Will the ‘death’ of Mullah Omar alter anything?

Questions over peace talks with Afghanistan and leadership succession confuse matters

An Afghan soldier stands guard as part of heightened security following the news that Mullah Omar was dead. Jawad Jalali / EPA

What should be made of reports that Taliban leader Mullah Omar died more than two years ago? The new claim by Afghanistan's intelligence agency that the one-eyed militant died in a Pakistan hospital in April 2013 is just one of many reports of his demise since he went into hiding in 2001, but this one has been declared credible by the US.

The news emerged just as talks between the Taliban and Pakistan were supposed to begin. To confuse matters further, the Taliban office in Qatar maintained it alone has the authority to take part in discussions, but has denied any involvement with or intention to sit at the negotiating table. The talks have since been postponed due to a lack of clarity over who has the authority to discuss terms for the insurgents.

If the Taliban has been able to operate as a coherent organisation for the past two years, why should anything change now? But other analysts contend that it was Mullah Omar’s role as a spiritual leader for the insurgents that allowed it to maintain that coherence among the rank and file.

Mullah Mansour, the current Taliban deputy, was reported to have been appointed leader, although some analysts were expecting Omar’s son, Mohammad Yakoub, to seek the position. The conflicting messages being emitted could reflect a struggle over who is the true leader and spokesman.

Another question is which one of the Taliban’s constituencies is now most important. Although the group controls only four of Afghanistan’s 373 districts, its power stems from the broader support it engendered from ordinary Afghans, ranging from those who seek a stable and prosperous Afghanistan that is ruled on Islamic principles to those who seek for it to be a strict salafist state.

The arrival of ISIL in the region threatens this broad base of support. ISIL has drained Al Qaeda of support in other parts of the world by being both successful on the battlefield and uncompromising in its claim of being hardline Islamists. Leaving aside for the moment ISIL’s twisted and self-serving misinterpretation of the message of Islam, this same process is underway in Afghanistan.

Will the advance of ISIL in Afghanistan and Pakistan rob the Taliban of its broad opposition status? Whichever way the confusion over the talks pans out, these are the real questions to which answers are needed if progress is to be made.