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               New Chief Is 'Ideal' Taliban Leader, Analyst Says

   by Ayesha Tanzeem

   The Taliban's new chief, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, has a
   reputation as a respected religious scholar with the title
   "sheikh-ul-hadith," a specialist in interpreting the words of Mohammad,
   the prophet of Islam.

   He enjoyed the esteem and trust of the Taliban's founding leader,
   Mullah Omar, who turned to him for a final say on important and
   potentially sensitive edicts and fatwas, according to Thomas Ruttig of
   the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

   Haibatullah also comes from a very strong tribal background. By
   electing him and his deputies, the Taliban has managed to accommodate
   all racial, tribal, ethnic and subtribal actors that needed to be
   pacified, said professor Adeel J. Khan, a regional security and defense
   analyst who teaches in European and Pakistan universities.

   "This is the [most] ideal set up that the Taliban could get," Khan
   said.

   Haibatullah's Noorzai tribe is one of the three big Durrani dynasty
   tribes. Founded in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Durrani empire once
   extended beyond present-day Afghanistan to northeastern Iran, eastern
   Turkmenistan, most of Pakistan and northwestern India.

   The other two Durrani tribes are Popalzai, the tribe of former Afghan
   President Hamid Karzai, and Ishaqzai, the tribe of former Taliban chief
   Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and his military rival, Mullah Rasool.

   Khan predicted that Haibatullah's election would take care of Rasool's
   faction.

   "In normal Pashtun circumstances, if Noorzais and Ishaqzais have joined
   each other, Rasool has to toe the line now or he will be eliminated,"
   he said.

   Nazar Mohammad Mutmaeen, a pro-Taliban analyst based in Kabul, said the
   Noorzai tribe also commands support within large swaths of the Taliban.
   At the start of the current war in 2001, he said, most members of the
   Noorzai tribe supported the Taliban while members of the Achakzai tribe
   supported the Afghan government.

   Deputies chosen

   The Taliban shura, or council, has also elected two deputies for
   Haibatullah. One of them, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was also a deputy to the
   recently killed Mansoor. He is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the
   founder of the Haqqani network, one of the most lethal groups in
   Afghanistan.

   The United States has offered a reward of $10 million for information
   leading to the capture of Sirajuddin Haqqani.

   The other deputy, Mullah Yaqoob, is a son of Mullah Omar and currently
   heads the Taliban military commission for 15 of Afghanistan's 34
   provinces.

   This setup means that "for all religious, political and diplomatic
   matters, Akhundzada (Haibatullah) will matter, but for the military
   matters it will be the Haqqanis who will call the shots," according to
   Khan.

   Although the Haqqanis will not have ultimate control, he said, they
   would operate through two Taliban commanders who lead important
   military units in the Taliban structure -- the Quetta military
   commission in the south and the Peshawar military commission in the
   north.

   The names of the commissions, Khan said, do not imply that the members
   live in these Pakistani cities. Rather, they are based on geographical
   affinity to the region under the control of the relevant commander.

   The Peshawar commander usually travels between Parwan, Kapisa and
   Nangarhar, while the Quetta commander is mostly in Nimroz, Zabul,
   Helmand and Kandahar.

   According to Khan, the Quetta commission, which controls the south and
   west of Afghanistan, has four additional zonal commanders, while the
   Peshawar commission has six additional zonal commanders controlling the
   north and east of the country. The zonal commanders are quite
   independent and belong to different tribes.

   ''Pakistan's influence wanes

   The new setup is likely to decrease Pakistan's influence on Taliban
   military and logistical affairs.

   "The leadership is divided among these three people who are dependent
   on 12 military commanders, so Pakistan now has to talk to some 15 or 16
   odd people coming from God knows how many tribes and how many ideas,"
   Khan said.

   While Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani has warned the Taliban to
   renounce violence or face the same fate as their late leader, chances
   of reduction in violence are now less than before.

   "Contrary to the public perception, Mansoor was never against talks. So
   this was a guy who was for talks, and we see his fate," Khan said,
   adding that it would now be difficult to persuade the Taliban to accept
   any talks.

   Plus, by eliminating the rifts that arose with the election of Mansoor,
   the Taliban may have also solidified its position on the battlefield.

   Haibatullah's background

   Haibatullah was born in the Sperwan area in the Panjwayi district of
   Kandahar province in Afghanistan, in 1966 or 1967. During the Soviet
   invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, he lived as a refugee in
   Pakistan's Balochistan province and studied in local madrassahs, or
   Islamic seminaries.

   He also fought against the Soviet forces and their Afghan partners.
   Taliban sources claim he mostly lived in Kandahar during that time and
   was part of the Hezb-e-Islami faction headed by jihadi commander Maulvi
   Khalis.

   When the Taliban came to power, he worked in its court system as one of
   the senior judges.

   After the United States and its allies attacked Afghanistan in 2001,
   Haibatullah escaped across the border to Baluchistan province in
   Pakistan.

   Taliban sources claim he played a central role in regrouping the
   Taliban after the group was ousted from power by U.S.-led forces.

   Once the Taliban regained some strength and established a shadow
   government against the regime in Kabul,  Haibatullah was given the
   responsibility of looking after the judicial affairs, according to
   Taliban sources. Other local sources say he ran a court based in
   Kuchlak, a town 20 kilometers from Quetta, the provincial capital of
   Baluchistan province. People brought their land disputes as well as any
   complaints against the Taliban to him.

   Roles in mosque, madrassah

   Four years ago, an Afghan Baloch in Kuchlak area called Mohammad Alam
   Mohammad Hassni, from the Mohammad Hassni tribe -- who was famous for
   his transport business and well-known locally as al-Haj, a title used
   for someone who has performed multiple Hajj or pilgrimages to Mecca --
   set up a mosque and a madrassah in the area.

   He made Haibatullah the imam of the mosque and put him in charge of the
   madrassah called Khairul Madaris, where he also lectured senior
   students. Many of those students became Taliban cadre.

   Gul Mohammad Kakar, a Kuchlak local, said the new Taliban chief was
   famous for his religious knowledge and oratory skills. When he spoke,
   Kakar said, people listened. He was also known for his good manners. He
   performed those duties until he was elected a deputy of late Taliban
   chief Mansoor in August 2015.

   Sources close to the Taliban claim that Haibatullah stayed in the area
   until an attack on Mansoor last December. After the attack, he left,
   and his whereabouts since then have been uncertain.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/new-chief-ideal-taliban-leader-analys
   t-contends/3346051.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/new-chief-ideal-taliban-leader-analyst-contends/3346051.html