Mullah Omar’s death mysterious: Pakistani daily

The Taliban have also now officially confirmed the NEWS on Thursday that Mullah Omar died of an illness some time ago and that they have elected Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansoor as his successor.

Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansoor, who has been tapped to succeed Mullah Mohammad Omar as the Taliban’s leader, is said to have close ties with authorities in Pakistan.

In an apparent damage-control measure, the Taliban leadership shura was hurriedly convened to nominate the Taliban’s once-upon-a-time civil aviation minister and Omar’s deputy, Akhar Muhammad Mansoor, as the new ameer – also a tacit acknowledgement that the supreme leader is no more.

An editorial in the News global said that Mullah Omar, who led the Taliban after it seized power in Kabul in 1996, lived in secrecy. He has been given the title of “The Leader of the faithful”.

Afghan Taliban leaders have long had sanctuaries in Pakistan, even as Pakistani government officials have denied offering support in recent years.

If Pakistan is, as it says, committed to a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, then the choice of Mullah Mansoor could indicate that the Taliban remains on board.

But the internal opposition is unlikely to prevent Mansour from proceeding with peace talks launched in the Pakistani hill station of Murree earlier this month.

Yacoob said that all Taliban commanders should have been included in the vote for Mullah Omar’s replacement.

Afghanistan later said the meeting scheduled in Pakistan had been postponed, voicing hope that it would be convened in the “near future”.

However, the spokesman of the NDS, the country’s intelligence agency, said that details about the Omar’s death will be released to the media when appropriate.

Omar’s son Mullah Yakoub was favoured to take over by some commanders, sources said, but at 26 was considered too young and inexperienced for such a key role.

The Taliban warned IS recently against expanding in the region, but this has not stopped some fighters, inspired by the group’s success, defecting to swear allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi instead of the invisible Mullah Omar. Mansour is only the Taliban’s second-ever leader, with Omar having been at the helm since founding the Afghanistan-based militant organization in the 1990s.

In another shift for the Taliban, it gave the No. 2 post to the head of a militant group, known as the Haqqani network, which has connections to al-Qaida.

Still, “Afghanistan remains a unsafe place, and the Afghan people still suffer from a brutal insurgency that continues to take innocent lives and hinder Afghanistan’s prospects for peace”, the White House statement said.

The election, which was reported yesterday, has not been officially confirmed by the Taliban. The second round of Afghan-Taliban talks had few surprises.

Mansoor’s name first rose to public prominence in 2010 when western intelligence officials spent tens of thousands of dollars ferrying a “senior commander” to Kabul for peace talks, only to discover that they had been courting an imposter, a grocer pretending to be Mansoor. The group is accused of being behind some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan. The Islamic State espouses a brand of Salafism at odds with the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam in Afghanistan.