One or more of the Taliban 5 that Obama traded out from Gitmo for Bowe Bergdahl is likely taken control and replaced Mullah Omar, even from the feeble detention in Qatar.
Directly after the attacks of 9/11, the CIA contacted Mullah Omar and said turn over Usama bin Ladin and the United States will not invade Afghanistan, Omar refused, so the war began against the Taliban. (factoid).
As ISIS, Islamic State has moved into Afghanistan and has declared the region a target, Taliban fighters have defected to ISIS. Meanwhile, no one has seen Mullah Omar in at least two years, yet some Afghanistan officials have made some declarations that he is dead. The Taliban has recently made some aggressive and deadly advances in designated Afghanistan territory while there is chatter that the terror group could merge with ISIS.
Given this possibility, it is curious that Mullah Omar has been declared dead, again.
Taliban splinter group claims Mullah Omar was killed 2 yrs ago
In part:
The Afghanistan Islamic Movement Fidai Mahaz’s spokesperson Qari Hamza, said the reclusive Omar was killed by commanders Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansoor and Gull Agha in July 2013.
Hamza said his group has evidence to prove its claims, Khaama Press reported on Thursday.
Afghanistan’s spy agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had said in November last year that Omar had possibly died. There are also reports that the Afghan Taliban has split into three factions.
NDS spokesperson Hasib Sediqi told the media in November last year that the two Taliban factions are led by Mullah Qayum Zakir and Mullah Agha, while the third comprises “neutral” militant leaders.
Reports last year had also suggested that Omar had given his old friend and deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, the authority to make decisions on his behalf regarding the peace process with the government.
Some officials in the presidential palace have claimed Omar is in custody of Pakistani security forces in the port city of Karachi.
Aimal Faizi, spokesperson for former president Hamid Karzai, said this information was shared by US secretary of state John Kerry. More of the story here.
Meanwhile, a document has been located, written in Urdu that spells out the plan ISIS has for targets in Afghanistan and even India. ISIS plans an end of the world operation.
Reported by Sara Carter via USAToday: The document was reviewed by three U.S. intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. They asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The undated document, titled “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror. It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaeda to join the group and says the Islamic State’s leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”
“Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah,” it proclaims. “This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”
By Graeme Wood: Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.) Much more detail here.
Published by WaPo in part: The Afghan Taliban recently published a 5,000-word biography hailing its leader, whose whereabouts remain largely unknown. It maintains that Mullah Omar, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head, is alive, well, and in charge.
According to SITE Intelligence group, the lengthy paean comes at a conspicuous moment, given both the political efforts being made to curtail the Taliban’s Afghan insurgency as well as the growing antagonism between the Taliban and the Islamic State, the leading extremist Islamist militants of the moment.
As an aside, negotiations by the new Afghan leadership is still in some peace talks with the Taliban.
NYT: An Afghan government delegation met with Taliban officials in the Pakistani capital for the first time on Tuesday, in a significant effort to open formal peace negotiations, according to Afghan, Pakistani and Western officials.
The Islamabad meeting, brokered by Pakistani officials after months of intense effort by President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan to get them more centrally involved in the peace process, was the most promising contact between the two warring sides in years. And it followed a series of less formal encounters between various Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in other countries in recent months.
