High-ranking officials from the Afghan Taliban confirmed on Thursday the death of their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and said the group’s top council has elected his successor, a senior figure who served as the reclusive mullah’s deputy for the past three years.
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“He is known among fighters in the field as more into peace talks than Mullah Omar, and less strict”, said one Taliban commander who asked to stay anonymous. “The leadership of the Afghan Taliban must be inside Afghanistan if they are to have the legitimacy of leadership”.
The Taliban’s first handover of power comes at a time when the US-led Afghan government has been trying to jumpstart peace negotiations as it struggles to contain the resurgent insurgency.
This month, two Afghan militant groups swore allegiance to Islamic State, and more could follow suit.
Mullah Omar’s death poses an existential crisis for the Afghan Taliban, analysts say, potentially presaging a splintering of the movement as the Islamic State group gains a toehold among insurgents enthralled by its battlefield prowess.
Omar’s death could complicate the peace process because it removes a figurehead for the Taliban.
Michael Kugelman, Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson global Center for Scholars, said the loss of their long-time leader was a huge blow for the Taliban. “Since Mullah Omar is now dead, this is a golden opportunity for ISIS to recruit among the Al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathetic base”.
Rivals likely to vie for influence include Mullah Omar’s son, Yacoub, who reportedly walked out of a meeting about the succession in anger, and former military leader Abdul Qayum Zakir.
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.
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, the former head of the Taliban courts.
Still, “Afghanistan remains a risky place, and the Afghan people still suffer from a brutal insurgency that continues to take innocent lives and hinder Afghanistan’s prospects for peace”, the White House statement said.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday it was postponing the peace talks due to the “uncertainty” surrounding Mullah Omar’s death and gave no new date for the negotiations, saying only that it hoped they would be held “in the near future”.
Taliban attacks against Afghan officials and forces have intensified with their warm-weather annual offensive and since NATO’s combat troops pulled out of the country at the end of last year, leaving Afghan forces in charge of the security situation in their country. “The eighth time you hear it, and it’s the same story, it seems pretty clear”, a Western official said.
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District officials said the Taliban had wrested control of the Now Zad district on Wednesday after two days of fighting.
