Taliban founder’s hideout next to US Afghan base

ISLAMABAD: Taliban founder Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of United States bases in Afghanistan for years, according to a new book that highlights embarrassing failures of American intelligence.

Washington believed the oneeyed, fugitive leader had fled to Pakistan, but the new biography says Omar was, in fact, living just three miles from a major US base in his home province of Zabul before his death in 2013.

Searching for an Enemy , by Dutch journalist Bette Dam, reveals the Taliban chief lived as a hermit, refusing visits from his family and filling notebooks with jottings in an imaginary language.

Dam spent five years writing the book and interviewed Jabbar Omari, Omar’s bodyguard.

According to the book, Omar listened to the BBC’s Pashto-language news in the evenings, but even when he learned about the death of Osama bin Laden, he rarely commented on developments in the outside world.

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which led to the fall of the Taliban, the US put a US$10 million (RM41 million) bounty on Omar and he went into hiding in a small compound in the regional capital Qalat.

The host family were not told of the identity of their guest, but US forces had twice almost found him. At one point, a US patrol approached as Omar and Omari were in the courtyard. Alarmed, the two men ducked behind a woodpile, but the soldiers passed without entering.

A second time, US troops even searched the house but did not uncover the concealed entrance to his secret room.

Omar decided to move when the US started building Forward Operating Base Lagman in 2004, just a few hundred metres from his hideout. He moved to a second building but soon afterwards, the Pentagon constructed Forward Operating Base Wolverine — home to 1,000 US troops — close by.

Despite his terror at being caught, he dared not move again, rarely going outside and often hiding in tunnels when US planes flew over. According to Dam, Omar would often only talk to his guard and cook, and used an old Nokia mobile phone, without a SIM card, to record himself chanting verses from the Quran.