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Mullah Omar lived short walk from US Base

The point here is that this account suggests he was hiding ‘right under the nose’ of the US and their Afghan allies. Pakistan has been criticized and berated for years because OBL did the same thing in hiding in Abbotabad.

So will the same people now similarly criticize the US & Afghans or apologize to Pakistan? Likely not.

i dont know.

Taliban are really into composing fine literature, aren’t they?

its a circus in there
 
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cant wait to see reply from those who blame Pakistan that OBL lived right under their nose, and they were either guilty or incompetent ..
 
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The point here is that this account suggests he was hiding ‘right under the nose’ of the US and their Afghan allies. Pakistan has been criticized and berated for years because OBL did the same thing in hiding in Abbotabad.

So will the same people now similarly criticize the US & Afghans or apologize to Pakistan? Likely not.

I was thinking the same thing.

The answer unfortunately is no, as the same logic does not apply to the US and its allies who determine the dominant discourse in the world.

This news will be buried and Americans will conveniently black it out of their minds.
 
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The one that got away, always bring back the fisherman.
 
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Taliban head Mullah Omar 'hid in Afghanistan,' not Pakistan as CIA believed

New book by Dutch journalist Bette Dam claims "US, and almost everyone else, had it wrong" and that "the Pentagon and the CIA knew little about Mullah Mohammad Omar [Taliban founder]."

Mullah Mohammad Omar "never stepped foot in Pakistan," and instead chose to hide in his native land Afghanistan where he lived "just a few miles from a major US base" housing thousands of soldiers, a new biography of the reclusive Afghan Taliban founder claims.

The finding indicates massive breakdown of US intelligence, Omar's mistrust of Pakistan – which sided with the US in War on Terror – and his limited role in leading the insurgency that continues till date.

"The story that emerges is that the US, and almost everyone else, had it wrong," claims an investigative biography, Searching for An Enemy, by a Dutch journalist Bette Dam.

The book was published in Dutch last month and some of its extracts were published in English by a new think-tank Zomia.

"He never lived in Pakistan. Instead, he spent the remainder of his life in a pair of small villages in the remote, mountainous province of Zabul," Dam was told by Abdul Jabbar Omari, Mullah Omar's bodyguard from the moment the Taliban leader went into hiding until his death in 2013.

Omari was the person who traveled to Pakistan to share the news of Mullah Omar's death with the senior Taliban commanders. He was arrested after his return and remains in the custody of Afghan intelligence agency National Directorate of Security (or NDS) since 2017.

Afghan government and Taliban didn't immediately comment on the new claims.

US upends Karzai's decision

The book details "Shah Wali Kot Agreement", between the Taliban and then Afghan leader Hamid Karzai after US invasion in 2001, and immediate hand over of Taliban leadership by Mullah Omar to trusted member Mullah Obaidullah.

Under Obaidullah's management the Taliban agreed to surrender and retire from the war.

Karzai's declaration of a general amnesty to Taliban pitted him against the US, which considered Afghan Taliban a serious threat and managed to block Karzai's attempts to reconcile with the Taliban.

Hiding place

The biography says the house in Qalat, capital of southern Zabul province, where both Omar and Omari hid was a typical Afghan mud-walled compound with a large courtyard.

"A row of rooms lined one wall, with a larger L-shaped room occupying the corner, where Mullah Omar stayed. There was no apparent door to the room — instead, the entrance was a secret door, what appeared to be a cupboard high on the wall," the biography says.

It says the American forces came close to the hideout twice in the four years Mullah Omar stayed there.

In 2004, Mullah Omar moved to Siuray, a nearby district, where the Americans built Forward Operating Base Wolverine, "about three miles from his new home."

The shack where Mullah Omar lived was situated on the river "and connected to large tunnels that were used for irrigation."

As helicopters and jets hovered over the village, Mullah Omar sometime took refuge in the irrigation tunnels, the book says.

"As the population turned against the government due to its corruption and American atrocities, they began to offer food and clothing to the household for Omari and his mysterious friend [Mullah Omar]."

The book quoting Zabul tribal leader Atta Jan says Karzai's leads were rejected by Americans who insisted that "Mullah Omar was in Pakistan."

"In fact, though they claimed otherwise, the Pentagon and the CIA knew little about Mullah Omar," the biography says.

