Head of Taleban's Qatar office quits as leadership rift deepens

Kabul - Tayeb Agha said consensus should have been sought from insurgent strongholds inside Afghanistan over the new leader's appointment.

The head of the Taleban's Qatar-based political office has stepped down even as Taleban urged followers to disregard "enemy propaganda" about internal fractures in their movement.
Tayeb Agha's resignation highlights growing discord over the movement's recent power transition.
Mullah Akhtar Mansour was announced as the new Taleban chief on Friday after the insurgents confirmed the death of Mullah Omar, who led the militant movement for some 20 years.
But splits immediately emerged between Mansour and rivals challenging his appointment, exposing the Taleban's biggest leadership crisis in recent years and one that raises the risk of a factional split.
Underscoring the deepening internal divisions, Tayeb Agha stepped down on Monday as head of the Taleban's political office, set up in Qatar in 2013 to facilitate peace talks.
"In order to live with a clear conscience and abide by the principles of Mullah Omar, I decided that my work as head of the political office has ended," Agha said in the statement published on a website regularly used by the Doha office and confirmed by a Taleban source.
"I will not be involved in any kind of (Taleban) statements... and will not support any side in the current internal disputes within the Taleban."
Agha added that consensus should have been sought from insurgent strongholds inside Afghanistan over the new leader's appointment.
Another statement on Tuesday, signed by spokesmen Zabihullah Mujahid and Qari Yusouf Ahmadi, called on supporters to "help write messages and letters on social media" to show a united front.
The Taleban source said Mansour's aides were trying to convince Agha to withdraw his resignation but his statement adds to a growing chorus of dissent in the movement over the increasingly bitter political transition.
"The death of Mullah Omar was kept secret for two years," Agha said. "I consider this a historical mistake."
The Taleban have not given details of when and where Omar died but the Afghan government said it happened in Karachi in April 2013.
The Taleban continued to release official statements in the name of Omar, who had not been seen in public since the Taleban were toppled from power in 2001, as recently as last month.
Many militants oppose what they see as Pakistan's attempt to force the Taleban into direct peace talks with the Afghan government.
Mansour and his two newly named deputies - influential religious leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Sirajuddin Haqqani - are all seen as close to the Pakistani military establishment, which has historically nurtured and supported the Taleban.
Many are also unhappy over the exclusion of the Qatar-based political office from the previous round of negotiations that took place in a hill station north of Islamabad on July 7.
The power struggle has cast a pall over the fragile peace process aimed at ending Afghanistan's long war, with the Taleban distancing itself from the second round of talks scheduled last Friday but cancelled after Omar's death.
"The death of Mullah Omar and rise of Mullah Mansour have served as a game changer for the Taleban," Haroon Mir, a Kabul-based political analyst, said.
"The Taleban began the peace talks from a strong and united position. Today, however, they are weakened, stressed, and increasingly fragmented."
But despite the open rifts, the Taleban have sought to present a unified front at a time when the Daesh group is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan.
Lately, Taliban fighters have been defecting to the Daesh group in northern Kunduz province, and the two rival militant groups have increasingly fought it out there. The Daesh, which already controls about one-third of Syria and Iraq, is thought to have a small but growing presence in Afghanistan.
The Kunduz governor's spokesman, Abdul Wadood Wahidi, said around 50 Taleban fighters in the province's Archi district joined the Daesh three days ago after being offered money. This set off fierce fighting between the rivals and the Taleban arrested the defectors, he said.
The incident, Wahidi said, "shows there is a fracturing among the Taleban ranks."
The Afghan government, meanwhile, banned any public mourning for Mullah Omar, saying late Monday that it would cause "anguish and humiliation" for those who have lost loved ones to the war with the Taliban.
A statement from the National Directorate of Security said public gatherings to commemorate Mullah Omar's death would be a "legitimate military target."
The militants released a video on their website showing a large crowd of supporters pledging allegiance to Mansour in an effort to bolster support for the new leader.
The video could not be independently verified by AFP.
Mansour on Saturday called for unity in the Taleban in his first audio message since becoming head of the group, in comments apparently aimed at staving off a splintering of the group.
 
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