In a statement sent to media Wednesday, the insurgent group said its new leader is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, a former head of the Taliban’s judiciary and one of two Mansour’s deputies.
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A senior religious cleric Haibatullah Akhunzada has been appointed successor to the Taliban’s leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a recent United States drone strike, as a compromise figure after the militant group’s council ruled out more radical candidates. Mullah Yaqoub, Omar’s son, was named a deputy of Akhundzada along with Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Initially, government representatives did not confirm the Taliban leaders death but not the confirmation has been released by the Foreign Office.
Both deputies had been considered top choices for the leadership role now assumed by Akhundzada.
He and other United States military and intelligence officials pointed out that the Taliban had been making steady battlefield gains against Afghan security forces, who have been suffering high casualty rates.
“The Taliban understood that they needed a new consensus leader, and quickly, to prevent what was possibly the aim of the US and Afghan governments – to create turmoil around the succession”.
“In our view there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan”.
The official said it is possible the Taliban is grooming Yaqoob to run the organization some day.
Some of these rivals fought Mansour’s men for land, mostly in the opium poppy-growing southern Taliban heartland. He enjoys widespread respect inside the group as a religious scholar but poses no clear threat to other powerful figures – he comes to the job without having commanded military operations or served in a leadership post, experts said. “Even when Mansour was alive, Haqqani was active with all the Taliban groups, talking to the relative commanders in an effort to work together”.
Afghanistan security forces inspect the site of a suicide attack west of Kabul, Afghanistan, May 25, 2016.
Akhundzada will have to walk a fine line between hawks calling for intensified attacks in the wake of their leader’s death, and more pragmatic elements seeking to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with Kabul to end the conflict. The insurgents have been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government since 2001, when their own Islamist regime was overthrown by the US invasion.
“I’m not going to get into the operational details of the strike against Mansour except to say that these are very narrow windows in any case, and it’s not just with friends and allies or partners or whoever, but in any of these instances, it’s absolutely vital to keep operational security, ” he added. That much we know for certain.
Two Taliban commanders had provided the audio to reporters late on Wednesday, saying it was an official statement.
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The Taliban seized power and ruled Afghanistan in 1996, but were toppled by US-led invasion after September 11, 2001 attacks on NY and Washington. Photos of the auto he was riding in, demolished by a drone strike, have been widely circulated in social media and media reports.
