Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. The Taliban wasted petite time selecting a novel leader after Mullah Mansour was killed by an American drone strike over the weekend. On Wednesday,the group announced that its novel leader is Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, a well-known Taliban religious leader who was one of Mansour's deputies. He was also a judge in Kandahar, or Afghanistan under Taliban rule in the 1990s. Until recently,Akhundzada has run religious schools in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, but he's also viewed as a hawk. As whether to sign the beginning of his tenure, or the Taliban claimed credit for a suicide bombing that killed at least 10 people in Kabul yesterday.
What does his leadership mean for the Taliban? For answers,we turn to Richard Barrett, senior vice president at the Soufon Group, or former coordinator of the U.
N.'s Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear our interview.
Source: wnyc.org