3 minutes agoMullah Omari, one-eyed terrorist leader, had lived only a few meters from the US base
Periskopi(7 years ago)
(7 years ago)The one - eyed leader of the Taliban, Müllah Omar, lived for years within an extremely close distance with American bases in Afghanistan, and is even taught that American troops once raided the house he was hiding but had failed to find the secret room built for the rebel leader, it is said in claims [...]
This exposes a spectacular failure of American intelligence, which had offered Omar's head $10m after the 11 September U.S. attacks.
Senior officials repeatedly suggested that, like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Pakistan and even died there. Translation Periscope from The Guardian.
While statements issued in his name were taking over the world, he was living a solitary life, refusing visits from his family, and making notes in a invented language and often hiding from American patrols in irrigation tunnels, Periscopi translates.
In fact, Omar is said to have regularly heard the BBC in the evening, but has rarely commented on the news, even on the death of bin Laden, the man who after the 11 September attacks practically ended the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.
Dutch journalist and writer Bette Dam, who had reported from Afghanistan since 2006, worked on that biography entitled “Searching for the enemy” for more than five years. It was published in Dutch last month, and some of the findings have also been translated into English.
He shows that Omar's shelter was his driver Abdul Samad Ustaz's home, which was then doing the taxi driver's work.
Ustaz had built a secret room in the shape of L in his building. His family had not told him about the identity of the guest, only that he was a high profile Taliban, and that they would be killed if they told anyone.
Although the house had been near Afghan control centers when American troops were building the FOB Lagman base in 2004, only hundreds of meters away from it, Omar had decided to stay there.
Mullah Omar became ill in 2013, coughing and vomiting, and then losing his appetite for food. He had refused any medical treatment and died on April 23, 2013.
Omar had buried him that very night, and had recorded the funeral to tell Omar's son and his half brother. They had seen him since 2001 but had traveled to Ustaz's house to open the tomb to be convinced it was him. /Periscopi
