Taliban leader Mansour was man of war, not peace talks

KABUL – Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansour, who according to U.S. officials was probably killed in a drone strike, took over as head of the insurgent movement last July following the revelation that the group's founder, Mullah Omar, had been dead for two years. He was initially thought to favor peace talks with the government, but after becoming leader he repeatedly refused to come to the negotiating table. For some Mansour was the obvious choice to succeed Mullah Omar, the one-eyed warrior-cleric who led the Taliban from its rise in the chaos of the Afghan civil war of the 1990s. Born in the same southern province, Kandahar, some time in the early 1960s, Mansour was part of the movement from the start and effectively in charge since 2013, according to Taliban sources. Mansour spent part of his life in Pakistan, like millions of Afghans who fled the Soviet occupation.