Terrorist Where Are They Now: Mullah "Taliban Commander of the Faithful" Omar
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Those of you with really, really great long term memories probably remember the name of Mullah Omar, the sexy beast whose picture you see on the left. Omar, the spiritual and political leader of the Taliban was declared "Wanted: Dead or Alive" along with his buddy and supposed father-in-law Osama Bin Laden after 9/11. Also, in a move that must have made this Islamic fundamentalist ascetic proud, a $10 million bounty was placed on his head. So, what is Mr. Omar up to these days? In the five-plus years since then, Omar has not only managed to avoid capture, but he has even managed to rebuild the Taliban to a large extent and is now causing the U.S. and the current Afghan government all kinds of headaches. |
For most of five years after the U.S. invasion, Omar stayed low key, preferring to stay alive and quietly rebuild the Taliban. While at first, Omar's decision to maintain his support for Bin Laden in the face of the American ultimatum (i.e. give us Bin Laden or we bomb you even further into the Stone Age) alienated him from many of his more cautious Taliban comrades (such as Mullah Dadullah and Jalaluddin Haqqani), he now seems to have righted the ship and gotten everyone on board, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister of Afghanistan and an opponent of the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion.
However, after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Queda In Iraq, in June of last year, a statement in Omar's name was issued by the Taliban on June 9, 2006. Happily for all of us, Omar vowed that "Zarqawi's martyrdom will not weaken the resistance movement in Iraq. Many, many more young men can become Zarqawi.. The successors...can be even stronger than him." As events since then have proved, Omar's knowledge of politics in Iraq appears to be better than that of American leaders who claimed that Zarqawi's death could be a catalyst for a reduction in violence.
Later in the year, an audiotape of Omar was issued by Taliban representatives in Pakistan. The release of the tape was meant to coincide with the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. On the tape, the good Mullah rejected the policies of the current Afghan government and promised that the explulsion of foreigners from the country by force would be accomplished ("I am confident that the enemy will run away in degradation and embarrassment," Omar said), since "Afghans have always expelled their enemies by force and no enemy or aggressive force has left Afghanistan at its own will... They have committed aggression and we will drive them out." A more heartening development from the tape was Omar's statement that attacks against "innocent" Afghan civilians should be minimized.
Most recently, Omar became the subject of a major league pissing match between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai accusing the Pakistanis of harboring Omar and other leading Taliban leaders in a Pakistani city called Quetta. Pakistani President Musharraf responded to these accusations in particularly diplomatic fashion, calling Karzai's accusations "absolute nonsense," and telling him that he is "very angry." Musharraf also claimed that Omar is in Afghanistan now and has never been anywhere else. In any case, whether Omar is in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or San Francisco, the most important thing is that this man, who ruled one of the most vicious regimes in human history and who protected and supported the people who are responsible for the worst terrorist attacks in human history, is free and clear and causing mischief. Maybe if he had had nothing to do with these attacks but had tried to kill our presidents daddy, like a certain recently deceased Iraqi president/dictator, this would not have been the case. We here at It's Still News will continue to monitor this story and keep you posted.