The Aga University Hospital Karachi has rejected Washington Post report claiming that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar (slain) was being treated at the AKUH.
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The new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor served as deputy to Mullah Omar and was the head of the Taliban’s political and military affairs.
For some Mansour was the obvious choice to succeed Mullah Omar, the one-eyed warrior-cleric who led the Taliban from its rise in the chaos of the Afghan civil war of the 1990s. The acknowledgment did not give any details of when Mullah Omar died or from what illness. The statement appears to have spurred speculation throughout the ranks of the Taliban, and the talk quickly prompted Mullah Mansour to begin telling his compatriots that Mullah Omar had died, the report said.
The Afghan government, elected last year, has embarked on a peace process with the Taliban.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to lower tensions within the Afghan Taliban cadres, the Taliban Shura on Friday announced to make Sirajuddin Haqqani of the Haqqani Network the operational commander of the insurgency. “Mansoor had invited only members of his group to pave the way for his election”, said one of the sources, a senior member of Taliban in Quetta. The Haqqanis are not only considered close to Pakistan but also Saudi Arabia.
The Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Mansoor, is seen as close to Pakistan, having set up a base and support system for his insurgents through the war, now in its 14th year.
When American troops arrived after the 9/11 attacks, Jalaluddin sought refuge in North Waziristan and became one of the first anti-US commanders based in Pakistan’s border areas.
He said the second round of talks which was scheduled to be held on Friday have been postponed after confirmation of Mullah Omar’s death, expressing the hope that their internal process of leadership appointment to be soon completed for carrying forward the peace process. But according to the dissenting terrorists as quoted by The Associated Press, instead of taking a vote of “all Taliban commanders”, the leadership vote was confined to only a “small number of leaders”. Afghan officials also said they received no help from Pakistan, which had long sheltered and aided the Taliban.
Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has long been thought to be in de facto control of the group and has just been announced as a deputy leader of the Taliban. Wolf said this will pose a challenge to the new Taliban leader. Haqqani has a U.S. bounty of $10 million on his head as a leader of the brutal and extremist Haqqani network, which is allied with al-Qaida.
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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.
