Taliban leadership struggle continues

Strategy Page:

There are some serious internal rifts in the Taliban, and also tensions between the Taliban and al Qaeda. At the center of it all is Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, who desperately wants to regain power in Afghanistan. This may be one reason why some Pakistani Taliban leaders have signed truces with the Pakistani government, so the movement can focus on Afghanistan. But al Qaeda has larger ambitions, and would like to leverage the Taliban's influence with the Pushtun tribes (on both sides of the border) to further the jihad in Pakistan.

There are other problems as well. Mullah Omar has "sacked" Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and then indicated that what he really did was just cut Mehsud loose. That's mainly because Mehsud is a powerful tribal leader, and no one in the region dares to defy him by accepting Omars appointment as new leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Apparently Omar does not have enough power among Mehsud's jihadis (core Taliban fighters) to actually remove him from command.

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Part of this escalating mess is a generational shift. Omar, and the other senior Taliban leadership, earned their reputations during the 1980s war with Russia. A new generation is more interested in the enormous wealth being generated by the Afghan heroin trade.

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One of the reasons why the leadership is in such a flux is that the Taliban are losing all their engagements in Afghanistan and in the course are losing many of their leaders. that is another reason why al Qaeda is refocusing its activities toward Pakistan. Al Qaeda lost in Iraq and is losing in Afghanistan, which makes Pakistan crucial to their survival. Al Qaeda is having to protect its rear and that is why Pakistan has become its central front. Recently it tried to supplement Taliban leadership in Afghanistan but that did not change the results.

The generational issues are another aspect of the failure of the old leadership in prosecuting the war.