Afghan Gov. Strongly Reacts against Report regarding Mullah Omar
Afghan government on Monday strongly reacts against the report, claiming that former Taliban leader Mullah Omar had lived and died in Afghanistan.
Afghan government on Monday strongly reacts against the report, claiming that former Taliban leader Mullah Omar had lived and died in Afghanistan.
“We strongly reject this delusional claim and we see it as an effort to create and build an identify for the Taliban and their foreign backers,” Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman to president Ghani twitted.
The remarks come as according to a new book that highlights embarrassing failures of American intelligence, Taliban founder Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of US bases in Afghanistan for years.
Washington believed the one-eyed, fugitive leader had fled to Pakistan, but the new biography says Omar was in fact living just three miles from a major US Forward Operating Base in his home province of Zabul before his death in 2013.
“Searching for an Enemy”, by Dutch journalist Bette Dam, reveals the Taliban chief lived as a virtual hermit, refusing visits from his family and filling notebooks with jottings in an imaginary language. According to Daily Mail.
Dam spent more than five years researching the book and interviewed Jabbar Omari, Omar’s bodyguard who hid and protected him after the Taliban regime was overthrown.
According to the book, Omar listened to the BBC’s Pashto-language news broadcasts in the evenings, but even when he learned about the death of al-Qaeda supremo Osama Bin Laden rarely commented on developments in the outside world.
At one point, a US patrol approached as Omar and Omari were in the courtyard. Alarmed, the two men ducked behind a wood pile, but the soldiers passed without entering.
A second time, US troops even searched the house but did not uncover the concealed entrance to his secret room. It was not clear if the search was the result of a routine patrol or a tip-off.
“We have sufficient evidence which shows he (Omar) lived and died in Pakistan,” the spokesman added.
