Taliban’s Rasool faction appoints Rauf as acting chief

Afghanistan Diary

Dadullah Front suffers division; Return to home of Afghan refugees

PESHAWAR: Mulla Abdur Rauf has been appointed the acting head of the Taliban splinter faction led by Mulla Mohammad Rasool.

Hailing from Kandahar province, Rauf is also a relative of Mulla Rasool, A statement from the group said the Shura members met somewhere in Afghanistan and selected Rauf to run its affairs until the release of Mulla Rasool, who was arrested by Pakistani authorities some months ago.

Though in custody, he has reportedly been allowed to talk to his family and Taliban aides on phone. However, it isn’t known when he would be freed as Taliban sources said past promises to release him weren’t fulfilled.

The small Mulla Rasool faction has also sidelined its deputy leader Mulla Abdul Mannan Niazi following reports that he had developed secret ties with the Afghan government and was getting assistance from it. Niazi has been very critical of the rival Taliban faction led by Mulla Haibatullah Akhundzada and has also criticized Pakistan for trying to use the Taliban to attain its objectives in Afghanistan.

The Mulla Rasool faction suffered setback recently when one of its leading military commanders, Mulla Baz Mohammad, joined the rival mainstream Taliban faction and pledged allegiance to Haibatullah.

Mulla Dadullah Front

Meanwhile, the Mulla Dadullah Front, another splinter Taliban faction, is also suffering division in its ranks. The faction was named after the late Taliban commander, Mulla Dadullah, who was killed fighting the Nato forces some years ago in Helmand province. Later, his younger brother Mansoor Dadullah took charge of the group and before long fell out with the Taliban leadership and began his solo flight from his bases in Zabul province. He was later killed fighting the 

Recently though, the elderly father of the Dadullah brothers announced an end to their feud with the mainstream Taliban faction and pledged allegiance to Mulla Haibatullah. He claimed all family had also joined the Haibatullah group. However, subsequently a son of late Mansoor Dadullah identified as Emdadullah Mansoor was made the new leader of the group. This meant the Mulla Dadullah Front too is facing differences in its ranks.

97th Independence Day

The Afghan government made efforts to raise patriotic sentiment on the occasion of the 97th Independence Day of Afghanistan on August 18. An incident in Kunar’s provincial capital, Asadabad, in which two persons were killed and several wounded marred the proceedings, but generally the day passed off peacefully. The Kunar incident was blamed on the Taliban as a rocket fired from the nearby mountains hit a building where Independence Day was being celebrated.

President Ashraf Ghani led the celebrations by laying floral wreath on the monument, Minar-i-Istiqlal, in Kabul to mark the day when Afghan King Amanullah Khan obtained complete freedom from the British.

Taliban also marked the day by felicitating the Afghan nation and issuing a statement urging the Afghan security forces to stop supporting the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan and instead join the fight to rid the country of the US-led occupying forces.

Return of Afghan refugees

Though Afghan refugees are coming home in higher numbers since the crackdown on non-registered refugees in Pakistan, the government still has no real plan to resettle and rehabilitate them. Authorities in Pakistan said about 30,000 Afghan refugees had left for Afghanistan in the past few months after realizing that the Pakistan government was determined this time to send back the refugees. Another factor was the doubling of the repatriation compensation package being paid by the UNHCR from $200 to $400 per person.

However, in Afghanistan the ministry of refugees and repatriation said the Afghan unity government has yet to accept its plan to provide land to the returning Afghan refugees for building houses. Also, land earmarked earlier in Mazar-i-Sharif for the repatriating Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan has allegedly been allotted to non-deserving people. President Ghani had ordered action against the culprits, but it seems his orders have yet to be implemented.