Mullah Omar death, Islamic State growth shake Afghanistan peace hopes

The Taliban confirmed Thursday that longtime leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died and named his second in command as its leader, amid U.S. fears that its ally in Afghanistan is facing a rising challenge from another source: the Islamic State.

The two events could deal a fresh blow to a hoped-for political settlement for Afghanistan’s long civil war. Pakistani officials said Thursday that a planned second round of peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban had been postponed at the request of the new Taliban leadership.

The rising threat from the brutal Islamic State jihadi movement, detailed in a report Thursday from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, represents a major complication in the Afghan conflict.

In his quarterly report, Special Inspector General John Sopko said even Taliban representatives acknowledged the Islamic State’s “growing prominence in Afghanistan” during informal talks in May with Afghan government officials in Qatar.

The Islamic State’s move “is emblematic of a larger problem in Afghanistan of fractured insurgencies and an influx of foreign fighters with disparate goals,” Mr. Sopko said. “These numerous groups and fighters not only affect stability and security, but may also strain any future peace processes with the Taliban, as there is increasingly no single entity with which to negotiate.” In February, Pentagon officials characterized the Islamic State’s expansion into Afghanistan as “relatively small” but said it was a concern as the U.S. continued to draw down troops in the country.

Mullah Omar, the legendary one-eyed militant leader known around the world for harboring Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda during the years leading up to 9/11, had not been seen in public since 2001, when he fled across the border into Pakistan as U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan. But his death, and a potential struggle for power within the Islamist movement, make a murky situation even messier.

Members of the group initially denied claims a day earlier by the Afghan government’s main intelligence agency that Mullah Omar died in a Pakistani hospital in 2013. The Taliban now say the mullah is indeed dead but that he had suffered “a kind of sickness and over the last two weeks” and then died of the illness, a Taliban spokesman told the Reuters news service.

The Taliban Shura, or Supreme Council, announced that it had tapped Mullah Akhtar Mansoor — widely believed to be Mullah Omar’s deputy since 2012 — to be its leader.

It was not immediately clear whether Mullah Mansoor will have the power to bring the group together behind the peace talks with Afghanistan. Some reports on Thursday said midlevel Taliban commanders had favored Mullah Omar’s son, Yaqoob, to take over as leader.

Peace talks struggle

The peace talks, meanwhile, have struggled to gain momentum despite an aggressive push for reconciliation by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who came to power in Kabul last year.

The process has the blessing of the Obama administration as well as China, which shares a border with Pakistan and has invested increasingly in Pakistan and Afghanistan during recent years.

But Pakistan, whose intelligence services have long been seen to carry influence with the Taliban, is acting as the lead mediator. Syed Tariq Fatemi, a top Pakistani diplomat and special assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has said the talks began picking up speed in early July.

At the State Department on Thursday, deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters that Mullah Omar’s death presents “a moment of opportunity” and that department officials “encourage the Taliban to use this time to make genuine peace with the Afghan government.”

But regional Taliban commanders have been openly split in recent months on whether to continue the war or negotiate, and their division can be tied to multiple factors.

Taliban commanders are said to be divided over the far more radical Islamic State movement and whether to ally with the group or block its spread to Afghanistan. At the same time, a network of Taliban militias is trying to expand its own offensive in Afghanistan, and some commanders are unlikely to abandon their success in favor of negotiating with the Ghani government.

Taliban forces overran several Afghan military and police installations, as well as the district center in the Now Zad area of Afghanistan’s Helmand province Wednesday — the latest in a series defeats for Mr. Ghani’s government.

The Long War Journal noted in a report Thursday that Now Zad was the scene of heavy fighting between the Taliban and British and then U.S. Marines from 2007 to 2010.

“More than 900 U.S. and British troops and 150 Afghan soldiers” drove the Taliban from the district, the report said, noting that since last summer, the militants have waged an offensive in Helmand that has stretched Afghan security forces thin.

Mr. Sopko’s survey offered a mixed verdict on the performance of Afghan forces halfway through their first fighting season without major U.S. combat support.

The Afghans “managed to hold all provincial capitals but took increased casualties and found themselves stretched thin.”

“Meanwhile, the Taliban is increasingly fractured, with some commanders claiming allegiance to the Islamic State,” the report said.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.