senior position in the Taliban movement. He has even offered the post of the Taliban military commission head to Yaqoob, who has yet to respond positively to it. The offer to Yaqoob could be made attractive by proposing to him to become one of his deputies.
Mansour has also received “baiyat” (pledge of loyalty) from ranking Taliban figures over the past two days at an undisclosed location to seal his appointment as the “ameer” (head) of the movement.
In a smart move earlier, he had appointed Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the powerful Haqqani Network, and a religious scholar Mulla Haibatullah Akhundzada as his two deputies. Haqqani would look after military matters and Akhundzada would oversee religious matters concerning the Taliban movement.
The two official Taliban spokesmen, Zabihullah Mujahid and Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, have also begun giving out news supportive of Mansour. This showed that Mansour was gradually consolidating his position on all fronts. Though his rival camp was also active as Yaqoob, Mulla Mohammad Hasan Rahmani, Mulla Mohammad Rasool and Mulla Abdul Razzaq held consultations with likeminded Taliban members to attract wider support, Mansour is at an advantageous position to outdo those challenging his elevation to the office of the “ameer” of Taliban movement.
Meanwhile, the Taliban leadership’s ingenuity in acting on behalf of Mulla Omar even after his death was highlighted in a media report on Friday. The Afghan Islamic Press in the report said the Taliban movement distributed six statements attributed to Mulla Omar after his death in April 2013. Most of the Mulla Omar statements were released on the eve of Eid in 2013, 2014 and 2015, but one issued on June 1, 2014 celebrated the release of five top Taliban commanders by the US from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, as part of a prisoners’ exchange deal mediated by the government of Qatar. The statement had termed the prisoners’ swap as a big victory for the Taliban.