Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s death announced two years after the fact
Mullah Mohammad Omar, the secretive head of the Taliban and an al-Qaida ally who led a bloody insurgency against U.S.-led forces, eluded capture for more than a decade in spite of being one of the most-hunted fugitives on Earth.
On Wednesday, he was reported to have died two years ago in a Pakistani hospital, according to the Afghan intelligence agency. In Washington, the U.S. government said they considered the report credible, though it was not confirmed by the Taliban or Pakistan.
Even in possible death, the one-eyed cleric-warrior was shrouded in mystery.
He led a movement that swept over most of Afghanistan in the 1990s and became notorious for imposing what was perhaps the strictest regime of Islamic law in the world at the time. For his Afghan followers and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida militants, Mullah Omar held the supreme status of Commander of the Faithful. And yet only one known photograph of him exists.
Abdul Hassib Sediqi, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, said Mullah Omar died in a hospital in the Pakistani city of Karachi in April 2013. The Taliban leader’s exact date of birth is unknown, but he is believed to have been in his 50s.
“We confirm officially that he is dead,” Sediqi told The Associated Press. “He was very sick in a Karachi hospital and died suspiciously there.”
Sediqi did not elaborate, and it was not immediately clear why news of the death had been delayed until now. But the announcement came just two days before a key second round of peace talks were to be held between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Pakistan.
Mullah Omar’s sheltering of bin Laden and al-Qaida, in an alliance forged in the 1990s, brought the wrath of the United States down upon him after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Less than three months later, American troops backed by northern Afghan allies marched into Kandahar, the southern city that served as Taliban headquarters.
Mullah Omar escaped on a motorcycle and was never seen again.
The Taliban insurgency that ensued wrecked U.S. hopes of quickly establishing the authority of the new government in Kabul, led by Mullah Omar’s fellow Pashtun, Hamid Karzai.
With a US$10-million bounty on his head, Mullah Omar is believed to have spent most of his time in hiding in the border regions of Pakistan — nominally a U.S. ally, but also a longtime backer of the Taliban.