Omar appointed Mansoor as his deputy and acting head of the shura or leadership council after his predecessor, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in Pakistan by the neighboring country’s spy agency in early 2010 with the help of the CIA.
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“(Our) political office… are not aware of any such process”. The armed group has been based in Quetta in the Balochistan province of Pakistan since 2001, when US forces ousted them from power.
The Afghan Taliban has a new leader, one who appears pragmatic and moderate compared to the near-mythical figure he replaces.
The divisions threaten a formal split in the Taliban.
The new Taliban chief is considered close to the Pakistani authorities and his election could further divide an already-fractured Taliban.
This was a title used by caliphs, historical Islamic state leaders.
It added that the man who had established close links with Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda after fighting alongside them following the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan may then have slipped away into the pages of history.
If the Afghan government is correct that Omar had died in a hospital in the Pakistani city of Karachi more than a year earlier, Zawahiri made that pledge to a dead man. That would suggest “that Zawahiri was either ignorant or duplicitous, neither of which will endear him to his followers”, said intelligence consultancy The Soufan Group, in a recent analysis. But the death of the one-eyed Afghan commander may also scuttle the most promising peace talks in Afghanistan in a decade. Pakistani officials denied that while talking to Reuters.
Still, Mansour can not afford to alienate Pakistan, said Saifullah Mahsud of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Centre.
The Taliban shura council met last night at an undisclosed location in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan to decide on Mullah Omar’s replacement. “It’s a matter of survival”, he said.
“I don’t think this agreement to go to the negotiating table is determined by personality; it’s more about the circumstances”.
The Taliban’s first handover of power comes at a time when the US-led Afghan government has been trying to jumpstart peace negotiations as it struggles to contain the resurgent insurgency.
Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansoor has been appointed as the new chief or emir of the Afghan Taliban.
In a statement released by the Taliban on July 30, the group described Mullah Mansur as one of the most “trusted” associates of the late Mullah Omar and an “active director” of the movement’s war effort.
It could also be an attempt to ensure money continues to flow to the Taliban, as the Haqqani Network has wealthy backers at a time of fierce competition for funding among insurgent groups.
According to Taliban sources, Sirajuddin will now decide on the operational issues of the Amarat-e-Islami Afghanistan.
Here’s a look at Mullah Mansoor and what may lie ahead for the Taliban and Afghanistan.
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The massively engineered myth of Mullah Omar had held the Taliban together and, while the chances of a temporary surge in violence by a tug of war among various Taliban factions remains possible, a throwback to the Mujahideen-style warlordism is unlikely.
