Taliban commander dies in airstrike by US drones
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THE leader of the Afghan Taliban has been killed in a US airstrike on a remote border area just inside Pakistan, Afghanistan said yesterday.
The death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour could trigger a battle for succession and deepen fractures that emerged in the insurgent movement after the death of its founder Mullah Mohammad Omar was confirmed last year, more than two years after he died.
It is also believed the attack will likely dash any immediate prospect for peace talks.
Saturday’s strike, which US officials said was authorized by President Barack Obama and included multiple drones, showed the United States was prepared to go after the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, which the Western-backed government in Kabul has repeatedly accused of sheltering the insurgents.
It also underscored the belief among US commanders that under Mansour’s leadership, the Taliban has grown increasing close to militant groups like al-Qaida, posing a direct threat to US security.
The US has not confirmed Mansour’s death but Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan government’s chief executive, and the country’s top intelligence agency said he had been killed.
“Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour was killed in a drone strike. His car was attacked in Dahl Bandin,” Abdullah said in a post on Twitter, referring to a district in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province just over the border with Afghanistan.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said the US had conducted a precision airstrike that targeted Mansour “in a remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”
Mansour posed a “continuing, imminent threat” to US personnel and Afghans, Kerry told a news conference while on a visit to Myanmar.
“If people want to stand in the way of peace and continue to threaten and kill and blow people up, we have no recourse but to respond and I think we responded appropriately,” Kerry said.
Notorious network
The Taliban have made no official statement but two commanders close to Mansour denied he was dead.
With the report of Mansour’s death, attention has focused on his deputy Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of a notorious network blamed for most big suicide attacks in Kabul.
“Based purely on matters of hierarchy, he would be the favorite to succeed Mansour,” said Michael Kugelman, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Institute think-tank.
Haqqani, appointed as No. 2 after Mansour assumed control of the Taliban last year, has generally been seen as opposed to negotiations.
Efforts to broker talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have already stalled following a suicide attack in Kabul last month that killed 64 people and prompted President Ashraf Ghani to prioritize military operations over negotiations.
Ghani’s office said yesterday that Taliban members who wanted to end bloodshed should return from “alien soil” and join peace efforts.
Kerry said the leaders of both Pakistan and Afghanistan were notified of the Saturday airstrike but he declined to say if they were told before or after it had been carried out. He said he had spoken to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by phone.
Pakistan has in the past denounced US strikes on its soil, calling them a violation of sovereignty, but US officials have said Pakistan has approved some strikes, in particular on militants fighting the Pakistani state.
Pakistan, which has been trying to broker Afghan talks, was “seeking clarification” on the strike, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Drones targeted Mansour and another combatant in a vehicle in a remote area of Baluchistan, southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, a US official in Washington said.
A Pakistani official in the area said a car had been blown up and two unidentified people had been killed.
One of the Taliban commanders who dismissed the report said it had nevertheless spread alarm. “This rumor has created panic among our followers across Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.
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