New Taliban chief facing tension as top official quits

PESHAWAR, Pakistan A top Taliban official introduced his resignation on Tuesday amid a rising management wrestle within the Afghan rebel motion after information of the demise of leader Mullah Mohammad Omar final week.

If the first public comments from the Afghan Taliban’s newly appointed leader are anything to go by, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour recognises how fractured the militant movement has become and that humility and consensus may be his best way forward.

Agha was in charge of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, through which peace talks were being negotiated.

The Taliban are believed to be split over whether to pursue the negotiations or continue their 14-year insurgency now that U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops have transitioned to a supporting role.

“Now, as the leader is appointed outside the country and from the people who are residing outside the country is also considered as a great historical mistake”, he said in a statement.

The Taliban source said Mansour’s aides were trying to convince Agha to withdraw his resignation but his statement adds to a growing chorus of dissent in the movement over the increasingly bitter political transition.

Agha was also the main force behind the successful prisoner exchange with the US as the Taliban’s Qatar office secured the release of five Guantanamo inmates in return for the US soldier Bowe Bregdahl.

“I and other members of the Political Office of the Islamic Emirate declare allegiance to the honourable Mullah Akhtar Mansoor“. The government said Omar had died in a hospital in Karachi while Taliban rejected the claim.

“We discussed the problems of both sides and in the end Mullah Omar’s family gave authority to the Unity Council that whatever decision they take they will agree to it and accept it”, Mullah Hameedullah told The Associated Press.

Media reports said that prominent Taliban leaders had not participated in the gathering where Mullah Mansoor was named while few other leading figures left the meeting in protest.

Mullah Yaqub confirmed that he had attended the meeting, but gave no further details.

The Taliban, meanwhile, issued another statement Tuesday urging followers to disregard “enemy propaganda” about internal fractures and to unite behind Mullah Mansoor.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he could not confirm the statement came from Agha, but two senior members of the Qatar office said he had resigned on Monday.

Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, a police spokesman within the western province of Herat, stated eight fighters, together with a commander, have been killed on Sunday in a battle over the management between two teams in a village in Shindand district. The move set off fierce clashes in which the Taliban arrested the defectors, he said.

Mansour, who was deputy to the late Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, is widely seen as close to neighbouring Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence, which helped create the Taliban in the 1990s and has maintained links ever since.