Mullah Omar Lives In Pakistan “Nobody Wants To Catch Him!”: Ex-Follower
The Canadian Press
Mullah Omar wears shades, has trimmed beard, lives in Pakistan: ex-follower
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The notorious leader of the Taliban, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, has reportedly had a makeover and been sighted on numerous occasions in Pakistan.
The one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar has significantly changed his appearance since he fled from his native Afghanistan seven years ago, says a former follower. Mullah Mohammed Zaher says he has personally met with the reclusive jihadist several times in Quetta, Pakistan.
He says the Taliban founder has turfed his trademark turban, trimmed his beard and begun wearing sunglasses.
Coupled with the fact that few pictures of him exist, Zaher says it would be difficult to pick Omar out of a crowd.
“He has totally changed his appearance,” says Zaher, a self-described Taliban commander under the former regime.
“He does not look like a Talib anymore. He does not even wear a turban.”
Zaher says Omar has several safe houses in the Quetta area, and that he has eaten meals with him there more than once in recent years.
“I used to meet him. I have seen his home,” Zaher said through a Pashto-language interpreter.
“He used to call us over.”
Zaher also lent support to a claim made five years ago by Afghan President Hamid Karzai about what the Taliban founder has been up to.
He says Omar is now a religious imam and has led Friday prayer services at a mosque next to a medical clinic in Quetta’s Saleem plaza.
The Afghan president publicly declared in 2003 that his intelligence sources had informed him that Omar was seen praying at that mosque in the bustling plaza.
Despite Karzai’s claim, few reports have emerged since then about the fugitive mullah’s whereabouts.
“We got a call about 10 days ago from our sources in Quetta that Mullah Omar was seen at a mosque near Saleem complex in the city,” Karzai told Newsline.com in December 2003. “I know where the Saleem complex is. I have lived in Quetta myself for many years.”
A U.S. intelligence source told CNN in 2006 that American officials believed Omar was in the Quetta area, and that at one point they had his whereabouts pinned down to a precise neighbourhood.
Britain’s Independent newspaper reported last year that Omar was being sheltered by Pakistan’s intelligence services - a claim the Pakistani government vigorously denied.
But Zaher says it’s true.
He says Omar has even spent the night on a military compound in the Nawakilli area near Quetta, where he says he and other militants received bomb-making lessons from members of the Pakistani army.
Zaher escaped to Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
He says he became tired of facing harassment and extortion from corrupt officials in the new Karzai government, and he moved his family to Quetta in 2003.
He says old Taliban friends soon contacted him and put him in touch with Pakistani military officials, who trained him and paid him $500 a month to join the insurgency.
He says he left the insurgency a little over two years ago, and moved back to Kandahar city’s District Six.
Zaher says he has not seen or spoken to Omar since then.
When asked how it could be possible that the Americans would still be searching for Omar despite all these supposed sightings, Zaher grows cross.
His voice rising to a near-shout, he lays out a cynical conspiracy theory that appears to be remarkably popular even among ordinary Afghans:
“Nobody wants to catch him!”
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Find him, kill him. Thank-you.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:07 am“Mullah Omar Lives In Pakistan “Nobody Wants To Catch Him!”
Nobody in Pakistan wants to find him.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:11 amCall the CIA
July 1st, 2008 at 7:17 amMollah Omar is “invincible” on his “Mobylette”
July 1st, 2008 at 8:19 amand after this story im sure he will be moving out of Pakistan now.
why cant people with this kind of “knowledge” just call someone who could deal with it instead of printing it first? and where the hell is the CIA or some other group if this is so widely known? this guy has been wasting air for too long now
July 1st, 2008 at 8:21 am“He says old Taliban friends soon contacted him and put him in touch with Pakistani military officials, who trained him and paid him $500 a month to join the insurgency.”
That says it all, doesn’t it?
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am“He says he became tired of facing harassment and extortion from corrupt officials in the new Karzai government, and he moved his family to Quetta in 2003.”
You mean that the new govt of a ‘corrupt-to-the-core culture’ has corrupt officials? Tell me it ain’t so.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:23 pm