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Afghan Intelligence Says U.S. Drone Killed Taliban Leader in Pakistan Taliban Leader Died in Drone Strike, Afghan Intelligence Says
(about 9 hours later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — The leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, was killed by an American drone strike, the Afghan intelligence agency said on Sunday. KABUL, Afghanistan — After months of failed Pakistani efforts to broker peace talks with the Taliban, an American drone strike against the leader of the Afghan militants signaled a major break with precedent as the United States circumvented Pakistan in an effort to disrupt the strengthening insurgency, officials said on Sunday.
Some Taliban commanders vehemently denied that Mullah Mansour was present in the area of the strike, which occurred on Saturday near the Afghan border in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, but a statement from the intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, was unambiguous. The Afghan intelligence agency said Sunday that the Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, had been killed in the strike in the restive Pakistani province of Baluchistan. The United States announced the strike Saturday but could not confirm that Mullah Mansour had been killed.
“Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the leader of the Taliban group, was killed around 3:45 p.m. yesterday as a result of an airstrike in Dalbandin area of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan,” the statement said. “He had been under close surveillance for a while, until his vehicle was struck and destroyed on the main road in the Dalbandin area.” Although there was still no official reaction from the main Taliban spokesman, some Taliban commanders on Sunday denied the reports, saying their leader was not in the area of the strike.
The United States did not offer confirmation of its own. Even if Mullah Mansour was not killed, the attack was significant, as it is believed to be the first American drone strike in Baluchistan, the de facto headquarters of the Afghan Taliban, after years of such attacks in other Pakistani and Afghan areas.
“We are confident, but at this point we do not have indisputable facts that he is dead,” said Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said on Sunday. The death of Mullah Mansour, who was consolidating his authority over a fracturing Taliban as the militants made major gains on the battlefield, would throw the insurgency into its second leadership crisis within a year. Still, it was unclear whether it could create any significant breathing space for the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani, which has struggled to bring the insurgency into negotiations.
Pakistan was not informed of the strike beforehand, said a senior American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential operational details. Even with no clear successor to Mullah Mansour, the issue of peace talks has long been seen as deeply unpopular among the Taliban’s most senior leadership.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry issued a statement Sunday denouncing the attack as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. In the statement, the ministry said a man carrying a Pakistani passport under the name of Wali Muhammad was targeted in the strike along with his driver. It was not immediately clear if either was Mullah Mansour. The strike in Baluchistan was also seen as a signal that the Obama administration was growing less patient with Pakistan’s failure to move strongly against the Taliban insurgency. While Pakistan’s powerful military establishment has quietly cooperated with the C.I.A.’s campaign of drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas, it has refused past requests from the spy agency to expand the drone flights into Baluchistan, former American officials said.
Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking on Sunday in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, where he was visiting the nation’s new civilian government, was the first senior official to talk about the targeted attack. He repeatedly referred to Mr. Mansour in the past tense. The United States and the Afghan government have long pointed at the Taliban sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, particularly in Baluchistan, as the main reason for the resilience of the insurgents despite a campaign against them that, at its peak, involved nearly 150,000 international troops.
Asked if Pakistan had been kept in the dark about the operation until it was complete — which is what happened with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 — Mr. Kerry said he would not say “when we communicated.” But he indicated that he had talked with Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, on Sunday morning, after the strike was announced. But until the strike against Mullah Mansour on Saturday, consecutive administrations in Washington had resisted the temptation of going after Taliban sanctuaries out of fear of angering Pakistan. Instead, American officials focused on pressuring the Pakistani military to force the Taliban’s leadership into joining peace talks with the Afghan government.
“We have long said that Mansour posed an imminent threat to us and to Afghan civilians,” Mr. Kerry said. “This action sends a clear message to the world that we will continue to work with our Afghan partners.” Pakistani officials were alerted to the attack against Mullah Mansour only after the strike, said a senior American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential operational details.
Mr. Kerry suggested that the attack would not derail peace talks, because he said Mr. Mansour had been opposed to any such negotiations. “He was directly opposed to the peace process,” he said. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday denouncing the attack as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. The stance echoed Pakistan’s anger over the American raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Then, too, the United States informed Pakistan of the raid only after the fact.
Mullah Mansour’s death could add to the Taliban’s leadership difficulties less than a year after the death of their founding leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was revealed. The Foreign Ministry said in the statement that a man carrying a Pakistani passport with the name Wali Muhammad, who entered from Iran on Saturday, had been targeted in the strike, along with his driver. It was not immediately clear if either was Mullah Mansour.
The news could also be a boost to the struggling government of President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, as the Obama administration has finally carried out what the United States had been reluctant to for 15 years: a strike against the Afghan Taliban in their sanctuaries in Pakistan. American officials say President Obama authorized a strike against Mullah Mansour weeks ago as it became clear that the new leader of the Taliban had little interest in peace talks. Months of efforts involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States to initiate face-to-face talks led nowhere, with Mullah Mansour only intensifying his attacks.
Although the United States has repeatedly targeted leaders of Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas, this is the first time a senior Afghan Taliban leader has apparently been struck on Pakistani soil. The opportunity on Saturday, after a closer surveillance of his movements was activated, presented itself relatively quickly, in a matter of hours, and the military acted using the earlier White House authorization.
