Afghan Taliban release statement praising new leader

The Taliban on Thursday confirmed in that Mullah Omar died of an illness some time ago and asserted they elected Mansoor as his successor. For its part, the Afghan government believes it can seize the on the crisis it has created by announcing that Mullah Mohammad Omar has been dead for more than two years ago to further weaken the insurgency by exposing the lie that had been holding it together. He allied himself to the Taliban after they took power in Kabul in 1996, serving as a cabinet minister under the militia’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

He was appointed Thursday following the apparent death of Mullah Omar, who sheltered al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before and after the 9/11 attacks.

But Mullah Mansoor is said to be close to Pakistani authorities, who in recent months have moved to improve relations with Afghanistan and who hosted peace talks between the government and the Taliban earlier this month.

The nascent peace process is now on hold, after the Taliban pulled out of a second round of official, face-to-face talks due to have taken place in Pakistan on Friday.

But it cast a pall on the country’s fragile peace process aimed at ending the long war, with the Taliban distancing itself from the second round of talks slated for Today.

Afghans with knowledge of Mansoor’s years with the Taliban describe him as a low-level administrator who mostly dealt with organizational matters and was not among the top 10 Taliban leaders at the time.

The US Department of State designated the HQN as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on September 7, 2012.

As well as fighting on the ground and coming under pressure from all sides to negotiate, the Taliban aussi face the challenge of halting the expansion of the group Islamic State in Afghanistan, qui has-been recruiting disaffected fighters.

Opponents of Mansour criticise him for being too close to Pakistan’s military, which has long been accused of supporting the Afghan insurgency to maintain regional influence.

The Taliban shura council met last night at an undisclosed location in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan to decide on Mullah Omar’s replacement.

He Has shown his ability to navigate in different currents in the Taliban movement, from the Quetta Shura to the “political office” in Qatar to commanders on the ground in Afghanistan.

Mansour, a longtime trusted deputy of Omar, takes charge as the Taliban confronts growing internal divisions and is threatened by the rise of ISIS, the Middle East jihadist outfit that is making steady inroads in Afghanistan. The Taliban released a statement this week confirming his death, which had been reported by the Afghan government, and saying he died from natural causes.

Washington holds the Haqqanis responsible for some of the most high-profile attacks against US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan, including a 2011 siege of the US embassy and, in 2009, the deadliest attack on the Central Intelligence Agency in 25 years.

Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the leadership question had not triggered fresh splits but instead illustrated existing fractures that could devalue any peace process.

The Taliban statement on 31 July confirmed Sirajuddin Haqqani as one of its newly elected deputy leaders.

“If anyone does not obey the new chief of the Taliban then he will be not in the Taliban”, he said simply.