KABUL: A senior Afghan Taliban figure said the death of their leader in a US drone strike last week could make the movement stronger and unify their ranks.
Mullah Mohammad Ghous, a foreign minister during the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule of Afghanistan, says Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s death clears the way for those who left after he became leader to return to the insurgency.
Pakistan's interior minister said on Tuesday he could not confirm that Mansour had been killed in a US strike, saying that the body recovered from near the Afghan border was charred beyond recognition.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters that DNA samples had been collected from the remains and would be tested against a relative who came forward to claim the body.
"The government of Pakistan cannot announce this without a scientific and legal basis," he said.
But still, Afghan Taliban are struggling to find a successor to Mansour. 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.
“Yakoub has refused to accept the role, saying he is too young for it,” a senior Taliban source in northwest Pakistan told AFP.
“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 factionalized Taliban into disarray nine months after he was elevated to the Taliban leadership following a bitter power struggle.
“The main challenge is to save the Taliban movement from being further divided,” another Taliban source told AFP, adding that supreme council members were constantly changing the venue of their meetings to avoid potential air strikes.
“It will take time to reach a consensus for the leadership position.”
Other candidates in the fray include Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s former deputy who is said to be close to the Pakistani military establishment.
Death of Taliban leader ‘could unify group’
Death of Taliban leader ‘could unify group’
Lawsuit challenges Trump administration’s ending of protections for Somalis
- The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
BOSTON: Immigrant rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop US President Donald Trump’s administration from next week ending legal protections that allow nearly 1,100 Somalis to live and work in the United States. The lawsuit, brought by four Somalis and two advocacy groups, challenges the US Department of Homeland Security’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants, whom Trump has derided in public remarks. Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in January announced that TPS for Somalis would end on March 17, arguing that Somalia’s conditions had improved, despite fighting continuing between Somali forces and Al-Shabab militants. The plaintiffs, who include the groups African Communities Together and Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, in the lawsuit filed in Boston federal court argue the move was procedurally flawed and driven by a discriminatory, predetermined agenda.
The lawsuit cites a series of statements Trump has made describing Somalis as “garbage” and “low IQ people” who “contribute nothing.”
The plaintiffs said the administration is ending TPS for Somalia and other countries due to unconstitutional bias against non-white immigrants, not based on objective assessments of country conditions.
“The termination of TPS for Somalia is racism masking as immigration policy,” Omar Farah, executive director at the legal group Muslim Advocates, said in a statement.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously said TPS was “never intended to be a de facto amnesty program.”
TPS is a form of humanitarian immigration protection that shields eligible migrants from deportation and allows them to work. Under Noem, DHS has moved to end TPS for a dozen countries, sparking legal challenges. The administration on Saturday announced plans to pursue an appeal at the US Supreme Court in order to end TPS for over 350,000 Haitians. It also wants the high court to allow it to end TPS for about 6,000 Syrians.
SOMALI COMMUNITY TARGETED
Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991, with its latest extension in 2024. About 1,082 Somalis currently hold TPS, and 1,383 more have pending applications, according to DHS. Somalis in Minnesota in recent months had become a target of Trump’s immigration crackdown, with officials pointing to a fraud scandal in which many people charged come from the state’s large Somali community. The Trump administration cited those fraud allegations as a basis for a months-long immigration enforcement surge in Democratic-led Minnesota, during which about 3,000 immigration agents were deployed, spurring protests and leading to the killing of two US citizens by federal agents.
In November, Trump announced he would end TPS for Somalis in Minnesota, and a month later said he wanted them sent “back to where they came from.”
The US Department of State advises against traveling to Somalia, citing crime and civil unrest among numerous factors.
