![]() Sources in Pakistan also assert that Mansoor is the driving force behind the nascent Afghan peace process.įILE - Sirajuddin Haqqani, far left, and Jalaluddin Haqqani, far right, then Taliban Army Supreme Commander, meet with reporters in Miram Shah, Waziristan on Aug. The top official in the Afghan government delegation involved in the peace talks with the Taliban, Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai, has said that the Taliban delegation at the first round of talks had the backing of Mansoor. ![]() Omar appointed Mansoor as his deputy and acting head of the shura or leadership council after his predecessor, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in Pakistan by the neighboring country’s spy agency in early 2010 with the help of the CIA.īaradar, a co-founder of the Afghan Taliban movement, was released in September of 2013 at the request of the then Kabul government. He briefly served as director general of the Kandahar airport and enjoyed the status of a minister for civil aviation till the end of the Taliban regime in late 2001.Īfter the Taliban was driven from Afghanistan and the group launched its counteroffensive, Mansoor was declared the group’s shadow governor of Kandahar and was a member of the Taliban’s leadership council. Mansoor joined the Taliban when the hardline Islamist movement, led by its founder Mullah Omar, emerged during the bloody power struggle among various Afghan factions following after the collapse of the Najibullah government in 1992.Īfghans with knowledge of Mansoor’s years with the Taliban describe him as a low-level administrator who mostly dealt with organizational matters and was not among the top 10 Taliban leaders at the time. Najibullah that was installed in Kabul after Moscow’s military departure in 1989. Later, he participated in the Islamist armed struggle against the Communist regime of Dr. The new Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, is said to be in his early 50s and hails from Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Islamist group.Ī member of the Ishaqzai tribe, Mansoor participated in the U.S.-backed Afghan insurgency, widely known as Afghan jihad, against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan between 19. FILE - Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, the newly named chief of the Taliban.
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