PESHAWAR: The ban­ned Pakistani militant group, Jamaatul Ahrar, has named a new chief to lead the outfit, prompting speculation about the fate of its founder-in-chief, Omar Khalid Khurasani.

Sources said the group named Dost Muhammad, alias Asad Afridi, a Zakha­khel Afridi, as its new chief after a shura meeting. Afridi joined Ahrar, now based in Afghanistan, in 2014.

This has come at the heels of reports that Khurasani, whose real name was Abdul Wali, had been seriously wounded in a recent US drone strike in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. Foreign wire services quoted Ahrar spokesman Asad Mansoor as saying the group’s emir had died on Wednesday evening.

But a senior security official said Khurasani had been ill for some time and incapacitated, warranting a successor to lead the group.

“There are conflicting reports about his injury and subsequent death, but there is nothing that suggests that he is dead,” he said.

Another security official maintained that Khurasani was alive.

“He is incapacitated and he knows that he is on top of the get-list and, therefore, his death provides him and his group with a cover story to hide away,” the official said.

Pakistani officials say insist that as far as they are concerned the Ahrar chief is alive unless they see clear evidence to the contrary.

“Had we had any evidence, we would have officially announced it,” he said.

Khurasani catapulted to the limelight in 2007 after seizing control of the shrine of a famous anti-colonialist fighter from his native Mohmand tribal region, Haji Turangzai and named it after Islamabad’s Lal Masjid.

His group later joined the umbrella organisation of Pakistani militant groups, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, but he left it after developing differences over succession in the aftermath of death of TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud in a drone strike in North Waziristan in November 2013.

Khurasani moved to Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province after the military launched an operation in Mohmand. His group, largely comprising fighters from his own Mohmand tribe, has been blamed for many cases of bombings, targeted killings and extortions.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2017