Taliban replaces leader killed in U.S. strike
Selection announced same day group kills 10 court employees
A little-known extremist cleric is selected as the new Afghan Taliban leader, just days after a U.S. drone strike killed his predecessor.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Four days after their leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike, the Taliban broke their silence Wednesday to announce that a lesser-known deputy, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, would take over and continue the group’s war against the Afghan government.
Akhundzada, who is thought to be in his 50s, is seen within the group as carrying deep religious credentials, and he served as a judicial leader during the days of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. But in the discussions leading up to his selection, Taliban commanders described him as a respected elder who was guiding the selection process, not as a front-runner himself.
The two men seen as the chief rivals for the leadership — Sirajuddin Haqqani, the insurgency’s operations leader; and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoub, the young son of the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar — were named as deputies on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Taliban’s core leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan.
In the statement, the council appeared to fend off the idea that any shift on entering peace talks might be coming, calling on the Taliban to unite behind Akhundzada and continue to fight.
The announcement was also the group’s first public confirmation that their leader for the past year, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baluchistan province, Pakistan, on Saturday. The Taliban’s spokesmen, who publish regular updates from battlefields across Afghanistan, had remained silent since the strike, as the movement’s leaders convened in Quetta to discuss his burial, as well as his successor.
Taliban commanders reached by phone said one of the group’s first meetings in Quetta was at the home of Akhundzada, who was said to be guiding discussions that were focusing more centrally on whether Haqqani or Yaqoub would rise to lead the insurgency. Over the past year, Haqqani had increasingly been running the day-to-day war for the Taliban as Mansour was occupied with a campaign of quashing internal dissent and with travel abroad.
Many of the movement’s leaders had pushed for a relatively obscure figure to succeed Mansour — to avoid a divisive personality and for purposes of enhanced security, keeping in mind that Omar’s reclusive ways long protected him and even concealed his death for years. It appeared Wednesday that such criteria had served Akhundzada well.
“One of the reasons that the Taliban chose Akhundzada as leader is that as a religious scholar, he can reunite different factions of the Taliban and prevent disintegration,” said Habibullah Fawzi, a former Taliban diplomat.
Along with the announcement on Wednesday came the Taliban’s latest attack on the outskirts of Kabul, targeting a van that was taking employees of an appellate court to neighboring Wardak province. The Taliban had vowed to take aim at government employees, particularly those in the judicial system, after six of their prisoners in Kabul were hanged recently, having been convicted on terrorism charges.
Najibullah Danish, a deputy spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said 10 people had been killed in the attack and four others wounded.