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New Taliban Leader Facing Tension as Top Official Quits New Taliban Leader Facing Tension as Top Official Quits
(about 1 hour later)
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A top Taliban official announced his resignation on Tuesday amid a growing leadership struggle after the news of the death of the group’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, last week. KABUL, Afghanistan — Solidifying reports of high-level rifts within the Taliban over the group’s leadership succession, the head of the insurgents’ official diplomatic delegation in Qatar broke with tradition and issued a public resignation letter on Monday.
On Tuesday, the Taliban’s political director, Syed Mohammad Tayab Agha, announced that he was stepping down from his office in the Qatari capital, Doha, that was set up to enable the Taliban to negotiate in any peace process. The resignation of the official, Tayeb Agha, the head of the Taliban political office in Qatar and a longtime confidant to the late supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, came amid an intense debate over the appointment of the movement’s new commander. Some senior Taliban figures have accused the new leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, of keeping Mullah Omar’s death a secret for nearly two years in order to tighten his own grip over the movement.
The swift announcement that Mullah Omar's longtime deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, would be the new leader has riled many senior figures angry about the implication that Mullah Mansour covered up Mullah Omar's death for more than two years. Opposition to Mr. Mansour’s appointment has come from Mullah Omar’s brother, Mullah Abdul Manan Hotak, his son, Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub, and several other Taliban leaders who say he arranged a hasty succession process in Quetta, Pakistan, where not all senior members were given a vote, according to Taliban officials close to the proceedings.
In a statement, Mr. Agha said he considered the decision to conceal Mullah Omar’s death a “historic mistake.” On Tuesday, efforts were underway to mediate the differences between Mr. Mansour and members of Mullah Omar’s family. A group of nearly 200 religious leaders and tribal elders traveled from Peshawar, Pakistan, where some Taliban members are based, to Quetta and held a meeting with Mr. Hotak and Mr. Yaqoub, asking them to end the dispute with Mr. Mansour.
The infighting could split the Taliban and threatens tentative peace talks with the Afghan government to end 13 years of war that began with a United States-led campaign after the Sept. 11 attacks. “The two family members of Mullah Omar said they had no differences with Mullah Mansour and they are only making complaints against the decision by Mansour to appoint himself without clerics and other members of the Taliban movement being called to the succession meeting,” a member of the Taliban leadership council who was at the meeting said.
Since Mullah Mansour's appointment was announced by the Taliban leadership council based in Quetta, Pakistan, it has been denounced by several top members of the group, including Mullah Omar's brother, who has called for an assembly to choose the leader. In a personal statement released to the public — a rarity from senior Taliban officials — Mr. Agha, who led the prisoner exchange effort that resulted in the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last known American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, called the selection of the new leader a “historical mistake.”
Considered close to Pakistan's powerful intelligence services, Mullah Mansour faces a challenge to hold the movement together, with hard-line commanders pressing for an end to talks and the continuation of fighting that has been increasingly successful in recent months. Comparing it to the selection of Afghan communist leaders in Moscow or factional leaders in Pakistan during the bloody civil war, he said such appointments outside the country had brought grave repercussions.
Some reports suggest that there have been clashes between rival Taliban groups, although a Taliban spokesman denied that. “In the current controversial situation, I am not supporting any side,” Mr. Agha said.
Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, a police spokesman in the western province of Herat, Afghanistan, said eight fighters, including a commander, were killed on Sunday in a battle over the leadership between two groups in a village in Shindand district. In his statement, Mr. Agha said he had not received any audio message from Mullah Omar, who reportedly died in April 2013, since the beginning of that year. Instead, he began receiving written instructions without a signature, which his superiors told him should be good enough, he said.
It remains difficult to assess how serious a threat Mullah Mansour faces, but the tension points at least to a suspension of the peace process while he consolidates his position. “But I was asking for his audio message to eliminate the concerns of the people,” Mr. Agha said.
Several commanders are known to have stopped fighting until the situation is clarified and there have been calls for a new council to be summoned to decide the leadership issue. At the heart of the leadership disagreements in the Taliban ranks is the movement’s policy toward recent peace efforts with the Afghan government that have been facilitated by Pakistani officials.
Two senior members of the Qatar office said Mr. Agha resigned on Monday. Under heavy pressure from Pakistani security officials, who have sheltered Mr. Mansour and other senior Taliban leaders, a delegation of Taliban officials attended the first round of meetings with Afghan officials near Islamabad on July 7. The meeting angered other Taliban leaders who had, for years, rejected direct talks with the Afghan government, preferring a slower outreach process without Pakistan’s influence.
A Taliban member who is close to Mr. Agha said Mullah Mansour's decision to send his delegation to the first official peace talks between Taliban and Afghan government representatives last month in Pakistan had bypassed Mr. Agha, the head of the negotiating team in Qatar. For Mr. Agha, whose family members are said to have fled Pakistan for Qatar after repeated harassment by the Pakistani security agencies, the talks in Pakistan derailed a process he had been building toward for years.
His office conducted shuttle diplomacy with delegations of influential Afghan politicians in Doha, Qatar’s capital; Oslo; and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In email exchanges with The New York Times as Taliban representatives sat down with the Afghan government in Pakistan last month, Mr. Agha’s office harshly denounced the talks, saying the process had been “hijacked” by Pakistan’s powerful military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. His aides characterized the Taliban officials who had participated as trying “to save their families and property in Pakistan.”
In his resignation letter, Mr. Agha said the Taliban’s agreement to negotiate through Pakistan had been crucial to the timing of leaking the news of Mullah Omar’s death.
“Efforts are underway regarding all concerned sides of Taliban to seize them in a trap,” he said.