ISLAMABAD - The Taliban’s new chief, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, has a reputation as a respected religious scholar with the title "sheikh-ul-hadith," a specialist in interpreting the words of Mohammad, the prophet of Islam.
He enjoyed the esteem and trust of the Taliban’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, who turned to him for a final say on important and potentially sensitive edicts and fatwas, according to Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
Haibatullah also comes from a very strong tribal background. By electing him and his deputies, the Taliban has managed to accommodate all racial, tribal, ethnic and subtribal actors that needed to be pacified, said professor Adeel J. Khan, a regional security and defense analyst who teaches in European and Pakistan universities.
“This is the [most] ideal set up that the Taliban could get,” Khan said.
Haibatullah's Noorzai tribe is one of the three big Durrani dynasty tribes. Founded in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Durrani empire once extended beyond present-day Afghanistan to northeastern Iran, eastern Turkmenistan, most of Pakistan and northwestern India.
The other two Durrani tribes are Popalzai, the tribe of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and Ishaqzai, the tribe of former Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and his military rival, Mullah Rasool.
Khan predicted that Haibatullah's election would take care of Rasool’s faction.
“In normal Pashtun circumstances, if Noorzais and Ishaqzais have joined each other, Rasool has to toe the line now or he will be eliminated,” he said.
Nazar Mohammad Mutmaeen, a pro-Taliban analyst based in Kabul, said the Noorzai tribe also commands support within large swaths of the Taliban. At the start of the current war in 2001, he said, most members of the Noorzai tribe supported the Taliban while members of the Achakzai tribe supported the Afghan government.
The Taliban shura, or council, has also elected two deputies for Haibatullah. One of them, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was also a deputy to the recently killed Mansoor. He is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of the Haqqani network, one of the most lethal groups in Afghanistan.
The United States has offered a reward of $10 million for information leading to the capture of Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The other deputy, Mullah Yaqoob, is a son of Mullah Omar and currently heads the Taliban military commission for 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
This setup means that “for all religious, political and diplomatic matters, Akhundzada (Haibatullah) will matter, but for the military matters it will be the Haqqanis who will call the shots,” according to Khan.
Although the Haqqanis will not have ultimate control, he said, they would operate through two Taliban commanders who lead important military units in the Taliban structure — the Quetta military commission in the south and the Peshawar military commission in the north.
The names of the commissions, Khan said, do not imply that the members live in these Pakistani cities. Rather, they are based on geographical affinity to the region under the control of the relevant commander.
The Peshawar commander usually travels between Parwan, Kapisa and Nangarhar, while the Quetta commander is mostly in Nimroz, Zabul, Helmand and Kandahar.
According to Khan, the Quetta commission, which controls the south and west of Afghanistan, has four additional zonal commanders, while the Peshawar commission has six additional zonal commanders controlling the north and east of the country. The zonal commanders are quite independent and belong to different tribes.
The new setup is likely to decrease Pakistan’s influence on Taliban military and logistical affairs.
“The leadership is divided among these three people who are dependent on 12 military commanders, so Pakistan now has to talk to some 15 or 16 odd people coming from God knows how many tribes and how many ideas,” Khan said.
While Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has warned the Taliban to renounce violence or face the same fate as their late leader, chances of reduction in violence are now less than before.
“Contrary to the public perception, Mansoor was never against talks. So this was a guy who was for talks, and we see his fate,” Khan said, adding that it would now be difficult to persuade the Taliban to accept any talks.
Plus, by eliminating the rifts that arose with the election of Mansoor, the Taliban may have also solidified its position on the battlefield.