In what ways did Mullah Omar support Osama bin Laden?

Mullah Omar: The secret life of the Taliban leader with an eye injury and the story of harboring Osama bin Laden

Rehan Fazal

BBC Hindi

December 23, 2024

Mullah Omar had given Osama bin Laden refuge in Afghanistan, that too at a time when he had no place left to hide in the world.

It was in Afghanistan that Osama planned to destroy the World Trade Center. Nearly three thousand people were killed in the attack.

According to Dutch journalist Betty Dam, author of a book on Mullah Omar, 'Only one picture of Mullah Omar was seen everywhere.'

'There is no consensus even on the authenticity of this picture. No one can say with confidence that this picture is of Mullah Omar.'

$2 million bounty on his head

There is no information about where Mullah Omar went after 2001.

The Afghan government, the US government and the US media believe he was living in Pakistan. The Taliban deny this and say he was still in Afghanistan.

There have been repeated reports of Mullah Omar's death since 2001. In 2012, the US government put a $2 million bounty on his head.

Mullah Omar is identified on the US State Department's Most Wanted List as:

Hair: Black

Nationality: Afghan

Identifying mark: Scar over right eye

Skilled in firing rockets at the Soviet army

It is not that Mullah Omar was an enemy of the United States from the beginning. There was a time when the Americans recognized him as a useful person fighting against the Soviet army.

Mullah Omar was born in a village near the city of Kandahar in Afghanistan. His father died when he was two years old. He was 22 or 23 years old when he took part in the war against the Soviet army.

Betty Dam writes that “during the war he earned the nickname ‘Rocket Man’ because his rockets hit the target accurately. In the beginning, many Afghan fighters were not very good at aiming, which led to the deaths of innocent civilians.”

Ahmed Mutawakil, a lawyer and former foreign minister of the Taliban government, told Betty Dam that “Omar came to the attention of the Soviet soldiers. Once he announced on the radio that a tall man had been killed. But it was only his dream because the tall man (Mullah Omar) had escaped.”

“Mullah Omar was naughty as a child. But then he became quiet and shy, especially in the presence of outsiders. When they were with their friends, they would copy others.'

Eye injury

In the late 1980s, during a battle against the Soviet army, he suffered a deep wound to one of his eyes.

Betty Dam writes that from that time on, Mullah Omar and his companions went into hiding because they feared Soviet air strikes.

They were looking up at the sky when the Soviet air force bombed. The explosion destroyed a nearby mosque. One of the pieces of debris injured Mullah Omar's right eye.

It took the doctor a whole day to reach Mullah Omar, and by that time a local doctor had treated him. Earlier, the doctor had also removed a bullet from Mullah Omar's waist.

Betty writes that "Although the CIA was helping the Taliban, giving them weapons, there was no medical assistance there. When the doctor reached Mullah Omar, he removed a piece of metal from Omar's eye with his own hand. He was trying to stop the bleeding with his turban. After medical assistance from the doctor, he was taken to the Pakistani city of Quetta."

Rapist commander sentenced to death

A well-known story about Mullah Omar in early 1994 is that a local commander kidnapped and raped two girls.

On July 30, 2015, Sandy Gall wrote for The Guardian newspaper that "Mullah Omar gathered 30 young students, gave them weapons and attacked the commander's hideout. They not only freed the girls, but also hanged him from the barrel of the commander's tank. Omar later said that we are also fighting against Muslims who have gone astray."

The war against the Soviet Union killed 75,000 to 90,000 Afghan civilians. While 15,000 Soviet soldiers were also killed.

In total, 1.5 million Afghan civilians were killed and about 3 million people were injured over 10 years. Many had their limbs broken and were disabled for life.

BBC journalist meets, hesitant to give interview

When BBC correspondent Rahimullah Yousafzai arrived at the Kandahar governor's house to meet Mullah Omar, he was taking a nap in the garden, wearing a turban.

The luxurious building had several rooms and halls, but Mullah Omar preferred to stay in a windowless room under the stairs.

An ISI officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Betty Dam that "all the Taliban leaders used to sit on the carpet and drink tea there. Near them was an iron box where all the government money was kept."

"Some people used to say that Mullah Omar rarely changed his clothes because he was always seen in shalwar kameez. He used to eat simple food, like soup and boiled potatoes. He would eat this food quickly, as if he were very hungry."

Mullah Omar was not a talkative man. He was like an old, illiterate man. He had a habit of repeating the same word over and over, which made it seem like he was stuttering.

In 1995, journalist Rahimullah Yousafzai was one of the few people in the world who saw Mullah Omar up close.

Betty Dam writes that “Mullah Omar welcomed Yousafzai. He often listened to him on the BBC Pashto service. But he was hesitant to give interviews. He used to say that he could not speak on the microphone. He had never given a single interview in his life.”

After much effort, Mullah Omar agreed, but the journalist was asked to give his questions and the tape recorder to the press advisor, Abdul Rahman Hotki.

The next day, Umar recorded all the answers to the questions. Listening to them, it seemed that he was having difficulty answering. Hotki told Betty that Mullah Omar repeatedly recorded some answers.

Hotki had written some answers on paper, but Mullah Omar was unable to read them.

According to Betty, the tape was later lost and could not be found in any archive.

