Pakistan cancels Afghan-Taliban Peace Talks

However, the statement did not reveal when and where the meeting was held. This may put him in a position to revive the peace talks.

He said that Pakistan government knows that a peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s best interest, for which an inclusive intra-Afghan reconciliation is imperative, adding Pakistan has been doing its utmost to facilitate the process.

Rifts in the Taliban leadership could widen after confirmation this week of the death of elusive founder Omar. “He was endorsed to continue the job and lead” the Taliban, a source said. “The successful holding of first round of peace-talks was a significant step forward towards a peaceful and stable Afghanistan“.

Mansoor’s credibility is already in question over his continued silence over the death of his supreme leader and putting out false statements on his behalf, (mis)leading the fighters to believe that not only was their leader alive and supervising their “holy war against foreign occupation forces”, but was also endorsing the Islamabad-sponsored peace talks. To a query about the presence of Daish/ISIL, he said that there is no footprint of the militant outfit in the country.

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.

Afghan officials have said they had “credible information” that Omar died two years ago in Pakistan, while Taliban spokesmen have said he never left Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar was the one-eyed, secretive head of the Taliban, whose group hosted Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the years leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks and then waged a decade-long insurgency against after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ended the Taliban rule.

Omar appointed Mansoor as his deputy and acting head of the shura or leadership council after his predecessor, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in Pakistan by the neighboring country’s spy agency in early 2010 with the help of the CIA. The Taliban are very happy with their new leader and have termed him as the most “trusted” acquaintance of Mullah Omar.

But Mansour, 50, has powerful rivals within the Taliban who oppose negotiations and have been pushing for Mullah Omar’s son Yaqoob to take over the movement. While there has been no official comment on the Pakistani side, Mansour’s appointment was welcomed by retired Brigadier Mehmood Shah.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, who founded the notorious Haqqani network, died in June 2014 according to Taliban and Pakistani intelligence sources. “The peace talks too are negotiable and it’s impossible to happen if the Taliban commanders on the ground are not a part of it”.

The report highlighted that Mullah Omar, the secretive leader of the Taliban, spent the final years of his life in “remarkable obscurity” and his death was confirmed only by “chatter” among Taliban officials.

The White House urged the Taliban “to heed [Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s] call for reconciliation and make genuine peace with the Afghan government“.

The reports of his death have appeared in media several times in past.

“The Taliban movement is facing the most hard time of its existence”, Rahimullah Yousufzai, a Pakistan-based expert on Afghan affairs, told AFP. Both groups have been under “enormous pressure” since Baghdadi’s audacious announcement of a caliphate across Syria and Iraq – a longtime pipe dream for Al-Qaeda that directly challenged its pre-eminence atop the movement – and his group’s astonishing military success, accomplishments that have drawn thousands of recruits from across the globe.