Mystery over Taliban chief’s fate continues

Taliban receiving aid from Pak: Former top Pentagon official

Confusion surrounded the fate of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was shot in a firefight during an argument with commanders of the divided movement, after an Afghan government spokesman tweeted on Friday that he has died.

The Islamist group has vehemently rejected claims by militant sources and in-telligence officials that Ma-nsour was critically wounded in a shootout at an insurgent gathering near the Pakistani city of Quetta.

A government spokesman on Friday went further, claiming that Mansour did not survive the clash, wh-ich threatens to derail a fresh regional push to jum-p-start Taliban peace talks. “Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour died of injuries,” Sultan Faizi, the spokesman for the Afghan first vice-president, wrote on Twitter without citing any evidence.

Taliban spokesman Zabih-ullah Mujahid rejected the claim as “baseless”, saying that Mansour was alive and well. The group kept longtime chief Mullah Omar’s death secret for two years.

The reported clash, which exposes dissent within the Taliban’s top ranks, comes just four months after Mansour was appointed leader in an acrimonious leadership succession.

If confirmed, his death could intensify the power struggle within the fractious group and increase the risk of internecine clashes.

“If Mansour has died, the Taliban will do everything in its power to keep that a secret for as long as possible,” Kabul-based military analyst Atiqullah Amarkh-il said. “Mansour’s death could spark new infighting over the Taliban leadership,” he said.

The mystery surrounding the fate of Mansour further deepened after the Taliban released an audio clip Thursday purportedly from the militant at whose house the firefight is said to have occurred. A man claiming to be Abdullah Sarhadi, a commander in Mansour’s group and former Guantan-amo Bay detainee, staunchly rejected the reports as “enemy propaganda”.

Meanwhile, a former top Pentagon official has told legislators that Taliban which has launched a series of terror attacks in Afghanistan has been receiving financing and logistic infrastructure support from Pakistan,

“The large amounts of we-apons and explosives used by the Taliban throughout Afghanistan showed they had the financing and logistics infrastructure to move this military equipment from their depots and supply chains in Pakistan to wherever such supplies were needed in Afghanis-tan,” said David S. Sedney, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defence for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia from 2009-2013.

“Beyond equipment from Pakistani sources, fighters from Pakistan were widely used in some of the Taliban offensives,” Mr Sedney told legislators during a Congressional hearing.