Mullah Omar's death

On April 23, 2013, Mullah Omar passed away and was buried by Omari and his two assistants "in a nondescript grave, without a coffin."

When Mullah Omar's death was announced, a senior Afghan official expressed his frustration to Dam.

"Who protected him. The Americans searched every house. How did they not find him?" he told her wondering how could Mullah Omar live for four years in a house near the governor's compound and an NDS branch.

Dam argues the Taliban leader never actively led his troops against the opponents and instead "simply removed himself from the practical world."

"This," she claims," appears to have served the interests of both the Taliban and the United States."

By hiding his death for about two years, Taliban managed to unify itself and continue fighting "while the US policy in Afghanistan was linked ultimately to the idea that Mullah Omar and bin Laden were in league together."

The Taliban leader's importance, the Dutch journalist says, "lay in what he represented to both sides, not in what he actually did."

Source: TRT World
 
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i think this is false that u.s troops were unable to find him during house search and u.s will use it to justify bombing civilian houses in afghanistan
 
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Unbelievable for many people, Afghans are dead shocked. Here is the article from Sami Yousufzai from 2015 Which exactly mention the same.

Exclusive: Inside the Mysterious ‘Death’ of Taliban Leader Mullah Omar
BY SAMI YOUSAFZAI ON 7/29/15 AT 8:23 PM
reports-mullah-omar-dead.jpg

A reward poster from a Pakistani newspaper shows Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.FAISAL MAHMOOD/REUTERS

Just before the end of Ramadan this year, I received an unexpected call from one of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s longtime family friends. He had just learned a secret held by only a tiny circle of Omar’s most trusted associates: The supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban was dead.

Rumors of Omar’s death have been circulating since he vanished in late 2001. The last verifiable sighting placed him on the back of a Honda motorbike, heading into the mountains outside Kandahar while the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance fighters closed in on the city. But this caller was different—extraordinarily well placed to know about the Mullah’s whereabouts. His claims were also very detailed. He asked not to be quoted by name on such a sensitive topic, but he and his family are highly respected for their longtime humanitarian work in Pakistan’s Afghan exile community.

Omar died in Afghanistan, my contact says. People have often assumed that the Taliban leader fled across the border into Pakistan, like most of his surviving followers, but in fact he refused to leave his country of birth. If you’re willing to trust the Pakistanis, you might just as well move to the United States, he told anyone who raised the thought.

Instead, he altered his appearance as best he could and tried to blend in among his countrymen. It helped that he had never permitted photographs of himself. After the Taliban regrouped as an insurgency, he began communicating with the leadership via a dedicated personal courier. Omar gathered a few loyal allies and even led them in occasional forays against the occupiers, the family friend says. He was wounded slightly a couple of times, but never seriously injured.

No one can be sure what killed Omar. Some have suggested it may have been a heart attack, but according to my caller he was a long way from any doctor who could have given a proper diagnosis when it happened in January 2013. The theory seems plausible; Omar would have been about 60 years old. His date of birth was never publicly disclosed, if he knew it himself. Longtime family friends say he was born on a roadside somewhere between Uruzgan province and Kandahar, where his desperately poor parents were headed in hope of finding work. For lack of better transportation, his mother was riding a donkey. When she went into labor, she dismounted; after the delivery, she climbed onto the animal’s back, cradling the infant, and traveled on. She doubted he would survive.


Decades later, when the end finally came, Omar was holed up for the winter among the desolate mountains of Now Zad district in Helmand province, in an area of tiny villages known collectively as Taizeini. Few maps show the place, but it’s roughly 100 miles northwest of Kandahar. A good friend was with him, according to my source. Mullah Abdul Jabar, a native of Zabul province, had served during the years of Taliban rule as governor of central Baghlan province. According to one of Jabar’s relatives, he never went home again after 2001. Instead, he stayed faithfully by Omar’s side as his messenger and attendant. The family friend says Jabar was the Taliban leader’s only link to the Quetta Shura, the group’s ruling council.

Omar told Jabar what to do in the event of his death or capture—get word to Mullah Sheikh Abdul Hakim. The religious scholar, a longtime friend and adviser of Omar’s, makes his home in Quetta, the southwestern Pakistani city where the Taliban leadership resides. Hakim and Jabar quickly relayed the news to three other senior Taliban figures. One was Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, the head of the Quetta Shura. Another was Mullah Qayyum Zakir, director of the Taliban’s military council at the time. And the third was another religious scholar and longtime Omar friend, Mullah Abdul Salam, who lives and preaches in the city of Kuchlak, a few miles outside Quetta. (None of the five could be reached for comment.)

