Taliban leader’s death knocks delicate Afghan peace process off-balance

By Xiao Bin Source:Global Times Published: 2015-8-3 21:08:02

On Wednesday, the Afghan government announced the death of the Afghan Taliban's elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. One day later, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid confirmed Omar had died of "sickness," and declared Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as Omar's successor.

As a result, the second round of the Afghan peace negotiation scheduled on Friday was postponed upon the request of Taliban leaders. The death of Omar has generated speculations about the trajectory of the situation in the war-torn country.

Some analysts believe the Taliban may dissolve due to internal divisions. Others think Omar's death is "a big blow to Al Qaeda" and "a win for ISIS."

All in all, Omar has left Afghanistan's political stage and a new era is being ushered in. But how will it affect the country's peace process? There are a few possibilities.

First, the Afghan government may gain an upper hand in peace negotiations. Since March 1996, Omar had been the highest leader of the Afghan Taliban and led the Taliban to confront NATO and the Afghan government.

For years, Omar had been the core of the Afghan Taliban and a key mover in the Afghan Taliban's negotiations with the government.

The Afghan Taliban is comprised of different armed factions in northern, northeastern and eastern areas. Omar's authority made it able to ease frictions among different factions and unite them to confront external threats.

However, without Omar, the Taliban may be divided. The Afghan government has the chance to gain support from the more moderate factions of the Taliban to add its advantage in the peace negotiations.

Yet the division of the Taliban may also add to the difficulties of peace negotiations. After the death of Omar, the primary task of the Taliban is to consolidate the status of the new leader.

Mansour, despite being Omar's assistant for years, will not find it easy to gain the same authority as the fallen leader any time soon.

In order to raise Mansour's authority, the Taliban leadership committee appointed Sirajuddin Haqqani, founder of the Haqqani Network, as Mansour's deputy. The Haqqani Network is considered the most lethal and powerful insurgent group in Afghanistan.

But for the Taliban, the real threat comes from internal divisions over ideas. The permeation of the ISIS mentality has dealt a heavy blow to the Taliban. ISIS enhanced its propaganda directed against the Taliban by comparing different ideas of Omar and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in order to win support from more Taliban sects. There have already been some sects and leaders who started to accept the ISIS way of thinking.

ISIS also carried out extreme actions to menace Taliban armed forces into accepting their ideas. In June, ISIS beheaded 10 Taliban members in Afghanistan's Nangarhar region. Mansour warned Baghdadi "against waging a parallel insurgency in Afghanistan."

Therefore, there is the possibility that internal frictions may emerge in the Taliban that can lead to chaos. Once the situation worsens, peace talks will inevitably be affected.

Finally, instability in Afghanistan is likely to intensify in the near term. After the death of Omar, the hardliners within the Taliban may create waves. They believe the withdrawal of the US and its allies is the result of their insisting on the "military struggle."

Based on this logic, the hardliners consistently initiated attacks in northern Afghanistan, which have led to thousands of casualties.

In the past, the moderate factions could keep the hardliners in check and balance by clinging to Omar. But before Mansour could establish his authority, the death of Omar may weaken moderate factions' ability to counter-balance hardliners, who may choose to gain political power through violent means.

Whether the peace process in Afghanistan, a country that has suffered hard from both war and poverty, can be dragged onto a positive course depends on international cooperation, the governance ability of the Kabul leadership and what internal consensus the Taliban can reach on this vital issue.

The author is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European & Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an adjunct researcher at the Research Center for Geopolitics of Central Asia of Xinjiang University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn



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