Akhundzada new Taliban leader

The Afghan Taliban confirmed on Wednesday that their leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US drone strike last week and that they have appointed a successor — a scholar who is unlikely to back a peace process with Kabul.

The announcement came as a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying court employees in the Afghan capital, killing at least 11 people, an official said. The Taliban promptly claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a statement sent to the media, the Taliban said their new leader is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, one of Mansour’s two deputies. 
The insurgent group said he was chosen at a meeting of Taliban leaders, which is believed to have taken place in Pakistan, but offered no other details.
Akhundzada vowed there would be no return to peace talks with the government. “No, no we will not come to any type of peace talks,” he said in the recording provided by a Taliban spokesman.
Akhundzada is a religious scholar who served as the Taliban’s chief justice before his appointment as a deputy to Mansour. 
His views are regarded as hawkish, and he could be expected to continue in the footsteps of Mansour, at least in the early days of his leadership.
A former foreign minister under the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Ghous, told The Associated Press that the choice of Akhundzada was “a very wise decision.” Akhundzada was well respected among Taliban of all ranks, and could be a unifying force for the fractured movement, Ghous said.
But hopes that the new leader would be a unifying figure dimmed within hours of the announcement Wednesday, with some dissident Taliban figures rejecting Akhundzada as leader.
A breakaway Taliban faction led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool, which has for months battled Mansour’s men for control of drug smuggling routes in the south, said it would not accept the new leader for the same reason it rejected Mansour — Akhundzada was chosen by the same small clique of leaders rather than by the wide rank and file.
“We will not accept him as a new leader until and unless all religious scholars and tribal elders sit together and appoint new leader,” said the faction’s spokesman, Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, speaking of Akhundzada.
However, President Ashraf Ghani’s office said the appointment brought the insurgents “yet another opportunity to end and renounce violence, lay down their arms, and resume a normal and peaceful life.”

Source : Arab News