A U.S. "unarmed aircraft" killed a top Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan on Saturday night, the U.S.-led international military coalition in Afghanistan said Sunday. The Taliban and Afghan government confirmed the death of the commander, Abdul Manan, the Taliban's shadow governor in Helmand province. His death is the biggest loss for the Taliban since a U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour in Pakistan in 2016, The Wall Street Journal says. Manan's death, followed Sunday by airstrikes on a Taliban training camp in Helmand that killed at least 29 people, coincided with the start of tentative peace talks with the Taliban launched in July.
Some experts on the Taliban and Afghanistan said the killing of Manan could actually further peace talks. As shadow governor of Helmand province and its lucrative drug trade, Manan's access to large amounts of cash gave him and his hardline views an independent power base within the Taliban, and a peace deal would have hurt the him financially. But the death of Mansour in 2016 stalled peace talks, and other experts told the Journal that the deaths of previous Taliban leaders have had little long-term effect on their insurgency or talks to end the 17-year-long war.
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