The selection of cleric Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada as the new Taliban chief on Wednesday all but dashes Obama’s hopes for opening peace talks before he leaves office, one of his top foreign policy goals, current and former USA defense and intelligence officials said.
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Newspapers hang for sale at a stand carrying headlines about the former leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was killed in a USA drone strike last week, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
“Haibatullah Akhundzada has been appointed as the new leader of the Islamic Emirate (Taleban) after a unanimous agreement in the shura (supreme council), and all the members of shura pledged allegiance to him”, the insurgents said in a statement.
But current and former U.S. government experts and independent analysts said they saw little chance of that happening, with one USA defence official noting the Taliban announcement of Akhundzada’s accession made no mention of negotiations.
Akhundzada went on to become the group’s “chief justice” before a US-led invasion toppled the Taliban government in 2001. Instead, the two men were selected as deputies under Akhundzada. Mullah Yaqoub, Omar’s son, was named a deputy of Akhundzada along with Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Mere hours after the Taliban announced its new leader, a suicide blast attack on a bus full of judiciary department employees claimed 11 lives and injured 10 people in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
But not all of the militant group’s members accepted their new leader. The peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which the Obama administration considered vital for American extrication from the conflict, were going nowhere.
Taliban elected a new chief on Wednesday after confirming the killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in the first-ever drone strike in Balochistan on Saturday. The insurgent group said Akhundzada was chosen at a meeting of Taliban leaders, but offered no other details.
The adviser said the drone strike has undermined the Afghan peace process.
The hardline Taliban movement banned human images for breaching their strict interpretation of Islam during their five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended when they were ousted by a US-led military campaign.
The Taliban statement called on all Muslims to mourn Mansour for three days, starting from Wednesday. He said the U.S. informed the army chief three-and-a-half-hours after the strike and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seven hours after the incident.
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Speaking at the G7 summit of world leaders in Japan on Thursday, President Obama said he was not optimistic of a change for the better any time soon after the killing of Mansour.
