Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor: Taliban’s new leader vows to continue fighting

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

The future of the nascent peace process is now uncertain.

The talks could be delayed for some time more as the Taliban is busy in organizational matters to address some internal problems, political watchers say.

Today, that hopeful scenario has been blown sky-high with the seismic revelation that Omar has actually been dead for the past two years.

Mullah Omar’s death was confirmed by the Taliban last week.

Haqqani’s family also rejected rumours of his death, according to an Afghan Taliban commander who spoke to AFP from an undisclosed location in northwestern Pakistan. A leader of the Haqqani Network that has ties with al-Qaeda, and is believed to be responsible for numerous deadly attacks in Afghanistan, Haqqani has a $10 million American bounty on his head. But these suggestions should be sent To avoid distracting other readers, we won’t publish comments that suggest a correction.

On Friday, Taliban commanders who attended the meeting that chose Mansoor as Omar’s successor told Reuters that Omar’s son and brother had walked out of the gathering in protest.

On Saturday, in a his first audio message as leader of the group, Mansoor called for the Taliban to unite as “division in our ranks will only please our enemies”, he said. In the 33-minute message, the new Taliban chief also says the insurgency will continue and advises his followers not to pay attention to rumors spread about the Taliban campaign. And he defined the goal of the insurgency as “an Islamic system” in Kabul, rather than explicitly speaking in terms of the Taliban reconquering Afghanistan. Mullah Omar’s death announcement will likely spark a fresh exodus of disaffected Taliban fighters to the Islamic State’s side.

Mansoor’s selection appears to have the backing of a broad array of Taliban leaders. But according to the dissenting terrorists as quoted by The Associated Press, instead of taking a vote of “all Taliban commanders”, the leadership vote was confined to only a “small number of leaders”. Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi said those who elected Mullah Mansoor had not followed the rules.

Sami Yousafza, The Daily Beast’s correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in an article titled “Up Close With the Taliban’s Next King” wrote: “Mansour in his days as student at the madrasa in the camp, was poring over the holy texts during the day, and sleeping in a room in the mosque at night“.

He has powerful rivals within the Taliban who are strongly opposed to peace talks with the Afghan government, while some are unhappy at the thought he may have deceived them for more than a year about Omar s death. Mansoor developed his relationship with Pakistani intelligence services during the 1980s while fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and served as minister of aviation from 1996 to 2001.

One might reasonably conclude that a spoiler wanted to sabotage the peace process by getting the word out about Mullah Omar’s death.

Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has long been thought to be in de facto control of the group and has just been announced as a deputy leader of the Taliban. The head of the police in Khas Uruzgan district said five police officers had been killed and four wounded in fighting so far.