New Taliban leader sends mixed signals on his goals
Mullah renews call for jihad, but does not rule out possibility of peace talks
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN— Two days after acknowledging that its supreme commander, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was dead, the Taliban released an audio recording said to be from the group’s new leader.
In it, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour declared that “the jihad will continue until there is an Islamic system” in Afghanistan, and he called on the Taliban to remain unified just as they had when Omar was at the helm.
He called on the insurgents to pray for “the strength and courage to follow the path of Mullah Omar,” founding leader of the Taliban who had not been seen since late 2001.
Omar’s fate had been unknown until last week, when the Afghan government announced that he had died more than two years ago in a Pakistani hospital. A day later, the Taliban confirmed his death.
Mansour seemed to dismiss the prospect of peace talks as enemy propaganda, despite the fact that he was said to have approved a historic faceto-face meeting in early July between delegations from the Taliban and the Afghan government. That meeting, arranged by Pakistan, was seen as a potential first step toward negotiations between the two sides. After Omar’s death was announced, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the next round of talks, scheduled for Friday, had been postponed at the Taliban’s request.
But in the recording, broadcast Saturday, Mansour said claims of any “peace process” or negotiations were merely “the words of the enemies.”
Still, the Afghan government and western diplomats will probably find some cause for hope in what Mansour said, and did not say.
His address did not explicitly rule out future contact for the government. And he defined the goal of the insurgency as “an Islamic system” in Kabul, rather than explicitly speaking in terms of the Taliban reconquering Afghanistan.