Taliban meet to pick Mansour successor

Senior Afghan Taliban figures were meeting on Monday to agree on a successor to Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the leader of the militant movement who US President Barack Obama confirmed had been killed in an American airstrike at the weekend.

The Taliban have so far made no official statement on the fate of Mansour. But senior members have confirmed that their main shura, or leadership council, has been meeting to discuss the succession in a bid to prevent factional splits.

Mr Obama, on a three-day visit to Vietnam, reiterated support for the Western-backed government in Kabul and Afghan security forces, and called on the Taliban to join stalled peace talks. US officials held back from confirming that the Taliban leader had been killed. The Pakistani authorities have said the drone strike was a violation of the country’s sovereignty, but reaction from Islamabad has otherwise been relatively muted and a number of questions remain over what exactly happened.

A Pakistani passport in the name of Wali Muhammad, which Pakistani authorities said contained a visa for Iran, was recovered near the scene of the attack and is believed to have belonged to Mansour.

But it is unclear what he may have been doing in Iran and why he was apparently travelling in Pakistan without a security detail. A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry was quoted on state media denying that such an individual had crossed the border from Iran to Pakistan at the time in question. Calling the death “an important milestone,” Mr Obama said.

However, he stressed that the operation against Mansour did not represent a shift in US strategy in Afghanistan or a return to active engagement in fighting, following the end of the international coalition’s main combat mission in 2014.

The Taliban, which have previously rejected overtures to join talks with President Ashraf Ghani’s government, have been pushing Afghan security forces hard since the launch of their spring offensive in April, but the attack on Mansour is likely to disrupt operations, at least temporarily. Although some individual Talib-an members have been quoted in media reports saying that Mansour was killed, the group’s leadership, keenly aware of the need to limit splits, has not issued its own confirmation. One senior member of the shura, which is based in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, said that the choice for the next leader appeared to be shaping around Mansour’s deputy, Sira-juddin Haqqani, or a member of the family of Mullah Omar, such as his son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob.

Haqqani, leader of an affiliated network blamed for a series of high-profile suicide attacks in Kabul, had the backing of Pakistan, while Yaqoob had support among members of the Afghan Taliban, the shura member said.

“We prefer someone from Omar’s family to put an end to all internal problems,” he said.