Afghan Taliban praise new leader in statement

The Taliban on Friday formally announced their new leader, saying he had been running the insurgent group’s operations for years in the absence of former leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. It is widely believed that Mullah Omar fled over the border to Pakistan, where he lived under Pakistani protection until his death. With such a positive myth built around him, Mullah Omar was the glue that held the fractious Taliban together.

“He will never be able to fill the vacuum created by Mullah Omar’s death“, said Ahmad Saidi, a former Afghan ambassador to Pakistan.

Bette Dam, author of an upcoming biography of Mullah Omar, said the supreme leader’s absence paralyzed many Taliban officials.

His death, however, initially cast doubt on the fragile peace process aimed at ending the long war, forcing the postponement of a second round of talks that had been expected in Pakistan on Friday. A spokesman for the National Directorate of Security specifically said that Omar died in a hospital in Karachi.

Mansoor’s newly appointed deputy is Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of a powerful insurgent network allied with al-Qaida that has carried out scores of attacks on U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan. They also provide an opening to rival Islamic State (IS), the Middle East-based extremist movement that has attracted renegade Taliban commanders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is when he frequently met with Osama Bin Laden since the Saudi lived close to the Kandahar airport.

Others said Kabul could also take control of a peace process that has been largely in the hands of the Pakistani authorities, widely believed to support the Afghan Taliban and to have pressured its leaders to deal with Ghani’s government, which has made peace a priority. “So now who should talk to whom”, he said.

Said to be in his mid-80s, Haqqani fought against the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as a commander of the Hizb-e-Islami Yunus Khalis group but is more noted for the role his Haqqani network faction of the Taliban played in attacking U.S.-led foreign forces after they invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

“Some of the leadership wanted to see Mullah Omar’s son take over”. Zabul is a province in southern Afghanistan.

A number of senior leaders like Tayab Agha, the political head in Qatar, and Mullah Qaum Zakir, an influential military commander, wanted Mullah Yaqoob, the 26-year-old son of Mullah Omar to take up the mantle of his father.

But some intelligence officials estimate Mansour only directly controls about 40 per cent of fighters in the field, he said. His rise to prominence came in 2010 when it was revealed that US officials were holding talks with his impersonator.

“He will not have the same unifying power as Mullah Omar had”.