THE drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansour gives rise to two observations. One Pakistan’s sovereignty was damaged by the drone attack. The second is that Mullah Mansour was not cooperating on the ill-conceived quadrilateral group peace talks though he had been promoted as new Taliban leader with Pakistan’s support because he was considered ‘ready for talks’. Hence patience with the Afghan Taliban — who were not in favour of peace talks in the first place — finally ran out.

The Taliban are an indigenous Afghan tribal construct where all constituent parts have equal rights in the decision-taking process. A leader can only lead if he recognises and accepts the spirit of the shura and leads accordingly. He cannot impose his opinion on the constituent parts of the organisation.

Thus Mullah Mansour recognised that the majority of the Taliban groups were against peace talks, and he had to accept this as the political line to follow in order to remain in power. There is no room for authoritarian leadership models in Afghan tribal society. Regardless of who is the next leader, he will have to follow the same line.

The murder of Mansour will be avenged and the shura will select a new leader which may take a while. The outcome is likely to be a more united Taliban in the on-going war against foreign occupation. Meanwhile, President Obama has again shown that he doesn’t understand much about how politics works in Afghanistan. If peace was his goal he has successfully shot it down.

Ali Ashraf Khan

Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2016