According to the Afghan government, Akhtar Mansour, leader of the Taliban who succeeded Mullah Mohammad Omar, was reportedly killed near Quetta, Pakistan, during a shooting. If this were the case, a new internal war could be opened between the Taliban.
Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was recognized as the new Taliban leader last September, in a statement posted on the group's website. At that juncture, Mullah Omar's brother and the latter's eldest son declared their support for Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who had run the organization after the leader's death in 2013. The estimated number of Taliban guerrillas is around 35: essentially a regional-based coalition, largely held together by Mullah Omar.
The Quetta Shura decreed Mansoor as the new "emir" on July 30, but a powerful Taliban faction did not recognize this authority, siding with Omar's eldest son, 26-year-old Mohammad Yaqoub Mullah. Internal tensions between the Taliban led to the suspension of the peace talks already started, but interrupted after the announcement of Omar's death. Mansoor himself disavowed the talks with the Afghan government (even if he participated in some cognitive meetings), calling into question any kind of preliminary agreement reached. It should be noted that the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, confirmed the terrorist group's loyalty to Mansoor.
That the Taliban are facing a delicate moment has long been known. Tayeb Agha, a high-profile figure in the movement, resigned as head of the Taliban political office in Qatar after criticizing the way Mansoor was chosen. Abdul Manan Niazi Mullah, a member of the main council who allegedly supported Mansoor's appointment, told Al Jazeera that he was not consulted in the final vote. A few days later, Maulvi Haibatullah Noorzai escaped an attack in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. According to the Afghan Pajhwok News, Noorzai and the head of the board of Taliban leaders, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, were on a mission to try to gather support for Mansoor.
Who is Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor
Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor should have been born in the village of Kariz, in the Maiwand district, in the province of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. It should have been born between the 1960 and the 1965. Of Pashtun ethnicity, belongs to the Ishaqzai tribe, of the Durrani tribal confederation. During the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Mansoor joined the paramilitary group founded by Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, leader of Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami. It was then that he met one of the leading commanders of the movement, Mohammad Omar.
After the war he moved and Quetta resumed his religious education. Arrived in Peshawar, he completed his studies at the madrasa of Darul Uloom Haqqania, the same as Omar, until 1995. Mansoor would have joined the Taliban to fight the warlords. Appointed head of security at Kandahar airport, following precise instructions from Mohammed Omar, he became civil aviation minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the 1996 to the 2001. In 2001, Afghan President Hamid Karzai granted him amnesty.
The USA, which knew the profile of Mansoor and the other Taliban commanders well, did not believe me in their conversion and started a series of raids aimed at their capture or elimination. Fled to Pakistan, he helped shape the new Taliban. In 2006, the Pentagon listed Akhtar Masoor as one of the 23 leading figures in the movement.
