It was never going to be easy for Mullah Akhtar Mansour to take over the leadership of the Taliban. Not only was he being asked to step into the shoes of the charismatic Mullah Omar described as “near mythical” by his followers but there is evidence to suggest that his shadowy predecessor died at least two years ago and his death was hushed up to avoid a power struggle developing within the Taliban. Add on the fact that there is intense international pressure on Mansour to deliver a workable peace process and it is clear that he will be hard-pushed to maintain solidarity within an organisation which has only had two leaders since it came into being in the 1990s.
As is the case with other figures in the upper echelons of the Taliban not much is known about Mansour other than that he was born and brought up in Kandahar province as a member of the Durrani line of the Pashtun tribe and is probably in his late forties. Like Mullah Omar he studied in the Darul Uloom Haqqani Madrasa on the outskirts of Peshawar in Pakistan and still retains close links with pro-Taliban groups within that country.
About five years ago Mansour came to the west’s attention when it was announced that he had been appointed deputy to Mullah Omar and much was made of his integrity and his organisational abilities. The few pictures believed to be of him show a thickset man with the dark beard and turban that are virtually the uniform for senior Taliban commanders. As more information became available it was noticeable that sources close to the Taliban started describing him as a “pragmatist” – shorthand for being a possible appeaser.
In that guise he opened peace feelers with the west and in 2013 he was responsible for the Taliban opening its first external affairs office in Doha in Qatar a step he described as being part of “a normalisation process”. Due to the secretive way in which contacts were established it was not always easy to gauge his intentions or even to establish his real identity. There was a moment of farce in 2010 when an Afghan man claiming to be Mansour turned out to be an imposter. After conducting talks with US and Afghan officials about creating a ceasefire he then disappeared into thin air taking with him a substantial amount of dollars.
This was an embarrassing setback for the US as it demonstrated the difficulties of dealing with the Taliban and underlined the bogus nature of many of those claiming to represent the organisation. The incident also added to the sense of mystery surrounding Mansour and helped to create a belief among his opponents and rivals that he could not possibly be as spiritual as Mullah Omar. That could well have been the case as in his early days in the Taliban regime he occupied the somewhat mundane position of minister in charge of civil aviation affairs, hardly the most onerous position in Kabul in the 1990s but times have changed. It was notable that the Taliban announcement also conferred on him the title “Amirul Momineen (emir of the faithful)”, by which Omar was known.
For whatever reason, Mansour remains a divisive figure with many believing that his appointment will cause a rift in the Taliban between those who want the armed struggle to continue and those who want to support a peace process. He has also caused upset in some quarters by criticising the ambitions of the Islamic State (ISIL) and claimed that the fight for a global caliphate should be carried under the banner of the Taliban and no other. This was a clear warning to young fighters who might have been considering leaving the Taliban and fighting under the black flag of ISIL. In any future power struggle his main rival could be Omar’s 26 year old son Yakub who was judged to be too young and inexperienced to take over from his father. Even so, he still enjoys the support of influential leaders such as Tayab Agha, the political head in Qatar, and Mullah Qaum Zakir a successful and respected military commander,
If the rumblings turn to violence it will help Mansour’s cause that one of his deputies will be Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of a notorious Afghan military group, the Haqqani Network, who has a US bounty worth $10m (£6.4m) on his head for his participation in cross-border attacks on US and coalition forces. Son of the equally feared Jalaluddin Haqqanni who allegedly died last year the network was the first group to declare jihad against the presence of Soviet forces in Afghanistan and Haqqani was an early and formative influence on the emergence of al-Qaeda. While this will give Mansour much-needed protection within Taliban ranks should the knives ever come out the connection will not work in his favour if he is determined to pursue a peace process which does not enjoy universal support.
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