The death of Afghan Taliban's chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a US drone strike inside Pakistan will not only make the peace process more difficult but may also add to the mistrust between Pakistan and United States, officials and experts believe.
Officials privy to the ongoing peace process under the four-nation Quadrilateral Co-ordination Group (QCG) consisting of Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States and China, maintained that this could be a serious blow to the peace process if the death of Mullah Mansour was confirmed.
Pakistani authorities are still investigating whether the man killed in the drone strike was in fact Mullah Mansour as claimed by the US or he was Mohammad Wali which Pakistani national identity card and passport recovered from the scene showed.
It would be difficult for the peace process to progress in the near future, as efforts to convince the Taliban to come to the table for talks with the Afghan government3 will be further complicated if the Taliban leader was indeed killed, sources said.
They based this assessment due to the difficulties with respect to initiating the peace process after the news of Afghan Taliban founding chief Mullah Omar's death was made public days before the scheduled meeting between the Taliban and Afghan government in August 2015. Pakistan has not yet officially confirmed the death of Mullah Mansour in the drone strike, as, according to the Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria, the identity of the person killed in the attack namely Mohammad Wali son of Shah Mohammad carrying a Pakistani passport and an I.D. card, resident of Qilla Abdullah, was being verified on the basis of evidence found at the site of the incident and other relevant information.
In the QCG process, Pakistan has been advocating peace negotiations as the only option for a political settlement in Afghanistan. Endorsing this, the recently-held fifth meeting of the QCG, also warned the culprits of the April 19 terrorist act in Kabul to beware of the consequences of their actions."After the killing of Mullah Mansour and that too inside Pakistani territory the future of the peace process is not only bleak but it has also led to Pakistan being in deep trouble", said Lieutenant General (Retd) Talat Masood, a senior analyst.
He said the United States probably was privy to the Taliban's movement inside Pakistan but the latest drone strike and death of the top Taliban leader on Pakistani soil badly exposed our policies before the whole world. Talking about Pakistan-US relations, he said that there was already a deep mistrust in the relationship and after this action, the trust deficit would further enhance.