My source says he knows of only one other person who might have been told of Omar’s death. (I couldn’t reach him either.) Back in the 1980s, Mullah Gul Agha Akhund, another Quetta Shura member, fought alongside Omar against the Soviet occupation. In recent years, he has been widely described as the only member of the leadership in regular communication with Omar—and even he was never able to speak directly with his old comrade. One of Omar’s wives and some of his children, placed under Pakistan’s protection in Karachi and Peshawar, could never speak to the Taliban leader, for fear the U.S. might find out and somehow trace him. Secrecy was essential: The Americans had placed a bounty of $10 million on his head.
https://www.newsweek.com/taliban-leader-mullah-omar-dead-357951
When the caller hung up, I began dialing my best Taliban sources and sending emails to check out the story. Preparations for the traditional end of Ramadan festivities made many of my best Taliban sources hard to reach, but I kept trying. Coincidentally or otherwise, the family friend had contacted me on July 15—the same day the Taliban chose to publish this year’s Eid al-Fitr greeting to the faithful. It was signed by Mullah Omar himself, as it has been every year. Some of my Taliban contacts insisted that Omar was not dead and would soon prove it publicly. Others pled ignorance. But no one bothered to pretend this year’s Eid message had anything to do with whether Omar is dead or alive. For years, his longtime followers have quietly conceded that his signed statements are far too polished to have been composed by the Taliban’s inarticulate and barely literate founder.

Nevertheless, confirmation of Omar’s death was hard to find. Even before the Quetta Shura imposed its ban on questions about his health, it was a dangerous topic among the Taliban. “It bears a stink of disloyalty if anyone asks about his medical condition or what he’s been doing,” a Haqqani Network commander tells me. “We don’t need to put him in danger by calling for definite proof that he’s alive," a former Taliban fighter says.

A second report of Omar’s death hit the Internet a week after the call from his family friend. This one was issued by a source not so sympathetic to the Taliban leadership: a tiny but bloodthirsty splinter faction that uses the name Fidai Mahaz—“the Suicide Front.” The group quit the mainstream Taliban in 2013 in open rebellion against Mansoor’s willingness to engage in peace talks.

Late last week, on July 22, the group’s website published a sensational accusation that Omar had been “martyred” by his old associates Akhtar Mansoor and Gul Agha. According to Fidai Mahaz, Omar’s death resulted from a violent quarrel the pair had with Omar, who objected to the recent opening of talks with the Americans in Qatar. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, Fidai Mahaz claimed the alleged killing took place in July 2013—during the holy month of Ramadan. The group says the burial took place in Zabul province. Proof will come, the group promised. After the claim was posted, I contacted Mullah Najibullah, the leader of Fidai Mahaz. He tells me that further details will be released when the time is right.

told The Wall Street Journal. Another Afghan intelligence official told The New York Times that Omar had been “suffering from a disease,” and added: “We do not know the whereabouts of his graveyard or whether he received a ceremony.”

Omar’s family friend stands by his version. The Mullah died in January 2013, he says, in Helmand province. His burial took place in the same village where his life ended, in Now Zad district. Only three or four people attended the funeral rites. It was the only way to keep his death a secret.

Despite the almost farcical conflicts among the various accounts, they all agree on just one point: Omar is dead. The Quetta Shura is expected to issue a formal announcement soon. Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to predict what will happen next. Will the Taliban’s representatives even show up for the next round of peace talks on July 31? Will the insurgency’s ranks shrink as its fighters hear that their spiritual leader is gone? Will the hardline jihadis of the self-styled Islamic State gain a wave of new Afghan recruits? Can the Kabul government avoid a collapse into factions and civil war, as happened in the early 1980s after the Soviet pullout?

It may very well be the case that Afghanistan needs Mullah Omar now more than ever.

With Sam Seibert in New York.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that Mullah Omar's family friend claims the Taliban leader died in 2012. He claims the Mullah died in 2013.
 
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:lol: and they blame us for not knowing the whereabouts of OBL, even after having searched the compound he was hiding in!!
 
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