Mullah Omar sought to stabilize Afghanistan under Taliban rule

He spoke little and could communicate only in his mother tongue, Pashto. He was largely unaware of diplomacy and world politics and couldn’t figure out the implications of international condemnation directed at the Taliban’s strict policies, such as the public executions of alleged murderers and severing of the limbs of thieves, banning education of girls over the age of 9, placing restrictions on working women and ordering the destruction of the ancient carved Buddhas of Bamiyan.

I asked him why he gave refuge to the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, despite knowing that it might provoke the United States to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban from power, as it did after the Sept. 11 attacks. He replied that it would have been improper for him as a Muslim and an Afghan to violate tradition by turning away someone like bin Laden, who not only needed help but also participated in the “jihad” against the Soviet army and assisted the Afghan mujahedeen and their widows and orphans with his money.

Some stories at the time speculated that Omar protected bin Laden because they entered into an alliance by marrying each other’s daughters. This wasn’t true: each of them had four wives, but bin Laden’s were all Arab, and Omar’s spouses were Afghan.

Omar’s origins were humble. His poverty-stricken family migrated from Kandahar, where he was born, to Urozgan and then back to Kandahar in search of a better livelihood when he was young. Finally his family lived in a one-room mud house in the village of Singesar in Kandahar’s Maiwand district.

That house stood in sharp contrast to the new, spacious bungalow in Kandahar’s Baba Sahib neighborhood where Omar lived and the stately Governor’s House from which he ruled Afghanistan. When he first took office, he would sit on a carpet in a large central room in the spacious house; later, on an elevated platform surrounded by telephones and a fax machine. Eventually, he learned to use satellite phones to give instructions to officials all over Afghanistan.

At one meeting, I observed how he ran his Islamic emirate. Surrounded by two dozen top Taliban leaders, a little-known commander walked in unannounced. The man asked Omar for money to repair his vehicle and feed his fighters. Omar signaled to his assistant, who took out a key from Omar’s right pocket, opened a box full of currency and took out a fistful of Afghanis. He delivered the money to the waiting commander, who left as quickly as he had come. I asked Omar why his government’s finance department didn’t handle this task, but he said he wanted to encourage ordinary Taliban fighters to come to him for their needs. Besides, he added, the box was his “bait ul mal,” the royal treasury disbursing public funds, functioning just as it did in medieval times during early Islamic rule. 

When I asked him how he felt about using modern technology despite his conservative beliefs, Omar told me he did it out of necessity. He drove a luxury Land Rover but traveled to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, just once during his six-year rule.

Omar only once gave a speech to the nation. He refused to be photographed, claiming it was un-Islamic. Few Afghans knew what he looked like, and this helped him avoid capture for years, despite the $10 million price put on his head by the United States. Only a couple of Omar’s images are available. American forces initially printed pictures of the wrong man on leaflets and matchboxes that were air-dropped and distributed in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan during a decade-long manhunt. 

Taliban leaders finally acknowledged Omar’s death on July 30, although they have not yet disclosed any details about the circumstances of his death or where he was buried. His aides kept Omar’s death a secret for more than two years because they were concerned about triggering a battle for succession that might demoralize the Taliban fighters battling the remaining U.S.-led NATO troops and Afghan security forces. They were right. The Taliban movement is facing strife in its ranks, and the issue of succession is still unresolved, although Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour has been publicly named the new leader.

In April of this year, the Taliban leadership published a short biography of Omar highlighting his achievements. It raised eyebrows, and many wondered about its timing. Some asked if the Taliban was trying to assert Omar’s status as the Taliban’s amir ul momineen to counter the challenge posed to him in Afghanistan by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims to be the caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Once the Taliban belatedly confirmed that Omar died on April 23, 2013, the reasons became clear. Though the Taliban said Omar’s official biography was issued to commemorate the 19th anniversary of his appointment as amir ul momineen, it seems this was done to coincide with the second anniversary of his death.

Rahimullah Yusufzai is a veteran Pakistani journalist who has covered Afghanistan’s conflicts at close quarters for, among others, Time magazine and the BBC.