Death of Mullah Omar Leaves Taliban at Crossroads

The Taliban, the most powerful Afghan insurgent faction, on July 30, announced the death of their long-time leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, from an unspecified illness in a press statement released via their website (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, July 30). The statement provided few concrete details on the date or location of Mullah Omar's death, prompting a variety of largely unfounded speculation, although it also claimed that "in the previous fourteen years never for a single day did he leave Afghanistan to visit Pakistan or another country." It also paid tribute to his memory, saying his Taliban government (in power from 1996-2001) had "portrayed to the world the true meaning of Islamic sovereignty," and said that "our duty to steer this Islamic Emirate, left behind to us as a trust, in the same direction as he had done."

Such platitudes aside, the Taliban's leadership have since moved to avoid any impression that Mullah Omar's death has led to any splits within the movement as well as any suggestions that their complex alliance with a wide range of other insurgent factions has been weakened, or that their military campaign is in anyway tailing off. The following day, the Taliban announced a new leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, a founding member and long-standing senior member of the group; a statement said that he was a "reliable and suitable person for shouldering huge tasks," and that he had been "the intimate and trusted associate of late Mullah Muhammad Omar" (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, July 31). The theme of continuation was further communicated by another press release quoting Jalaluddin Haqqani, the veteran militant leader of one of Afghanistan's most potent jihadist factions, as saying that "my particular recommendation to all members of the Islamic Emirate is to maintain their internal unity and discipline" (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, August 2). Underlying the Taliban's carefully choreographed press releases and heavy emphasis on unity and continuity is likely to be the group's fear that Mullah Omar's death may accentuate centrifugal trends within the movement, which is already internally divided over whether and how to engage in negotiations with the Afghan government and also on relations with Pakistan. Indeed, only a few days after the Taliban publicized news of Omar's death, Tayyab Agha, the head of the Taliban's Qatar-based political office, claimed that Omar had died two years previously; he also said that the Taliban had been mistaken to cover this up and also to appoint Mansour as successor (Daily Times [Lahore], August 4). Tayyab Agha's very public departure may partly reflect personal rivalries with Mansour, or else indicate more ideological divisions over the movement's future strategy; either way, it suggests that Mansour is unlikely to enjoy the same levels of deference and respect that Taliban members previously accorded Mullah Omar.

At the same time, however, attacks by the Taliban have continued, notably with the group carrying out a large truck-bomb attack on a government special forces base in Pol-e-Alam, the capital of Logar Province, on August 6, killing at least three soldiers (RFE/RL, August 6). In another notable development, supporters of Mullah Omar, including a range of high-level former militants and Taliban officials and also Soviet-era mujahideen fighters, held a public meeting to pray for him in Kabul (Afghan Zaria, August 2). The event is a reminder that, on one hand, the Taliban threat to the Afghan government is not only military in nature but also a political one, and also that, even to his detractors and opponents, Mullah Omar was an iconic figure in modern Afghan history whose successors may struggle to control the fractious, politically divided and geographically fragmented movement that he bequeathed them.