A senior Taliban official named Habibur Rahman Mansur was killed on Thursday during a battle between Taliban forces and a “dissident commander” in northern Afghanistan.
He was the second Taliban official to be killed in Badakhshan in less than a month.
Mansur was the mayor of Badakhshan’s capital city of Faizabad. He was reportedly killed by a bomb on Thursday while driving through the city. The Taliban Interior Ministry provided few other details of the attack.
Badakhshan is home to a “dissident commander” named Juma Khan Fateh, who has been urging his supporters to rise up against the Taliban. On Wednesday, he distributed an audio message that said: “Convey my greetings to the people. Let the people start the war.”
Fateh’s message said that fighting between his forces and the Taliban was already underway in several districts of Badakhshan.
Local sources told Afghanistan International on Friday that the Taliban attacked first, launching a “large-scale operation” against positions held by Fateh’s fighters on Tuesday, including helicopter support and reinforcements sent from Kabul.
Taliban forces were also said to be rounding up and arresting local residents who were suspected of supporting Fateh.
Another report from Afghanistan International said there was considerable unrest among senior Taliban leaders over the campaign against Fateh, with some criticism of deputy intelligence chief Tajmir Jawad for acting too aggressively against the dissident commander and touching off an uprising in Badakhshan.
Jawad sent about 300 troops from the Badri 313, the Taliban’s “special forces,” into Badakhshan to disarm Fateh – and Fateh’s fighters sent quite a few of them home in body bags by taking advantage of their superior knowledge of the local terrain and support from local residents. Fateh was also able to bring down at least one of the Taliban’s helicopters.
Sources told Afghanistan International that, despite these misgivings, the Taliban leadership has reached a consensus that Fateh must be captured or killed, because anything less would make the Taliban look weak – and more uprisings could be brewing in remote areas across Afghanistan.
Fateh is a former Taliban commander who resigned from his position as deputy governor of Zabul province in July. He claimed he had “no disagreements with the Islamic Emirate,” the Taliban’s name for its junta government, but he complained that “some individuals exploited the situation unfolding in Badakhshan,” and there were “language barriers and lack of understanding” keeping him from doing his job as deputy governor.
The “situation” in Badakhshan, according to Fateh, was that too many of its fighters were being left out of jobs in the Taliban government and the problems of the impoverished province were being ignored in Kabul.
This might be because Badakhshan borders Tajikistan and many of the province’s residents are ethnic Tajiks, including Fateh himself. Most senior Taliban officials are drawn from the Pashtun ethnic group. The Taliban regime and Tajikistan are not overly fond of each other at the moment.
On Friday, Tajikistan filed a formal diplomatic protest with the Taliban over violations of its territorial integrity during the factional clashes in Badakhshan. The complaint said Taliban aircraft violated Tajikistan’s airspace during the fighting, and stray bullets from the conflict killed a young woman in Tajikistan’s border province of Darvoz.
Fateh is also said to be testy about accusations that he is profiting from illegal gold mines in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban arrested several of Fateh’s allies and family members when it cracked down on gold mining in May.
On July 28, another Taliban official named Zabihullah Amiri was killed by two motorcycle-riding gunmen while on his way to Badakhshan’s capital of Faizabad. The Taliban said its forces killed one of the gunmen and captured the other, but to date there has been no official identification of the killers or explanation for why they killed Amiri, the Taliban’s director of information and culture.