Nisar questions claim Mansoor was opposed to talks

Nisar says Taliban chief backed Murree peace initiative; Naushki drone strike carried out from neighbouring country

ISLAMABAD: American and Afghan leaders have confirmed the death of the Afghan Taliban supremo in Saturday’s US drone strike deep inside Pakistan, but Islamabad insists it cannot confirm the man believed to be Mullah Akhtar Mansoor is actually him.

Not only that, the country’s security czar disclosed on Monday that the insurgents had almost agreed on declaring Kabul a ‘conflict-free zone’ in their first face-to-face meeting with Afghan officials in Murree last year. The Pakistan-brokered Murree peace initiative broke down in July after the two-year-old death of longtime Taliban leader Mullah Omar was leaked to the media.



“The second direct contact [between the Taliban and Afghan officials] was scheduled for July 31, but it was sabotaged at the eleventh hour by leaking the news of Mullah Omar’s death to the media,” Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the federal interior minister, told a news conference in Islamabad. He also hinted that the Taliban’s participation in the Murree process had full blessings of Mansoor.

US President Barack Obama, who confirmed Mansoor’s death on Sunday, claimed the Taliban chief had rejected efforts “to seriously engage in peace talks and end violence”.

Pakistani officials, however disagree. They say Mansoor wanted to consolidate his grip on the group before returning to the negotiating table.

Nisar also sought to quash the widespread impression that Pakistan controlled the Afghan Taliban. “Would he be travelling alone in a rented car, if he had official support in Pakistan,” he said. “They [Taliban] are men of free-will, still Pakistan managed to bring them to the negotiating table.” Pakistani officials say a quartet-backed fledgling peace process is all but dead because now the Taliban would not trust anyone.



A remotely piloted US aircraft targeted a car in the Kuchaki area of Naushki district, over 200 kilometres away from Quetta, on Saturday, killing the driver and another man who, US and Afghan officials claim, was Mullah Omar’s successor Mullah Mansoor.



But Interior Minister Nisar said the two bodies were charred beyond recognition. “Without credible evidence I cannot confirm Mullah Mansoor was killed in the US drone strike,” he added. “The driver’s body has been identified and subsequently handed over to heirs – but the second body has yet to be identified.”

Nisar said a blood relative of Mansoor has approached the Pakistan government seeking custody of the corpse. “Now, we have a source to match DNA of the second body,” he said, adding that identification of the body would be made public. A Pakistani passport and identity card were recovered from the wreckage of the car destroyed in the US drone strike. The documents name the holder as Muhammad Wali, s/o Shah Muhammad, a resident of Killa Abdullah district of Balochistan. The dead man had two wives, but there is no record of his children with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

Nisar said he had ordered an inquiry into who had verified the documents of Wali Muhammad for obtaining a Pakistani identity in 2001. “Investigations revealed that Uzair Ahmad, s/o Noor Ahmad Khan, who is Risaldar Major in the Balochistan Levies, and Mahboob Khan Norai, s/o Muhammad Rasool had attested his documents.”

The two men were subsequently arrested – but surprisingly they denied attesting the identity forms of Wali Muhammad.

The investigations also revealed that a Naib Tehsildar who had verified Wali Muahammad’s identity card has died. “According to the 2005 record, Killa Abdullah’s Tehsildar Rafique Tareen, who is currently OSD, verified the identity card-related documents of Wali Muhammad which were co-verified by DCO Hafiz Tahir. I have directed the FIA to arrest the Tehsildar and conduct an inquiry against the DCO,” he said. Later in the evening Tehsildar Tareen was arrested in Quetta.



US Secretary of State John Kerry said after the drone strike that Pakistan was notified about the attack. But Interior Minister Nisar said the Americans shared the information with Pakistan’s prime minister and army chief seven hours after the strike.

Pakistan has already recorded a diplomatic protest with the United States by summoning its envoy in Islamabad. Nisar said the US drone attack was not only a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty but also of UN Charter and other international laws. He revealed that no American drone entered into Pakistan’s airspace rather the car was targeted from another country.

He said a meeting of the National Security Council would be convened when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is currently in London, returns to Pakistan to work out a clear point of view on the issue. Despite Islamabad’s protest, President Obama warned on Sunday that American forces would continue to go after threats on Pakistani soil. “We will work on shared objectives with Pakistan, where terrorists that threaten all our nations must be denied safe haven.”

The interior minister said it was very strange of the Obama administration to say that anyone who was threat to the US would be targeted. “This kind of approach violates international laws and would create the law of jungle,” he said, adding the Afghan soil was explicitly used by terrorists against Pakistan, but Islamabad never violated the sovereignty of Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2016.