The Taliban fighters on the ground, who carry out the organization’s attacks in Afghanistan, have yet to make their voices heard in the intensifying succession struggle after Mullah Omar’s death. PHOTOGRAPH BY RAHMAT GUL / AP

On Thursday, the Taliban released a statement confirming that Mullah Mohammad Omar—whom the group called “Amir al-Mu’minin,” Commander of the Faithful—had died on April 23, 2013, and proclaimed three days of mourning. Though the statement claimed Omar had died in Southern Afghanistan, the Afghan National Directorate of Security, the first source of the news, stuck to its report that he had died in a hospital in Karachi. Two weeks earlier, on Eid al-Fitr, the Taliban had published a statement said to be from Mullah Omar, which some interpreted to endorse ongoing talks between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. (I wrote about the talks and Mullah Omar’s statement earlier this week.)

The same day that the news of Omar’s death broke, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that, at the request of the Taliban, the second round of peace talks, which was scheduled to be held in Pakistan on Friday, had been postponed. Instead, members of the Taliban leadership council met in Quetta, Pakistan, to elect a successor. After an apparently contentious discussion, the spokesman announced that Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, Omar’s deputy since 2010, had been elected to replace him. His two deputies would be Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a cleric who has been responsible for issuing fatwas providing religious justification for military and terrorist operations, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who commanded operations, including spectacular attacks in Kabul, on behalf of his ailing father, Jalaluddin. His father’s death over a year before was disclosed the day after Sirajuddin was appointed. Jalaluddin Haqqani was one of ten mujahideen commanders who, during the anti-Soviet war, received assistance directly from the C.I.A. rather than via Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or I.S.I. Like Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin is a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a bounty of ten million dollars on offer for him from the Rewards for Justice program.

There are reports of opposition to Mansur, countered by denials. Veteran Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, who years ago was able to interview Mullah Omar, reported that five council members—including several who were close enough to the I.S.I. to be tapped to represent the Taliban at a meeting with the Afghan government in Urumqi, China, in May—had called him to express their dissatisfaction. According to these reports, Abdul Qayum Zakir, the former head of the military commission, allied with Mullah Omar’s family to support the late leader’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Yaqub Hotak, as his successor. When their efforts failed, members of Omar’s family reportedly walked out of the meeting, claiming that it was not representative. In response the Taliban spokesmen posted and distributed a “letter of clarification,” allegedly from Zakir. Zakir wrote that he had heard senior Taliban—two of them from among the Urumqi participants—saying on the radio and in “gatherings” that he was in conflict with Mansur. This charge was “absolutely baseless,” Zakir said, and he promised to “be one of the most obedient individuals” in the Taliban. Reports of dissension continued to filter out nonetheless.

It may be tempting to portray Mansur as in favor of talks, and Zakir and Mullah Omar’s family as “hard-liners” opposed to talks, but the lines are not so clear. Especially with the appointment of Mawlawi Haibatullah, Mansur seems to be strengthening his Ishaqzai tribe’s hold over the leadership rather than maintaining a careful tribal balance. Afghanistan’s history with the I.S.I. inevitably leads some to attribute differences between Zakir and Mansur to an effort by Pakistan to pressure Mansur, but a senior Pakistani official e-mailed to say, “Our main effort now is to prevent fragmentation That is lose-lose for everyone.” The Taliban Web site claimed that Mansur received visiting delegations, whose members pledged bay’at (religiously mandated allegiance) to him.

The Taliban did not make analysis of the situation any easier when, without comment or explanation, they removed Mullah Omar’s Eid statement from their Web site, on Thursday. They were presumably embarrassed to feature a statement attributed to a dead man as their most authoritative policy guidance, but they gave no indication of whether the guidance was still in effect. That statement had provided the most elaborate Islamic justification yet for a negotiated solution to the conflict, but stopped short of endorsing the July 7th meeting between Taliban leaders and an Afghan government delegation, which had been orchestrated by Pakistan. Instead, it reasserted that only the Doha-based Taliban Political Office, which did not participate in the meeting, had authorization for talks.

On July 9th, the Taliban announced that the political office, which has so far not participated in direct talks with the Afghan government, had been granted “full capacity and agency powers” over the negotiations, meaning that decision-making powers had been transferred from Quetta, where Taliban leaders were subject to Pakistani pressure, to Doha, where they are not. All the statements about the leading role of the political office remained on the Taliban Web site as of Friday, but the office seemed unsure what to do. It tweeted that it, like everyone else, had been kept in the dark about Omar’s death, and claimed that the death had been kept secret due to a fatwa by learned clerics that revealing the death could harm the jihad.

The Pakistani pressure on the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan government through a process in which Pakistan has a say will continue, as will differences among the Taliban on how to respond. Mansur authorized Taliban leaders with strong ties to the I.S.I. to participate in the July 7th meeting, while simultaneously permitting his official spokesman and Web site to issue statements undermining the meeting’s legitimacy. Now Mansur’s decisions, unlike those in Omar’s name, are unlikely to be met with unanimous consent, especially if they are seen as being made under pressure from Pakistan.

The political office, which derived much of its authority from its close ties to Mullah Omar (its head, Tayyib Agha, is rumored to be the late leader’s son-in-law) might be orphaned. It has been under Mansur’s leadership, however, that Taliban spokesmen have stated that the political office is the only address for talks. If the office seizes its new autonomy to engage directly with the Afghan government, and the government accepts the offer rather then relying entirely on Pakistan, the office could be the government’s interlocutor in an Afghan-led effort. Any settlement will still need to safeguard Pakistan’s interests, but China’s involvement, as in the Urumqi meeting, may accomplish that more deftly than meeting under the gaze of I.S.I. generals.

The fighters on the ground have yet to make their voices heard. Will they accept Mansur, or will they split into factions aligned with different members of the leadership? Will they continue to receive logistical and material support from the leadership and from I.S.I., both of which may also be divided? It seems unlikely that many fighters would abandon the Taliban for the Islamic State, whose religious and political views are anathema to Afghans. But nearly four decades of war have revolutionized the society in many ways. There is a new generation in Kabul, created by education, freedom, and Internet access. Next there may be a new generation of Taliban.