White House says former Taliban leader Mullah Omar is dead

THE Taliban has elected Mullah Akhtar Mansoor as its new leader, Taliban sources have told Al Jazeera, as the group confirmed the death of their founder, Mullah Omar.

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.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed reports of Omar’s death, although he said it occurred more recently than April 2013-the date given by the Afghanistan government earlier this week.

As Afghan officials quietly expressed optimism that peace will eventually prevail, the first fissures began appearing Friday in the Taliban’s veneer, when Mullah Omar’s son Yacoob said that he and other senior leaders rejected the manner and the result of the election for a new leader.

“The leadership of the Islamic Emirate and the family of Mullah Omar… announce that leader Mullah Omar died due to a sickness”, a statement issued by the Taliban said, using the insurgent group’s official name. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said Kabul “as always, is committed to the peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban movement and hopes that the aforementioned meeting will be held in the near future”.

The family of the man who led an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians also asked “Muslims to forgive him if anyone’s rights were violated during his time in the Islamic Emirate”. Critics speculate that this may convince him to revive the peace talks.

JuD is a controversial organisation, which was added to the banned outfits list by Pakistani authorities at the start of the year, along with the Haqqani network.

It went on to cite analysts who believed that Mullah Omar’s death is a serious blow to the Afghan Taliban.

Dan Feldman, President Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the week’s developments offer “a moment of opportunity” for both sides.

Pakistan is widely believed to have influence over the Taliban, and the Kabul government in the past has accused it of sheltering the group’s leadership. “So now who should talk to whom”, he said. “Pakistan had always denied that Mullah Omar was based on its soil”, said the daily.

“Mansoor’s major challenge is to strike a deal with the Afghan government and at the same time convince the hardliners to stop fighting and hold the movement together”, he said.

Sirajuddin Haqqani has long headed the so-called Haqqani network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban and based in North Waziristan, one of Pakistan’s tribal regions along the Afghan border.

Haqqani carries an American bounty of Dollars 10 million on his head as a leader of the Haqqani network, which is linked with al-Qaeda. NATO’s combat troops pulled out of the country at the end of last year, leaving Afghan forces in charge of security.

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.