Afghan Taliban close ranks around new leader

Afghanistan's Taliban are closing ranks around their new leader after months of infighting that followed the death of Mullah Mohammad Omar, which could allow the insurgents to speak with one voice in hoped-for peace talks but will also strengthen them on the battlefield.
The Afghan government's announcement last summer that Mullah Omar, the reclusive one-eyed founder of the group, had died two years earlier in Pakistan aggravated longtime rifts within the movement.
Many senior figures said his deputy-turned-successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, had deliberately misled them.
The upheaval led to the collapse of Pakistan-brokered face-to-face talks between Kabul and the Taliban after just one round, and clashes flared between Mansoor loyalists and a splinter group led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool, which declared him the leader of the Taliban in November.

But Abdul Rauf, a Taliban commander close to Rasool, said senior Taliban figures who had objected to the rapid and secretive succession are now reluctantly returning to the fold. "We all took a stand against Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, but now one by one we are joining with him without demanding any changes," he said.
Relatives of Mullah Omar, notably his brother Manan and son Yaqub, had objected to the selection of Mansoor, which was done by a small inner circle of senior Taliban leaders. But they were persuaded last year to drop their objections and publicly declared their loyalty to Mansoor.

Rauf said Abdul Qayum Zakir, a military commander sacked by Mansoor in 2014, and former Rasool loyalists Abdullah Jan and Niaz Mohammad, had also reconciled with Mansoor. Mullah Hassan Rahmani, who was governor of southern Kandahar province when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, issued a statement last month saying he too would support Mansoor.

The Taliban's former foreign minister, Mohammad Ghaws, said he hoped the united front would help future peace talks succeed. "I am not in favour of or against any faction," he said, but if Rasool had continued to oppose Mansoor and the majority allied with him it would have brought "no good to the Taliban or to Islam."

While Rasool has yet to reconcile, Mansoor had sent his representatives to meet with him in western Farah province, Ghaws said. "There is no religious reason for him (Rasool) not to come with the majority, and so I believe we will be fully united very soon."
The Taliban's growing unity - brokered by religious scholars within the movement - has raised hopes that the group can be brought back into peace talks to end 15 years of war.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China plan to hold a third round of talks tomorrow to lay the groundwork for the renewal of direct talks between Kabul and the Taliban.