Death of “Mullah Mansour” to change nothing in battlefields: NATO

NATO- Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan said that it is not expected that with the Taliban’s new leadership any dramatically change will be seen in battlefields in Afghanistan.

General Charles Cleveland, spokesman for NATO and U.S forces in Afghanistan has warned that if the new Taliban leadership be the same as previous one, they also would face the same fate.

“Mansour was a serious threat to US, coalition and Afghan forces and an obstacle for peace in Afghansitan. The new Taliban leader can be a historical man or also can be the same as the previous Taliban leaders,” General Charles Cleveland said.

Mansoor’s successor will face the same challenge, with the marked difference that he will be incessantly pursued by US special forces, which have more or less reassumed the lead military role in Afghanistan this year.

The new Taliban leader, too, will have to establish leadership credibility by leading a successful year of fighting, but will struggle even more than Mansoor to prevent the inevitable fragmentation of the Taliban.

In the meantime, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has said that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was eliminated since he was blocking Afghan peace talks.

“Under Mullah Mansour’s leadership, the Taliban have continued to conduct brutal attacks across Afghanistan, leading to the death and suffering of countless Afghan civilians and security forces, and posing a major daily threat to the forces of the US and other NATO Allies and partners,” NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.

“Mullah Mansour stood in the way of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, blocking the prospects for progress towards peace and reconciliation for Afghanistan,” he further stated.

“The Government of Afghanistan and the US Government have confirmed that an operation by US forces resulted in the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour,” he said.

“NATO and our partners remain fully committed to our mission to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces, so that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism,” the NATO chief said.

Mansour had publicly taken control of the Taliban last August, when the group announced that its charismatic founder, Mullah Omar, died in secret in April 2013.

The revelation led to an internal struggle which resulted in some groups unhappy with Mansour’s elevation breaking off from main Taliban. Notably, Omar is thought to have died of natural causes despite a more than decade-long U.S. effort to find and kill him.