Yesterdays some announcements were made that the leader of the Afghan Taliban Mullah Omar died. It was the fifth or sixth time that Mullah Omar was said to have died so I ignored it. But today the official Taliban political office confirmed the news and said that Mullah Omar had died on April 23 2013 in south Afghanistan.
This confirmation, and the date of the death, will have all kinds of ramifications. Not only in Afghanistan but also in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
A few weeks ago an official Taliban Eid message that was attributed to Mullah Omar. It endorsed negotiations with the Afghan government. Some negotiations were already happening through the good office of the Chinese and with participation of Pakistani and (likely) U.S. government officials. What will happen with those is now up in the air. As Barnett Rubin explains:
The death of Mullah Omar may allow Pakistan to put leaders it controls more fully in charge of the Taliban. It may also cause the Taliban to splinter. Some may stop fighting and enter the system, while others may join even more extremist groups, such as the Islamic State, and fight the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the two governments cannot gain the willing participation of most of the Taliban in the peace process, Kabul may demand that Islamabad use force to shut down whatever part of the Taliban’s military machine it does not control directly. But the Pakistani Army […] will be reluctant to take on a battle-hardened Afghan group, some of whose members it hopes to use as future agents of influence.
Michael Semple adds:
[F]or many involved in the conflict, Mullah Omar’s Islamic Emirate has been a flag of convenience. They should be expected to defy any attempt by his successors to impose a ceasefire. Acknowledgement of Omar’s death is likely to hasten the shift to a multi-actor insurgency in Afghanistan. That would be a bitter reality for Afghans who hope for peace. But ultimately the Afghan government, with continuing international support, should be far more confident of ultimately prevailing over a fragmented insurgency than in a fight against a unified Taliban movement.
I doubt that a fragmented insurgency is more easy to overcome than a united one. With whom will you talk about peace when the Taliban fall apart?
The Taliban named Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur as new leader of the Taliban but not (yet) as Emir of the Islamic Emirate. [UPDATE: The official Taliban site now named Mansur also as "Amir-ul-Momineen" and thereby as official leader of the Islamic Emirate.] He has been the acting deputy Taliban leader for some time. His rise to power is explained by two huge mistakes in U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Anand Gopal gives this short biography of Mullah Mansur:
- Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur is from Band-i-Timor, Maiwand, Kandahar. He fought in 80s jihad in taliban fronts
- Most notably, he fought for a time under Mullah Faizlullah Akhundzada, alongside Mullah Omar
- During the Taliban regime he was head of the air force and also the (often absent) head of the civil aviation ministry
- In 2002 he surrendered & retired to his home in Kandahar, agreeing to abstain from politics. However, the US did not accept reconciliation
- Militias/US raided his home repeatedly. Final straw came when the US killed Hajji Burget Khan, revered leader of Mansur’s Ishaqzai tribe
- He asked friends in the Afghan gov’t to protect him, and they advised that he flee to Pakistan. There, he reconnected with old comrades
- As other important leaders (Osmani, Obaidullah, Beradar) were eliminated, Mansur rose steadily up the ranks to become de facto leader
In 2002 and 2003 U.S. special forces went after former Taliban leaders who had given up fighting and retired. This revenge driven campaign reignited the Taliban. They went back underground and again took up weapons. Then the manhunt campaign against Taliban leaders targeted the most experienced leaders who were in control of the fighters. These were the grown ups one could have talked with. Instead younger, more fierce leaders took over after the elder ones were killed and these are now less likely to agree to compromises. U.S. tactics in Afghanistan restarted a war against the Taliban that had been over and prolonged the new war by killing the leadership ranks of the Taliban who could have made peace.
Like Osama bin Laden the current head of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri had pledged allegiance (bay'a) to the Emir of the Islamic Emirate Mullah Omar. He renewed that pledge only last fall. He and his followers now learns that his pledge has been to a dead man. That is a huge disgrace. Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as well as al-Qaeda in Yemen had prevented their fighters to give bay'a to Caliph Baghdadi and the Islamic State with the argument that al-Qaeda had already given bay'a to Mullah Omar. That argument is now more than dead and the leaders who used it are discredited. A lot of Jabat al-Nusra fighters will now turn towards the Islamic State giving more power to that already quite strong group.
