Akhtar Mansour

2007 and later Quetta Shura and Taliban insurgency

According to leaked material, Mansur attended a meeting dated 24 August 2007 with other senior Taliban officials, so that he and those others present might discuss and organize a potential suicide bombing and bombing campaign upon the areas of Kandahar and the Helmand Province, and also particularly focused on killing Ahmad Wali Karzai and Hamid Karzai.

2013 – June 2015 Wahid Muzhda is quoted as saying of Mansur:

A fact which is corroborated by an additional report, which states the office was in Doha, Qatar.

According to a 2014 report, Mansur, together with Abdul Qayum Zakir and Gul Agha Ishakzai, were involved in fighting over control of a major opium-producing area (land of Maiwand District) against a co-founder of the Taliban movement, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

An article published on 12 March 2015 said Mansur and Abdul Qayum Zakir, who were long-term rivals, had met together in order to find an agreement and at the meeting had slaughtered sheep for a feast. The article stated Mansur was in favour of initiating so-called talks with Afghani government officials at the time, but was unable to make any progress in his own direction due to opposition from Zakir to the opening of a dialogue with the Afghan government.

According to one report, dated 17 March 2015, Mansur was at that time deputy amir al-mu'minin, military leader and head of the shura of Quetta.

Mansur wrote a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on behalf of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, released on 16 June 2015, to express his concerns of the potential for a negative influence of ISIS upon Afghan Talibans' progress, since ISIS activities might pose a risk of causing "multiplicity" within forces of the jihad of Afghanistan. The letter, appealing to the unity of "religious brotherhood", requests al-Baghdadi might extend "goodwill" to the Taliban, which "doesn't want to see interference in its affairs". The letter was written in Pashto and released within the Voice of Jihad site.

Additionally, the letter shows Mansur considered the late (Sheikhs) Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi and Ibn al-Khattab, to be heroes. In addition the letter expresses recognition of the support to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, of "famous religious scholars", of these he provides (Sheikh) Hamud bin Uqla al Shuaybi as an example.

Internal dissent Taliban splinter group Fidai Mahaz claimed Mohammed Omar was assassinated in a coup led by Akhtar Mansur and Gul Agha. Mansoor Dadullah, a Taliban commander and the brother of former senior commander Dadullah, also claimed that Omar had been assassinated. Mohammad Yaqoob, Omar's eldest son, denied that his father had been killed, insisting that he died of natural causes. A Taliban communique published 30 July 2015 said that Omar had died in hospital.

Mullah Mansur is said to have "closely kept the secret that Mullah Omar had been dead" despite the leaking of a report of Omar's death in 2013.

Features of Mansur's leadership Mansur announced one of his deputies to be Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Mansur is thought to have had dealings of some kind with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence.

Sometime in August, Mansur sent a delegation to meetings with officials of the Afghan government, which was subsequently "hailed as a breakthrough".

A Security Council report, dated to the immediate September after Mansur's inauguration, showed he, as the new leader, was unwilling to engage in negotiations for the purposes of assuring peace.

Communications According to a report published on 5 November 2015, Mansur stated his opinion that modern education was a "necessity".

Mansur released his first communication as leader of the Taliban on 1 August 2015 as part of a 30-minute (or 33-minute, according to Al Jazeera) video release:

Mansur stated his position with regards to peace talks; the suggestion of his being willing to engage in peace talks as "enemy propaganda".

The website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan published a biography of Mansur when he became Emir.

Death

On 21 May 2016, Mansur was killed in a U.S. military drone strike on the N-40 National Highway in Pakistan near Ahmad Wal, not far from the Pakistan–Afghanistan border; Mansur had crossed earlier that day from Iran into Pakistan through the Taftan, Balochistan border crossing, some away from the spot where he was killed. Mansur was being driven to Quetta, after a long stay in Iran, reportedly to both visit family and seek medical treatment. against the Toyota Corolla, which was struck by two Hellfire missiles launched by Reaper drones.

The following day, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States had "conducted a precision airstrike that targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansour in a remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border" against Mansur that had likely killed him, and stated that Mansur "posed a continuing, imminent threat" to U.S. personnel and Afghans. Kerry said that the leaders of both Pakistan and Afghanistan were made aware of the airstrike but did not comment on the timing of the notifications, which he said included a telephone call from him to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Obama stated afterwards that he had hoped Mansur's death would lead to the Taliban joining a peace process. The death of Mansur was also later officially confirmed separately by the Afghan government and members of the Taliban. The strike that killed Mansur was a rare instance of a U.S. drone strike in Balochistan; U.S. strikes in Pakistan were more generally limited to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Two senior members of the Taliban said that Pakistani authorities had delivered Mansur's badly burned body to the Taliban for its burial in Quetta, Balochistan. Pakistani officials, however, denied handing over a body.

Succession and impact Mansur was succeeded as Taliban leader by Hibatullah Akhundzada.

Some U.S. officials had been divided over Mansur's intentions. Some believed that Mansur could have brought the Taliban to the negotiating table, potentially speeding up the reconciliation process; others, by contrast, "were highly skeptical of Mansour's commitment to talks," noting that Mansur had a long history of authorizing suicide attacks, including in the weeks before the drone strike (such as the April 2016 Kabul attack, which killed more than 60 people), and that even as Mansur was agreeing to secret direct peace negotiations, he had rejected international peace efforts. According to the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, U.S. officials stated that Mullah Mansur's death was "unavoidable" due to the then Emir being unwilling to engage in peace talks.

Timeline The following is a list of reported information: Born sometime during either 1960, 1963, 1965 or 1968. Appointed to the Quetta Shura sometime during 2007.