pakistan’s role in these events believe that Mullah Omar’s longstanding opposition to reconciliation with the ill-equipped and shaky Kabul regime may have outlived its use. This ruled out his 26-year-old son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoub, who is as much a hardliner as his father. In any event, the group has named a new leader: Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.

However, in the audio message on Saturday, Mullah Mansour dismissed peace talks as “propaganda campaigns by the enemy”, and called for unity among the Taliban. Since then the prospect of peace talks has been thrown into confusion and reports of infighting have emerged on a daily basis amid apparent unhappiness within the movement at the choice of his successor. “Our goal and slogan is to implement sharia (law) and an Islamic system, and our jihad will continue until this is done”.

For the Afghan government the biggest problem is that the peace talks could suffer.

Confirmation of Omar’s death last week cleared up some confusion over his fate, but also brought deep divisions within the Taliban out into the open.

Importantly, the Chinese-Pakistani game plan will be to stem the ascendancy of the Islamic State, which not only could pose a serious threat to regional security, but also could be seized as an alibi for the perpetuation of the western military presence in Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar’s son Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir and several other top leaders and council members are unhappy with the decision to name Mansoor as new chief. “You will see – even the women will be throwing rocks at the Taliban”. He presumed that orders issued on behalf of Mullah Omar would be complied with and will not be challenged.

Like other students, Omar was bound by the strict discipline of the seminary and lived in on-campus dormitories while undergoing a series of courses in religious instruction, starting with basic Arabic-language recitation of the Quran and culminating in rote memorization of Islam’s holy book before he graduated in 1982 and returned to Afghanistan, the sources said. Since that day, when he became a guest of ISI, there has been no forensically verifiable evidence of his being alive.

Tough questions will be asked whether Pakistan wants to be a peace-broker or a power-broker in Afghanistan. Moreover, the two entities had conflicting political goals: al-Qaida wanted to wage war against the West, while the Taliban were willing to work with the West to achieve local goals.

One said: “They don’t know who their leaders are”. Not only may his efforts not be rewarded due to Islamabad’s incapacity or inability to deliver, but they may prove to be counterproductive as illustrated by the recent fiasco of the cooperation agreement signed by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Afghan government, meanwhile, appears divided over the best way forward – with some officials seemingly intent on exploiting any weakness in the insurgency and determined to crush it once and for all. Further underscoring this interpretation is that the announcement seems to have been made in haste, to follow immediately on the public acknowledgment of Omar’s death.