The Taliban announced Mullah Akhtar Mansour as their new leader on Friday, marking a historic power transition for the militant movement that has waged a 14-year insurgency in Afghanistan.
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Clearly, the Doha Political Office and Akhar Mansoor-led Taliban faction do not see eye to eye on the question of pursuing peace process through Pakistan.
“This will be the Afghan Taliban’s biggest test yet”, said Michael Kugelman, an Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson worldwide Center for Scholars.
But experts have long spoken of a divide in the movement between those who favor the peace process and those who still believe they can overthrow the government.
Afghan President Dr. Ashraf Ghani had charged two months ago that Pakistan was engaged in an undeclared war with Afghanistan for 14 years.
The first round of face-to-face talks between Taliban representatives and the Afghanistan government was held in Pakistan on July 7.
In another shift for the Taliban, it gave the No. 2 post to the head of a militant group, known as the Haqqani network, which has connections to al-Qaida.
Pakistan is again selling the snake oil of peace talks that it has managed to broker between some elements of the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Reports on Wednesday that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died will be rightly hailed by some as the demise of an American nemesis.
“Yet even by Mullah Omar’s standards, his elusiveness in his final years was remarkable”. Pajhwok Afghan News is reporting that several senior leaders and members of Omar’s family reject Mansour’s appointment and some have even accused Mansour of involvement in Omar’s death (Pajhwok).
Mullah Mansoor, thought to be aged between 50 and 52, was previously the aviation and transport minister during the Taliban regime, which controlled most of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.
The statement was backed from different sources as Pakistan echoed the same regarding the death of Mullah Omar.
In an email to journalists, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said Omar had “abandoned this mortal world” as the result of an illness.
In a letter published on the Taliban website, Zakir wrote that he had read reports “that I had differences with Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour”.
If Pakistan is, as it says, committed to a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, then the choice of Mullah Mansoor could indicate that the Taliban remains on board.
The group claims Mansoor has the loyalty of its battlefield commanders, who have intensified their attacks against Kabul in recent months – but local commanders have expressed confusion over who to follow. The Islamic State espouses a brand of Salafism at odds with the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam in Afghanistan.
They are considered to be closest militant group to Pak Army, as former DG ISI Shuja Pasha stated before Abbottabad Commission that Haqqani Network was a brainchild of ISI and Central Intelligence Agency, and was formed to fight against Soviet Union.
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As well as fighting on the ground and coming under pressure from all sides to negotiate, the Taliban also faces the challenge of halting the expansion of the Isis group in Afghanistan, which has been recruiting disaffected fighters.
