Taliban's new chief appeals for unity

He says waging jihad duty of all

KABUL -- In his first public remarks as leader of the Taliban, newly elected chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor urged those within the organization to settle their differences while continuing the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The war should continue until a "pure Islamic regime is built in Afghanistan" and reports on peace talks are "enemies' propaganda," he said in an audio message sent by email Saturday by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Enemies are endeavoring to "fracture and undermine the Taliban's jihad and empower themselves," he said.

The 30-minute speech could not be independently verified.

The comments were made as Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani's administration had said face-to-face talks with Taliban members in Pakistan in early July ended with optimism. The next round of discussions about a possible cease-fire was scheduled for Friday, but was postponed at the request of the Taliban, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

"We must be united, otherwise our enemies will win in our separation," Mansoor said. "Jihad is all our responsibility to carry out. We should remove our differences."

Mansoor's broadcast comes less than a week after the Afghan government announced the 2013 death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Omar's fate had been unknown until the government said he had died more than two years ago in a Pakistani hospital. A day later, the Taliban confirmed that Omar had died, but said little about the timing and claimed that he had never left Afghanistan, which he governed from 1996 to 2001.

Mansoor, Omar's deputy, was elected successor.

"We have to continue our jihad, we shouldn't be suspicious of each other. We should accept each other. Whatever happens must comply with Shariah law, whether that be jihad, or talks, or an invitation to either. Our decisions all must be based on Shariah law," he said in the recording.

Omar, the one-eyed, secretive head of the Taliban who hosted Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had not been seen in public since fleeing over the border into Pakistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban from power.

Under Mansoor's shadow leadership, the Taliban has participated in a series of indirect meetings with government representatives. But the Taliban have simultaneously intensified attacks on Afghan security forces, expanding the group's footprint into the previously peaceful northern provinces after NATO and U.S. troops ended their combat mission and handed over security to Afghan forces at the end of last year.

The position of the Afghan government was unclear, as Ghani -- who has made peace a priority of his administration -- is in Germany for medical treatment.

Mansoor seemed to dismiss the prospect of peace talks as enemy propaganda, despite the fact that he was said to have approved the face-to-face meeting in early July. That meeting, arranged by Pakistan, was seen as a potential first step toward negotiations between the two sides.

But in the recording, which was released Saturday, Mansoor said claims of any "peace process" or negotiations were merely "the words of the enemies."

His address did not explicitly rule out future contact for the government. And he defined the goal of the insurgency as "an Islamic system" in Kabul, rather than explicitly speaking in terms of the Taliban reconquering Afghanistan.

The speech, according to Mujahid, was made to a special gathering of Taliban leaders, scholars and clerics. Mujahid said the meeting occurred the same day that Mansoor was selected to replace Omar and that several people in attendance made an oath of allegiance to Mansoor.

The selection of Mansoor, who has been the insurgency's de facto leader for several years, occurred quickly given the Taliban's byzantine command structure across numerous power centers in several Pakistani cities.

Mansoor's selection appears to have the backing of a broad array of Taliban leaders. They include his onetime rival, a top Taliban military commander, as well as the hard-line Haqqani wing, which is now well represented at the top of the Taliban command structure.

A few dissident voices have emerged to claim that Mansoor's selection was the work of a small faction of his supporters and that a far larger gathering of Taliban leaders is necessary to select Omar's successor.

Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, who was a provincial governor in the north and west of Afghanistan during the Taliban era, said Saturday that "the great mujahedeen, clerics, fighting commanders who have been part of the Islamic emirate for 20 years were all excluded from the succession meeting."

Niazi added that Omar's family, particularly his brother and son, was "not happy" with the appointment." Niazi, who does not have a current position in the Taliban leadership, has emerged as a spokesman for those opposing Mansoor's selection.

If Mansoor fails to appease his fighters and field commanders, the ultimate beneficiary could be the Islamic State. The rival Islamic extremist group, which already controls about a third of Syria and Iraq with affiliates in Egypt and Libya, has established a small foothold in Afghanistan and is actively recruiting disillusioned Taliban fighters, according to Afghan government and U.S. military officials.

Before his appointment, Mansoor had been directing Taliban operations in Afghanistan against U.S.-led coalition troops since 2001, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad, a senior Taliban commander in Afghanistan, said by phone Thursday. He also played a central role in appointing commanders and shadow governors in the war-torn country, Mohammad said.

Mansoor was born in 1960 in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, where Omar would found the Taliban more than 30 years later. Mansoor developed his relationship with Pakistani intelligence services during the 1980s while fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and served as minister of aviation from 1996 to 2001.

In a separate statement Saturday, the Taliban rebutted media reports that the leader of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, had died in eastern Afghanistan a year ago.

"These claims have no basis," the statement said. It said the leader of one of the country's most brutal insurgent groups, based in Pakistan's tribal belt with links to al-Qaida, "has been blessed with good health for a long time now and has no troubles currently."

The Haqqani network has been blamed for some of the most high-profile terrorist attacks in Kabul in recent years.

Like Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani has been reported dead on a number of occasions, but the reports have not been independently verified. His son, Sirajuddin, was elected as the Taliban's deputy to Mansoor.

Meanwhile, Afghan officials said Saturday that Taliban gunmen had surrounded a police station in southern Uruzgan province and were holding 70 police officers hostage. The head of the police in Khas Uruzgan district said five police officers had been killed and four wounded in fighting so far.

"If we don't get support then all 70 police will be either dead or captured," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Eltaf Najafizada of Bloomberg News; by Lynne O'Donnell and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press; and by Joseph Goldstein, Fazal Muzhary and Taimoor Shah of The New York Times.

A Section on 08/02/2015

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