KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan official said Wednesday his government is examining claims that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is dead.
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CNN also quoted a senior Afghan intelligence agency official as saying that Mullah Omar died more than two years ago in a hospital in Pakistan of an unknown illness.
Omar had not been seen in public since fleeing when the Taliban was toppled from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001, and there has been speculation for years among militant circles that he was either incapacitated or had died.
Haseeb Sediqi, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, claimed that Omar died in a Karachi hospital “under mysterious circumstances”.
The source did not give details of what evidence the Afghan government used to come to the decision, but said it had sufficient information to conclude that Omar died of hepatitis B about two years ago, and his death was kept secret to keep the group together.
Reports regarding the death of Mullah Omar emerged earlier today with earlier reports suggesting Pakistan have confirmed the death of Mullah Mohammad Omar to the Afghan government.
Mullah Omar and most of his comrades have constantly evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world, and are believed to be guiding the resurgent Taliban.
A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday that the authorities were trying to verify the reports. Local police and soldiers now take the brunt of their assaults as U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces ended their combat mission at the end of previous year. Pakistani officials believe that loyalists were grooming his son Yaqoob, who is in his mid-20s, to succeed him as the Taliban’s supreme leader.
His death has not yet been independently confirmed by American intelligence sources.
The Taliban have yet to react to the reported death of their historic leader.
“As the movement is not a single system and comprises many factions, the situation within the Taliban will change, without anyone knowing for how long the power struggle will continue”, Sazhin said. The Taliban had released periodic writings under his name, but it remained unclear whether he was in fact the author.
The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to journalists about the situation.
Omar was born in 1959 or 1960 in a small village near the southern city of Kandahar, and had to fend for his family from an early age after his father died.
The Afghan Taliban’s political chief, Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, is in favour of negotiations while military commander Abdul Qayum Zakir is against them.
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The group was targeted for providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, which plotted and carried out the September 11 attacks. Indeed, without a commander for the faithful, Taliban members who oppose the group’s participation in any peace talks and favor the use of violence against the state to reinstate the Afghan emirate may be emboldened.