Passion for driving

Mullah Omar was fond of driving. He would raise his seat and move it closer to the steering wheel. But he did not have a driving license.

He also had accidents many times. His close associate Agha Jan Mutasim says, "We did not want him to drive, but he was stubborn and would put the driver in the passenger seat and drive the car himself."

"After the accident, he would wait in the garage for the car to be repaired so that he could drive again."

When the two sides were evenly matched in the fight, Mullah Omar himself would join the fight like other Taliban fighters.

Author Ahmed Rashid wrote in his book 'Story of Afghan Warlords' that 'If Mullah Omar had wanted, he would have been fighting with Taliban fighters in the bunker himself, but his commanders did not want that. They used to tell him, 'You are a leader, not a soldier.'

Away from modernity

When the Taliban first reached Kabul, Mullah Omar stayed in Kandahar instead of going to Kabul. He handed over the day-to-day affairs of Kabul to Mullah Rabbani.

Mullah Rabbani lived in the presidential palace in Kabul, which his namesake Burhanuddin Rabbani had vacated.

The Taliban had no experience in running administrative affairs and were mostly young.

Mullah Zaeef writes in his book, My Life with the Taliban, that "many of them only knew how to read the Quran and fight. They could barely sign their names. The officers were quite surprised when they removed the chairs in the room and began the ministerial meeting by laying mattresses on the floor."

Senior Taliban leaders walked instead of traveling in Kabul city. Perhaps this was also because there were very few cars in Kabul at that time and the price of petrol was also high.

Taking photographs was banned in the country, except for passport photos. Listening to and playing music was prohibited.

Many vehicles were stopped and cassettes and cassette players were confiscated and broken.

Afghanistan's national sport, buzkashi, was also banned. Playing chess was also forbidden and people were required to wear full pants instead of half pants while playing football.

In 1996, Sudan, under American pressure, asked Osama bin Laden to leave the country. He had no choice but to go to Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden wrote in his book, "When his plane was flying over Saudi Arabia on its way to Afghanistan, he started sweating with fear. He was afraid that the plane would be shot down by a rocket."

When Osama bin Laden's plane landed in Jalalabad in 1996, Mullah Omar was not there to welcome him.

Omar bin Laden writes, "It is wrong to believe that Osama came to Afghanistan at the invitation of Mullah Omar. He was welcomed at the airport by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's men. Initially, he was housed in the palace of Afghan King Zahir Shah, but then Osama went to live in a cave in the mountains of Tora Bora. I do not remember anything about their alleged friendship."

When Mullah Omar kicked Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan

Osama's son Omar remembers Mullah Omar telling Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan after the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

"Mullah Omar was taller than my father," Omar told his daughter Dam. "When he came to see my father, a dinner was arranged for Mullah Omar. But he sat some distance away from Osama."

"He asked for a chair, which was a little strange because everyone else was sitting on the floor. He told my father clearly, 'This is not going well, you have to get out of here.'"

Mullah Omar told Osama, "They (the US) are making a big issue of drugs and women's rights. I don't want your extradition to be a big issue."

Omar told his daughter that Mullah Omar also said, "Under Islamic law, I can't hand you over to them. But I expect you to go yourself."

According to Omar, "When my father told Omar that Sudan had allowed him to stay there for five years, while he had only been in Afghanistan for three and a half years, he stood up from his seat and was ready to leave. He didn't even shake Osama bin Laden's hand."

In fact, after the 9/11 attacks, the United States demanded the extradition of Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan, but there was no response from Mullah Omar. After which the Americans began bombing the Tora Bora hills.

Assassination attempt on Mullah Omar and mysterious death

In late February 2001, Mullah Omar announced plans to destroy two historic Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

The statues were 174 and 115 feet tall and were carved from rock 1,500 years ago. UNESCO had included them in its World Heritage List.

The announcement caused a stir around the world, but Mullah Omar did not change his mind. On March 2, 2001, the statues were destroyed by placing explosives.

On the night of October 6, 2001, a US Predator 3034 drone was sent to Mullah Omar’s office in Kandahar with the intention of killing him.

Chris Wood wrote in an article titled “The Story of the First Drone Strike” in the May 30, 2015 issue of The Atlantic magazine, “Senior CIA officials at headquarters thousands of miles away were looking at these images. They feared that a bomb dropped by drones on the office could kill many innocent people. So they were waiting for Mullah Omar to come out.

Chris Wood writes that "When three Land Cruisers full of armed men came out of the building, they were sure that Mullah Omar was in one of them. But a disagreement between two generals about the time of the attack prevented the Hellfire rockets from being fired. The three Land Cruisers got lost on the crowded streets."

The mystery surrounding Mullah Omar continued for a long time. Even today, many things are said about his death.

In July 2015, the Afghan government announced that Mullah Omar had died, but it is also said that he had died two years earlier, on April 23, 2013.

Betty Dam writes that "Mullah Omar's associate Abdul Jabbar Omari told me that on that day there was a lot of hail falling all over Kandahar. Mullah Omar had been coughing and vomiting for the past three months. "Omari insisted that she see a doctor, but Mullah Omar refused."

"With great difficulty, he agreed to get an injection from a local shop," Omari told her daughter. "He fainted and his face turned pale. As soon as I touched him, he collapsed. He died the next day."

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#Afghanistan #Taliban #United_States