Afghan Intelligence: Afghan Taliban Leader Killed in US Drone Strike
Ayaz Gul and Carla Babb
Voice of America
The Afghan intelligence agency NDS confirmed that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan near the Afghan border.
A brief NDS statement released Sunday on its official Twitter and Facebook accounts said, “Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was killed in the airstrike yesterday at 3:45 p.m. in Dalbandin, Baluchistan.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday during a visit to Myanmar that Mansoor was targeted because he posed "an imminent threat to U.S. personnel, Afghan civilians and Afghan security forces," and that Mansoor "was directly opposed to peace negotiations."
Meanwhile, doctors in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, have confirmed receiving two bodies from the remote border region, the scene of the U.S. strike.
Dr. Rashid Jamali, duty officer at the city’s Civil Hospital, told VOA the bodies were retrieved by locals in a border town before they were transported to Quetta.
Jamali said documents recovered identify the men as Mohammad Azam, who was a taxi driver, and Wali Mohammad, a passenger.
Witnesses said the taxi was attacked from the air Saturday afternoon and the victims were brought to the district hospital before they were transported to Quetta, the original destination of the vehicle.
Pakistani television station “92 News” released images of the destroyed car and the passport the slain passenger was carrying, which had Saudi and Iranian visas. The picture on the Pakistani passport resembles Mansoor, some Taliban sources confirmed to VOA.
However, spokespeople of the Taliban, who are usually available to media for comments, have not been accessible to confirm or deny the incident more than 24 hours after it happened.
Pakistan has also not yet formally commented on the drone attack.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's office in Kabul issued a statement Sunday, saying, “The government of Afghanistan is in the process of reviewing the final details of this operation concerning the fate of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and will publicly announce the results as soon as possible.”
It said the Taliban leader was "engaged in deception, concealment of facts, drug-smuggling and terrorism while intimidating, maiming and killing innocent Afghans."
Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on background said the strike was authorized by President Barack Obama.
Special Operations Forces
The official said several unmanned aircraft operated by U.S. special operations forces targeted a vehicle in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. An adult male who was traveling with Mansoor was also reported likely killed in the strike.
Depending an the actual location of the strike, it could be the first time U.S. drones are known to have targeted Taliban fighters inside Pakistan's Baluchistan province.
All other known drone strikes inside Pakistan have occurred in the country's federally administered tribal areas, a semiautonomous region along the Afghan border where Pakistan's military has battled militants for years.
It is also rare for U.S. Special Forces to carry out drone strikes inside Pakistan. The CIA is typically in charge of the covert strikes that target senior terrorist leaders in the country.
The elimination of Mansoor will deal a critical blow to the Taliban, which has struggled with internal divisions over its leadership since July 2015 when the insurgent group announced its founder and first leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had been dead for more than two years.
The United States has not designated the Afghan Taliban as a terrorist group.
U.S. policy in Afghanistan generally allows coalition aircraft to target enemy fighters only when they can be identified as al-Qaida or Islamic State group loyalists, or when militants are directly threatening NATO personnel.
Working Arrangement
Earlier this month, a senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan told reporters that there are signs that al-Qaida terrorists have been working more with the Taliban since Mullah Mansoor took charge.
Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said, however, U.S. forces "are not in -- necessarily in direct combat with the Taliban."
Cleveland said that the expectation is that Afghan government forces are the ones mainly engaging the Taliban, and U.S. forces are there to help them.
On Friday, David Petraeus, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and former head of the CIA, called for loosening restrictions on U.S. airstrikes against Afghan Taliban fighters.
In an essay published in The Wall Street Journal, Petraeus and his co-author, military analyst Michael O'Hanlon, said because of the Taliban's long ties with al-Qaida and the Haqqani network, its aims of overthrowing the Afghan government, and its continuing push to seize territory, the United States should rely more on air power to help defeat the group.