The announcement of Omar’s death threw into disarray a fledgling peace process fostered by neighboring Pakistan aimed at ending more than 13 years of war between the Taliban and the Western-backed government in Kabul.
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The Taliban said Thursday that Mullah Omar’s family had confirmed his death from an unspecified illness, though no time frame was given.
The news of Mullah Omar’s death sparked a leadership contest that many feared could create disunity within the group, potentially affecting the outcome of recently opened peace talks. Only a handful of high-ranking Taliban had any access to their leader, and by the middle of 2013 that number had been winnowed to one: “Mullah Akhtar Mansour, effectively the No 2 in the insurgency”, a report in the New York Times said. He has been given the title of “The Leader of the faithful”.
The Taliban leader’s demise inside Pakistan vindicates everyone who has shouted at the top of their lungs, most importantly former Afghan president Hamid Karzai that Pakistan is part, nay cause, of the Afghan problem not its solution.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar lived in secrecy and his death appears to have been just as mysterious, a Pakistani daily said on Friday.
It was not immediately known when the talks would be held again.
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.
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.
Omar’s rise was born from frustration at abuses perpetrated by armed factions in the chaotic early 1990s, and he and his hardline Islamist Taliban movement seized power in 1996. There are indications that he already was under tremendous pressure from those opposed to the talks, including the Doha-based Political Office, which on July 8, the day the first round of peace talks ended in the cool climes of Murree, posted a statement on the official website of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Still, Mansour can not afford to alienate Pakistan, said Saifullah Mahsud of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Centre.
However, in bin Laden’s case, Pakistani officials consistently claimed that he was long dead, while in Mullah Omar’s situation, they not only denied his presence for a good twelve years in Quetta and Karachi, but also, concealed his death for two years in an apparent attempt to keep the myth alive.
Preparations had been under way for the next round of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, provisionally planned for Thursday or Friday in a location yet to be confirmed. The reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan was full of many horrors including severe discrimination against and brutal killing of Hazaras and other minority groups and the infamous destruction of the historical statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan.
A Taliban official said that after the group’s ruling council had chosen a successor for Omar, the decision was supposed to be ratified by a college of religious clerics.
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In a reminder of the threat posed by insurgents stepping up their campaign to overthrow the government, the Taliban captured a district in the southern province of Helmand that foreign troops struggled to secure for years.
