Ise-Shima: Hopes of negotiating peace with the Afghan Taliban’s new leader were swiftly fading from all sides Thursday, as US President Barack Obama warned the extremist movement will continue killing in Afghanistan.
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Undated photo released by Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), a Pakistan-based Afghan news agency, on May 25, 2016 to local media shows the new leader of Afghan Taliban Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.
“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 United States government experts and independent analysts said they saw little chance of that happening, with one U.S. defence official noting the Taliban announcement of Akhundzada’s accession made no mention of negotiations.
He said Pakistan was of the view that there was no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and the use of force for past 15 years had failed to deliver peace.
A breakaway faction led by Mullah Rassoul rejected Akhundzada’s appointment, saying he was selected inside Pakistan without any broad consultation with field commanders in Afghanistan. It continues to operate in large chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to launch deadly attacks on both civilian and military targets.
The article ‘What Happens After the Drone Strike?’ said the attack was a “sign of American exasperation with Pakistan’s duplicitous game of working with Washington to combat terrorism while sheltering the Taliban and its even more hard-line partners in the Haqqani network”.
The US and Afghan governments said Mansoor had been an obstacle to a peace process that had ground to a halt when he refused to participate in talks earlier this year. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had said that the body recovered on Pakistani soil, near the Afghan border, was charred beyond recognition.
Obama, speaking at a news conference in Shima, Japan, on the sidelines of a summit of world leaders, said he never expected “a liberal Democrat to be the newly appointed leader of the Taliban”.
Aziz said during the quadrilateral meeting of May 18, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USA and China had agreed that politically negotiated settlement was the most viable option and had stressed for continued efforts to bring Taliban on the table.
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If they don’t, “they will face the fate of their leadership”, Hashimi said, referring to former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
