Haqqani network confirms death of its leader Jaluluddin Haqqani

– AFP pic, July 31, 2015.The new Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has a reputation as a relative moderate who favours peace talks with the government, but his leadership already faces challenges to its legitimacy.

The Taliban also announced his deputies – Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads the Taliban-allied Haqqani network and has a $10 million US bounty on his head, and Haibatullah Akhundzada, former head of the Taliban courts.

The contradictory reports come a day after the Taliban confirmed that its founder Mullah Mohammed Omar had some time ago, signifying a major shift in Afghanistan’s militant leadership.

“Of course he wanted the foreigners out of Afghanistan, but Mullah Mansoor consistently told Mullah Omar that war was not the solution in Afghanistan“, Mujda said.

The Afghan Taliban Shura, or Supreme Council, chose Mullah Omar’s deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, as the group’s new leader, the Taliban said in a statement, adding that Mullah Omar had trusted Mansoor and that Mansoor had been handling the Taliban’s executive affairs. “Yet even by Mullah Omar’s standards, his elusiveness in his final years was remarkable”.

Sources, however, say Sirajudin Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, has been running the militant network for over a year now, ever since his father’s illness. In his latest address, Baghdadi made a point of specifically welcoming followers of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam – to which the Taliban belongs – into the caliphate. According to earlier reports, talks were scheduled to take place in Xinjiang’s provincial capital Urmuqi, but shifted to Pakistan, where the first round was held.

Mansour, Omar’s longtime deputy who has been effectively in charge for years, favors talks to bring an end to more than 13 years of war.

Sources in Pakistan also assert that Mansoor is the driving force behind the nascent Afghan peace process.

He surrendered in 2001, like many senior Taliban; going to the new Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to ask for amnesty and then retiring to his home district.

He is said to be in favour of peace talks with the Afghan government, and reportedly has appointed Haji Din Muhammad to participate in the peace process. Both groups had great incentive to keep Mullah Omar’s death from the public and, more importantly, from rank-and-file Taliban members.

Mansoor had previously engaged with representatives of the Afghan government during a meeting outside Islamabad last month.

But so far the embryonic talks have not stopped the militants pressing ahead with their summer offensive, which is shaping up to be one of the bloodiest in recent years.

The insurgents have ramped up their attacks on military and government targets since the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation combat mission ended in December.

Founded by Jalaluddin, the network is considered the most risky faction in the Taliban army in Afghanistan.

“The challenge for ISIS was not that numerous rank-and-file of those organizations did not sympathize with it but that they felt tied to their groups by a binding pledge of allegiance”, Hassan said, using another acronym for ISIL. The group is accused of being behind some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan.