Taliban publish mullah omar biography

He emerged from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as their undisputed leader or "commander of the faithful", a title with great resonance in Islamic history. No Western journalist has ever met Mullah Omar, who left virtually all contact with the outside world to his foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil. To many ordinary Afghans he is just a name, but those who have seen him say he would be about 50 - and tall, with a black beard and a black turban.

His right eye was damaged by shrapnel when he was fighting Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers in the s. When the Taliban were in power he rarely left the southern city of Kandahar, where he lived in a large house that was reportedly built for him by Bin Laden. The two were reported to have spoken daily by satellite telephone, and some reports suggested they also met for fishing trips.

Under Mullah Omar's rule, a strict interpretation of Islamic law was imposed on Afghanistan under Taliban control. Women were strongly discouraged from leaving their homes, denied schooling and jobs and forced to fully cover themselves. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddha's destruction.

Taxes on opium exports was the primary source of income for the Taliban during its rule and subsequent insurgency after Following the September 11 attacks on the United States carried out by al-Qaeda, [ 77 ] the United States under the Bush administration taliban published mullah omar biography an ultimatum to Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden and other high ranking al-Qaeda officials and shut down all al-Qaeda training camps within the country.

Omar replied, "No. We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims, that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time we were threatened. Islam says that when a Muslim asks for shelter, give the shelter and never hand him over to enemy. And our Afghan tradition says that, even if your enemy asks for shelter, forgive him and give him shelter.

Osama has helped the jihad in Afghanistan, he was with us in bad days and I am not going to give him to anyone. Nonetheless, high-ranking Taliban officials attempted to persuade Omar to hand bin Laden over and made offers to the United States through its contacts with Pakistan. The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef said at a news conference in Islamabad that "our position in this regard is that if the Americans have evidence, they should produce it.

Omar thought there was "less than a 10 percent" chance that the US would do anything beyond make threats. The Supreme Council of the Islamic Clergy, a council of around 1, clerics, convened in Kabul in late September and issued a decree against the United States and its threats of militarily invading Afghanistan. They also recommended that Osama bin Laden be asked to leave Afghanistan of his own free will to "avoid the current tumult" and expressed sympathy and a conciliatory tone towards those who died in the 11 September attacks: "The ulema voice their sadness over American deaths and hope America does not attack Afghanistan.

However, according to an interview with Pakistani journalist Rahimullah YusufzaiOmar told him:. I don't want to go down in history as someone who betrayed his guest. I am willing to give my life, my regime. Since we have given him refuge I cannot throw him out now. On the night of 7—8 Octobershortly after the US-led United States invasion of Afghanistan began, Omar's house in Kandahar was bombed just after he had left, fatally injuring his year-old son.

His stepfather, who was also his uncle, was initially reported killed, [ 82 ] but later reports said he was injured and treated at a hospital. In another account of an attack that night, an MQ-1 Predator drone followed a three-vehicle convoy that left Omar's compound and drove to a compound to the southwest of Kandahar, with US commanders believing Omar was in one of the vehicles.

Men disembarked from the vehicles and entered a large building in the compound. US military officers considered bombing the building, but were concerned that another building in the compound might be a mosque, which they wished to avoid hitting. Eventually it was decided to fire a Hellfire missile from the Predator at one of the vehicles, where armed guards kept gathering, in the hope that it would draw out anyone inside the possible mosque.

Dozens of men, some armed, emerged from the large building and other buildings in the compound, and some got into vehicles and departed. According to fellow Taliban fighters, Omar had secretly fled his residence in Kandahar for security purposes shortly after it was bombed and was last seen riding on the back of a motorcycle driven by his brother-in-law and right-hand man, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Senior and former Taliban officials have said that there had not been any confirmed sightings of their Amir-ul-Momineen commander of the faithful in Afghanistan since then. In Novemberhe was heard over a short-wave radio ordering all Taliban troops to abandon Kabul and take to the mountains, noting, "defending the cities with front lines that can be targeted from the air will cause us terrible loss".

But the current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause — that is the destruction of America. This is not a matter of weapons. We are hopeful for God's help. The real matter is the extinction of America. And, God willing, it [America] will fall to the ground. He stated that Omar was merely changing locations due to security reasons.

On 5 DecemberOmar held a meeting in Kandahar of top Taliban leaders and asked them what they wanted to do. Many were ready to stop fighting and willing to surrender. Omar handed over the Taliban leadership to his defence minister, Mullah Obaidullahin writing. Two days later Omar left Kandahar and went into hiding in Zabul province in Afghanistan.

She said that her findings, confirmed by Afghan officials as well as the Talibans, depicted the US intelligence failure and cast even further doubt on US claims in the Afghan war. Omar was protected in hiding by Jabbar Omari, a former Taliban governor of Baghlan provincewho was from Zabul province and belonged to the Hotak tribe, as Omar did.

Taliban publish mullah omar biography: The Afghan Taliban on Sunday published

They spent four years living in the provincial capital Qalat at a private home owned by Abdul Samad Ustaz, Omari's former driver. Omar's wives moved to Pakistan and Omar declined when Omari offered to bring his son to visit. He had very little active involvement in the Taliban from the end of He sent a cassette tape to the rest of the Taliban leadership in Quetta inreaffirming that Obaidullah was the supreme leader and naming who should be on the leadership shura council.

The shura sent a messenger every three to seven months, when they wanted his advice on some matter. He sent at least one other cassette tape, inbut stopped that practice after the messenger was briefly detained in Pakistan, and thereafter messages were just relayed person-to-person. Omar kept in taliban publish mullah omar biography with events in the world by listening to BBC Pashto radio.

Bette Dam wrote, "Though Mullah Omar did not venture outside for fear of being caught, according to Jabbar Omari, in the four years they hid in that home, they felt relatively safe. After the US established Forward Operating Base Lagman a few hundred metres from the house inOmar relocated to a shack in a remote hamlet on the edge of a river, about 20 miles southeast of Qalat in Shinkay Districtclose to the Durand Line.

His hideout was connected to underground irrigation channels that ran up into the hills. People in the village knew that Taliban personnel were living there and offered gifts of clothes and food to Omari and Omar. Jabbar Omari said that Omar grew ill inrefusing to visit a doctor and dying of illness on 23 April. Omari and two helpers buried him that night, with Omari videoing the burial as proof.

Omari went to Quetta, returning with Omar's son Yaqoob and brother Abdul Manan Omariwho had not seen him since Yaqoob insisted that the grave be opened so that he could see his father. Omari went to Quetta and met with ten senior Taliban to describe the 12 years he spent with Omar. Obaidullah had died in and Akhtar Mansour was the operational leader of the Taliban.

Four religious scholars at the meeting decided that Mansour should continue as leader, but that Omar's death and Mansour's succession should not be disclosed publicly yet, while the United States was preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Some at the meeting unsuccessfully argued for openness. Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst Michael Semplefor example, wrote in a December report that "Mullah Omar remains the Taliban supreme leader and the source of all authority in the movement.

Some believed that Omar hid in the mountains of southern Afghanistan for over a year before he fled to neighboring Pakistan in late He continued to receive the allegiance of prominent pro-Taliban military leaders in the region, including Jalaluddin Haqqani. According to sources, he lived somewhere in Karachi for a time, where he worked as a potato trader to escape detection; a city where he had lived in already and visited for many years before the group's emergence in the s.

Omar declared that the Taliban were "hunting Americans like pigs". In the years following the allied invasion, numerous statements were released that were identified as coming from Omar. In Junea statement regarding the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq was released by Omar and in it, he hailed al-Zarqawi as a martyr and he also claimed that the resistance movements in Afghanistan and Iraq "will not be weakened".

In Januaryit was reported that Omar made his "first exchange with a journalist since he went into hiding" in with Muhammad Hanif via email and courier. In it he promised "more Afghan War", and he also said that the more than one hundred suicide bomb attacks which occurred in Afghanistan in the last year had been carried out by bombers who acted on religious orders which they received from the Taliban — "the mujahedeen do not take any action without a fatwa.

In JanuaryThe Washington Postciting a report which was published by the Eclipse Groupa privately operated intelligence network that may be contracted by the CIA, stated that Omar had a heart attack on 7 January According to the report, Pakistan's ISI rushed Omar to a hospital near Karachi where he was operated on, treated, and then released several days later.

Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, stated that the report "had no basis whatsoever". Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid responded to the report by stating, "He is in Afghanistan safe and sound. On 31 Mayfive senior Afghan detainees were released from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba in return for the release of American prisoner of war Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl — a person claiming to be Omar reportedly hailed their release.

In Decemberacting Afghan intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil stated that he was not sure "whether Omar is alive or dead". This statement was made after the Afghan intelligence agency published reports in which it revealed that fracturing was occurring within the Taliban movement, leading some reporters to speculate that a leadership struggle had ensued because Omar had died.

Taliban publish mullah omar biography: Descriptive biography to commemorate Omar's 19th

An anonymous European intelligence official stated that "there's a consensus among all three branches of the Afghan security forces that Omar is alive. Not only do they think he's alive, they say they have a good understanding of where exactly he is in Karachi. The man described ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as a "fake caliph ", and he also said that "Baghdadi just wanted to dominate what has so far been achieved by the real jihadists of Islam after three decades of jihad.

A pledge of allegiance to him is ' haram '. On 29 JulyAbdul Hassib Seddiqi, the spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, said "officially" that Mohammed Omar had died at a hospital in KarachiPakistan, in April[ ] and the office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed that information on his death was "credible". The following day, the Taliban confirmed that he was dead, [ 13 ] but denied that he died in Pakistan.

According to an official statement by Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Asif"Mullah Omar neither died nor was buried in Pakistan and his sons' statements are on record to support this. Whether he died now or two years ago is another controversy which we do not wish to be a part of. He was neither in Karachi nor in Quetta. Afghan officials report that Omar was buried in Zabul provincea province in southern Afghanistan.

Several senior Taliban commanders have also been buried in Sarkhogan area. He further stated that the area had special significance for the Hotak tribe which Omar was from. Sources close to the Taliban leadership said his deputy, Akhtar Mansoorwould replace him, although with the lesser title of Supreme Leader. Fidai Mahaza Taliban splinter group, claimed that Omar did not die of natural causes; rather he was killed in his hideout in Zabul province.

Conversely, the Afghan government was unsympathetic to mourning his death; security forces were ordered to prevent citizens from publicly grieving Omar. A National Directorate of Security NDS spokesman said that Omar was "the biggest cause of war and backwardness in the modern history of Afghanistan", adding that any ceremony for Omar would be an "insult" to victims of the Taliban.

During this time the location of Mullah Omar's grave was indirectly revealed. The grave is situated in the Suri district of Zabul Province.

Taliban publish mullah omar biography: The Afghan Taliban have

Despite his political rank and his high status on the Rewards for Justice most wanted list, [ 77 ] not much was publicly known about Omar. Omar made no public speeches and always refused to meet foreigners; [ ] Before his death, only one known photo existed of him. After his death, the Taliban released a newer and clearer photo showing Omar in his youth in Accounts of his physical appearance state that Omar was thin, strongly built and very tall, at around 1.

In a meeting inwhen the decision was made to stand up against the warlords, Mullah Omar was the natural leader "to stand and resist against this anarchy as he would be supported by all of them". There is little description of the battles to take nearly all of the rest of Afghanistan, which culminated in In this account, it concluded in a state "based on the pure rules and principles of Sharia Law, after a long interval, the world witnessed a practical model of Islamic government once again".

There is no mention of al-Qaeda. In fact, there is no mention of the world beyond Afghanistan other than rather routine support for the Palestinian desire to retake Jerusalem. The image confirms the characterisation of the Taliban as an Islamic conservative Afghan nationalist organisation with a narrow world view. The account attempts to portray the Taliban leader as "charismatic" with a "special sense of humour".

But it concedes that there is nothing out of the ordinary about him. As one of the very few Westerners who has ever laid eyes on him inI can confirm that among other Taliban he did not stand out. And the account makes a virtue of this, claiming he has never owned his own home. Simple dress, simple food, simple talk, frankness and informality are his natural habits.

Its simple no market no demand no dirty man like this in market. Will Pakistan ban this book as it did Malala's book? M R Khawaja. Good Idea at least people will know his background. Either Taliban, IS or Shabab, what ever you want to call them. They are all contractors on someone's payrolls. All terrorists are confused what they are fighting for.

Apr 06, am. I hope Taliban and ISIS will fight each other and in the process will weaken themselves and I hope and pray these terrorists groups will be history soon. All they were lacking was brand management. This may not be a good way to counter the influence of ISIS. Ali CA. PEACE is the way forward my friend. Animals have biographies now.

Shamain Ayaz we should. Asma Ali. Waqar Omar. Ayaz When did Pakistan ban Malala's book?