Former Taliban leader lived under US nose
A biography of one-eyed former Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar says he lived near a US base in Afghanistan for years, not in Pakistan as US officials have said, exposing Western failure to track him down, but a spokesman for the Afghan president described the claim as "delusional".
In her book "Op Zoek Naar De Vijand (Searching for an Enemy)", Dutch journalist Bette Dam says Omar never hid in neighbouring Pakistan.
He lived in hiding just three miles from a major US military base in his home Afghan province of Zabul, said Dam, who says she spent five years interviewing Taliban members for the book.
Omar's hardline Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, and has waged an anti-government insurgency since then.
Omar, who delegated effective Taliban leadership after 2001, appears to have acted as more of a spiritual leader, according to the book, and the militant movement kept his death in 2013 secret for two years.
He was wanted in the United States for providing a safe haven for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the United States and lived in hiding in Pakistan, and Washington had placed a $10 million bounty on his head.
US forces even searched his accommodation on one occasion, but failed to find Omar's hiding place, Dam told Reuters.
"The book underlines the failure of Western intelligence at a time when US and Taliban officials are holding peace talks to end the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan," she said.
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