Mullah Hameedi, a top Taliban military commander in southern Afghanistan who confirmed a strike in the border area but denied that Mullah Mansour was there, said: “We are going to persuade Mullah Mansour to publish his audio record to confirm he is alive.” It took the Afghan government until noon on Sunday to state that Mullah Mansour was died. The Taliban brushed it aside as propaganda along the lines of similar claims in December. The Afghan government, at that time, said Mullah Mansour had been killed in fighting between rival Taliban factions, also in Baluchistan.
The strike, carried out by several unmanned aircraft operated by United States Special Operations forces, was authorized by President Obama, American officials said. “Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the leader of the Taliban group, was killed around 3:45 p.m. yesterday as a result of an airstrike in Dalbandin area of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan,” the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said in a statement. “He had been under close surveillance for a while, until his vehicle was struck and destroyed on the main road in the Dalbandin area.”
Mullah Mansour rose to the Taliban leadership after the death of Mullah Omar in 2013 was revealed last summer. A former aviation minister lacking battlefield expertise, he ascended through the ranks of the insurgents gradually but was seen as a crucial figure in the Taliban’s regrouping after an initial defeat following the American-led invasion in 2001. Once he rose to the movement’s No. 2 position, he began a cunning campaign of sidelining rivals and creating a monopoly over resources and decision-making. Mullah Hameedi, a top Taliban military commander in southern Afghanistan, confirmed a strike in the border area but denied that Mullah Mansour had been there. “We are going to persuade Mullah Mansour to publish his audio record to confirm he is alive,” he said.
The United States did not offer confirmation of its own. “We are confident, but at this point we do not have indisputable facts that he is dead,” said Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said on Sunday.
Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking on Sunday in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, was the first senior official to talk about the attack. He repeatedly referred to Mr. Mansour in the past tense.
Asked if Pakistan had been kept in the dark about the operation until it was complete, Mr. Kerry would not say “when we communicated.” But he indicated that he talked with Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, on Sunday morning, after the strike was announced.
“We have long said that Mansour posed an imminent threat to us and to Afghan civilians,” he said. “This action sends a clear message to the world that we will continue to work with our Afghan partners.”
Pakistan’s relatively muted reaction, similar to its standard protests against drone strikes by American forces, might be due to the fact that, according to Taliban commanders in recent months, Mullah Mansour had repeatedly resisted Pakistani officials’ pressure on him to join negotiations.
“Mansour has not been cooperative in making progress on peace settlement discussions with Afghanistan,” said Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the RAND Corporation. “One red line for Pakistan has historically been a failure by Taliban operatives to accede to Pakistani priorities.”
Mullah Mansour rose to the Taliban leadership after the death of Mullah Omar in 2013 was revealed last summer. A former aviation minister lacking battlefield expertise, he ascended through the ranks of the insurgents gradually but was seen as a crucial figure in the Taliban’s regrouping after an initial defeat following the American-led invasion in 2001. Once he rose to the movement’s No. 2 position, he began a campaign of sidelining rivals and creating a monopoly over resources and decision-making.
After a very public leadership confirmation last summer in front of large gatherings of Taliban in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, Mullah Mansour had limited his movements, Afghan officials said. While the reason given to his subordinates was security — he narrowly missed an attempt on his life, attributed to dissidents within the Taliban ranks, in December — keeping the leader at a distance from the commanders followed a pattern that became routine under Mullah Omar.After a very public leadership confirmation last summer in front of large gatherings of Taliban in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, Mullah Mansour had limited his movements, Afghan officials said. While the reason given to his subordinates was security — he narrowly missed an attempt on his life, attributed to dissidents within the Taliban ranks, in December — keeping the leader at a distance from the commanders followed a pattern that became routine under Mullah Omar.
At the same time, Mullah Mansour’s deputies, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is largely running battlefield operations, have continued to move freely in Pakistan. A persistent question over whether Mullah Mansour would strike a peace deal with the Afghan government was his deep involvement in narcotics, a trade that has prospered in insecurity. The United Nations, as well as the Afghan government, has described Mullah Mansour as resembling the leader of a cartel rather than an insurgency that has relied on religious justification for its long war.
Even as the Taliban operating inside Afghanistan remained a formidable and violent force, Mullah Mansour had difficulties uniting his ranks. He brutally quashed breakaway groups and sought to buy the support of other skeptical commanders, all while maintaining a publicity campaign that portrayed him atop a united command. “Mullah Mansour was involved in smuggling and the mafia besides the leadership responsibility he had, which is why he was in favor of continuing the war to better run his businesses,” said Jawid Kohistani, an Afghan security and intelligence analyst. “That is why he wouldn’t cooperate for the calls for peace talks.”
When Mullah Omar’s death was revealed last summer, Mullah Mansour was a strong, though not unanimous, candidate for the job. But even as the Taliban under his leadership remained a formidable and violent force, Mullah Mansour struggled to unite the ranks. He quashed breakaway groups and sought to buy the support of other skeptical commanders, all while maintaining a publicity campaign that portrayed him a the head of a united command.
Much remains unclear about the succession if he is dead.
One leading candidate would be Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of Mullah Mansour’s most feared deputies, who has largely been running battlefield operations in recent months. While closely linked to Pakistan’s spy agency, Mr. Haqqani would struggle to gain the support of the wider Taliban as his small but lethal network has only in recent months fully integrated into the larger insurgency.
Whether or not Mullah Mansour resurfaces as he did the last time he was reported killed, the United States’ expansion of its drone campaign into Baluchistan suggests “that the U.S. is losing patience with the promises of Pakistan,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington.
“The Taliban insurgency will probably continue, but Pakistan has another chance to dissociate itself from backing the greatest threat to Afghan stability,” Mr. Haqqani said.