Afghanistan’s government has offered the new Taliban leader a choice: make peace or face the same fate as his predecessor, killed in a U.S. drone strike last week. But Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada is a hard-liner who has used his religious credentials to justify the Taliban insurgency that has killed or wounded tens of thousands of Afghan civilians as a “holy war” and his succession has inspired little hope for an end to the bloodshed.