THE circumstances of Mullah Omar’s death may be an ongoing mystery, but other events on the Afghan Taliban front are already eclipsing the rather disturbing questions raised by the contradictory news of the circumstances surrounding Omar’s death.

The Taliban have a new leader and two new deputy leaders and at least for now, the new leadership is trying to project a sense of unity and continuity. But whether those efforts will produce the results that Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour and his Haqqani-affiliated deputies, Haibatullah Akhunzada and Sirajuddin Haqqani, want is far from a settled matter.

In the weeks and months ahead, the field commanders and other strands of leadership within the Taliban shura will surely be heard from — and only then will it be clear if Mansour and his faction can maintain unity.

Already, though, there are troubling signs for the future of talks. Mansour has long been rumoured as being on relatively good terms with the Pakistani establishment, while the close relationship between the Haqqani network and Pakistan is an open secret.

Under Mullah Omar the Afghan Taliban had managed to maintain a sense of independence while simultaneously keeping the lines of communication with Pakistan open, a delicate balancing act that credibly allowed both sides to claim that theirs was no master-stooge relationship.

Now, with a seemingly much more Pak-aligned leadership — at least prima facie and at the moment — of the Afghan Taliban, how will that impact the support for talks inside the Afghan state and across the Taliban spectrum?

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has made it clear from the beginning of his term that he believed an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process could only materialise if Afghanistan and Pakistan improve the bilateral relationship.

But within the national unity government generally and within the Afghan security establishment in particular, there remains a great deal of mistrust and suspicion of Pakistan. Will President Ghani find himself under further pressure to reject the idea of talks and a peaceful solution?

Similarly, it is relatively clear now that there are several factions within the Afghan Taliban, even if they have long downplayed their differences to keep up the impression of a cohesive, and winning, Taliban.

If there were no factionalism, no one within the Taliban would have thought to try and hide the news of Mullah Omar’s death.

Will Mullah Mansour really be able to rally all factions behind him, especially when it is not yet known to what extent external powers have manipulated their favourites into place and created new frictions?

Worryingly, the lessons of the post-Najibullah period appear to have not been learned and Afghanistan may be more on a knife edge today than it has been in over two decades.

Warlords fighting each other may pale in comparison to Afghan Taliban turning on each other.