CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohmmad Omar is a shadow even among own people

In early 2002, as local and American forces closed in on his southern Afghanistan hideout, the Taliban’s supreme leader reportedly hopped onto a motorcycle and buzzed away to safety.

Mullah Mohmmad Omar was always a reclusive figure, even during his brutal, iron-fisted rule over the country, but since his escape 11 years ago, he has all but vanished.

Now, as the Taliban launches an historic attempt to negotiate an end to the Afghan conflict, even some within the insurgency are questioning whether the one-eyed emir is still truly in charge — or even alive.

For the Taliban’s official organization, the intriguing question, “Where is Mullah Omar?”, is a non-issue.

Both Zabihullah Mujahid, its spokesman, and a member of the governing Grand Shura, or council, in Quetta, Pakistan, told the

this week Mullah Omar is alive, healthy and actually living in Afghanistan, where the U.S. still has 66,000 troops — and a US$10-million bounty on his head.

Not only that, he is overseeing the office in Doha, Qatar, recently opened by the insurgents to spearhead peace negotiations, they said.

“He is for sure in Afghanistan but we cannot disclose his whereabouts due to security reasons,” said Mr. Mujahid. “The leadership of the Taliban supreme council doesn’t allow him to appear in public or speak to the media, as his life is in danger.”

The Shura member, who asked not to be named, said the Taliban leader is in “constant contact” with council members but only joins meetings for urgent business. Otherwise, he communicates by recording messages on cassette tapes.

In contrast to Osama bin Laden’s periodic release of video messages, though, none of those voice recordings have been made public. And official assurances fail to assuage some commanders in the Taliban network, who have brazenly challenged Omar’s directives recently, according to a media report.

Several have ignored orders changing their roles in the insurgency, seeing the edicts as attempts to usurp Mullah Omar’s name in support of personal ambitions, Ron Moreau, a veteran correspondent in the region, reported on the Daily Beast website.

“To save the Taliban, the Shura has to produce Mullah Omar, if he is alive, in a convincing way, or else we should choose a new leader,” a former Taliban justice department official told Mr. Moreau.

In fact, there used to be relatively routine sightings of Mullah Omar, but no Taliban leader has claimed to have met him in recent years, said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and one of the world’s foremost experts on the group.

Mr. Rashid said Friday his sources tell him the man declared “commander of the faithful” went into deep hiding about two to three years ago because of word the U.S. was pondering drone attacks on Quetta.

“He’s still alive, kept very carefully, possibly by the Pakistanis,” Mr. Ra- Unlike the late Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohmmad Omar

lacks a public profile. shid, the author of several best-selling books on Afghanistan, said from Lahore, Pakistan.

“Nobody knows where he is, but I think his death would certainly have been registered, as the death of any al-Qaeda or Taliban [leader] is always registered, both by the movement and by the governments.”

The recent peace overtures, with the opening of the Doha office, would not have happened without Mullah Omar’s stamp of approval, he said.

Bette Dam, a Dutch journalist who has lived in Kabul for the last three years and is writing a book on the Taliban, said her sources suggest the U.S. killing of bin Laden in May 2011, not the drone threat, that pushed Mullah Omar deeper underground. Still, she also sees no evidence he is dead.

In fact, Mullah Omar remains a galvanizing figure, a sort of “Robin Hood” even, among his fellow Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan and neighbouring areas of Pakistan.

“I think he is still amazingly popular, he is very inspiring for a lot of people,” said Ms. Dam.

“The way he governed Afghanistan, with strict sharia law, creating a lot of calm and law and order, and no corruption, is still remembered … Mullah Omar is [described as] a pleasant character. He is described as a friendly person.”

On the other hand, his total lack of a public profile creates a “vacuum” within the Taliban leadership, leaving space for others to jump in and “claim a lot of things,” she added.

“Sometimes, I’m surprised that the image of the Taliban is still so strong and coherent, because in the field there is a lot of disagreement, maybe sometimes a sort of anarchy.”

Mullah Omar, who is believed to be in his early 50s, was born to peasants in Uruzgan province, just north of Kandahar. He lost his eye to a shrapnel injury while a mujahedeen fighter battling Soviet occupiers in the 1980s.

In 1995, he led a group of fundamentalist madrassa students to power, enjoying initial popularity as they swept aside corrupt, violent warlords who held sway in much of Afghanistan.

Then his government ushered in an almost surreal brand of Islamic rule, prohibiting women from attending schools and workplaces, banning amusements ranging from music to kite flying and staging public executions for a wide array of offences.

Eventually, they earned the wrath of the U.S. and its allies by refusing to hand over bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks.

As U.S. and Northern Alliance forces took control of Afghanistan in late 2001, Mullah Omar remained defiant, telling a BBC interviewer the “bigger cause” was bringing about the destruction of the U.S.

In a 2004 interview with a Pakistani journalist, he confirmed the existence of a Taliban fatwa against Afghan women who worked for Western aid agencies. If they did not quit the agencies and confine themselves to their houses, “death will be their destiny,” he said.

In recent days, the Taliban has struck a different tone, professing to want peace and stability, with the prospect of a political end to the conflict ahead.

“We are not against women’s education, we are trying to … establish good relations with the world,” said the Shura member. “We want a clear and transparent system like the rest of the world has.”

Still, many Afghans would like the man who has spearheaded such a bloody insurgency to endorse peace and negotiations in his own voice, said Ms. Dam.

“For Afghanistan, It would be such a huge advantage if [Mullah Omar] would say something,” she said. “But there is nothing.” People march in downtown Rio de Janeiro on Thursday during a protest of what is now called the Tropical Spring.

Brazilians are demanding better public services and bemoaning massive spending to stage the World Cup.

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