If Mullah Mansoor fails to hold the movement together, the ultimate beneficiary could be the Islamic State group, which has established a small but growing presence in Afghanistan over the past year, in part by recruiting disillusioned Taliban fighters.
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Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced Mansour as the new leader in a statement on Friday, a day after confirming that Mullah Omar was dead.
But as the weekend of scheduled peace talks in a hilltop resort near Islamabad came and went, developments in Afghanistan seemed to point increasingly away from the path of negotiation, with Taliban forces aggressively attacking scattered targets across the country following U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation combat troop withdrawals at the end of last year, and the new Taliban leader openly calling for their armed campaign to continue.
In the fall of 2014 and winter of 2015, Afghan officials said, they intercepted two letters written by disaffected Taliban commanders who both referred to the possible death of Mullah Omar.
Afghan Taliban’s Supreme Council was not consulted over the nomination of Mullah Akhtar Mansour as the group’s supremo following Mullah Omar’s death and a new leader could be named in his place, media reports said.
It was widely believed that it was Mansoor who had sent the top three Taliban leaders to sit in face-to-face discussions with the representatives of the Afghan government in Pakistan on July 7. However, a spokesman for the group told BBC that Mullah Mansoor had not been appointed “by all Taliban” which, he said, was against Shariah. However, the Taliban officials said that the majority of the Leadership Council members and religious scholars had elected Mansoor as the new leader.
One might reasonably conclude that a spoiler wanted to sabotage the peace process by getting the word out about Mullah Omar’s death.
The fundamentalist Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 by enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
If Mansoor fails to appease Taliban fighters and field commanders on the ground, the ultimate beneficiary could be the Islamic State group.
On Friday, some TV channel reported that the Haqqani Network founder died almost a year ago of natural causes and was buried in Afghan province of Khost. However, Mullah Omar’s death reports overshadowed the negotiations.
Meanwhile, efforts by the Afghan government to start peace talks with the insurgency did nothing to allay rising tensions within the movement. He also played a central role in appointing commanders and shadow governors in the war-torn country, Mohammad said. It may believe that by announcing Mullah Omar’s death, it has plunged the Taliban into crisis and thereby weakened the organisation – and deprived it of some of the leverage it derived from its strong showing on the battlefield.
A statement by the group said Mullah Omar was eliminated following the opening of the group’s liaison office in Qatar which sparked serious argunment between him and Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. “Haqqani… was ill before but he has been blessed with good health for a prolonged period now and has no troubles currently”.
The Haqqani network has been blamed for some of the most high-profile terrorist attacks in Kabul in recent years.
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However, none of the claims circulating about Haqqani could be independently verified. The head of the police in Khas Uruzgan district said that five police officers had been killed and four wounded in fighting so far.
