The Afghan Taliban are struggling to find a successor to slain chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, militant sources said on Tuesday, with one saying the two main contenders had backed out of the leadership race. Mullah Yakoub, the Taliban founder’s son, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, an implacable foe of US forces, were seen as the two frontrunners for the job after Mansour was killed Saturday in a rare American drone strike deep inside Pakistan.
“Yakoub has refused to accept the role, saying he is too young for it,” a senior Taliban source in northwest Pakistan said.
“Mansour’s deputy and operational head of the Haqqani network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has also refused due to personal reasons.” That development will complicate the job of the Taliban’s supreme council, which has been holding emergency meetings since Sunday at an undisclosed location in Pakistan to find a unifying figure for the leadership post.
The insurgents have yet to officially confirm the death of Mansour, which has thrown the deeply factionalised Taliban into disarray nine months after he was elevated to the Taliban leadership following a bitter power struggle.