Mullah Mohammed Omar’s rise from obscurity as a minor mujahideen commander to leadership of the extremist Taliban movement was meteoric, even by Afghan standards. From 1994, when he emerged as a Robin Hood figure in the post-civil war chaos of Kandahar, until his death in 2013 aged about 53, he was the Taliban’s undisputed head. Its largely unrecognised Islamic emirate ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until late 2001, after which Omar was not seen in public. Despite his symbolic importance to his followers, little was known of him in recent years, and his death has been announced only now.
A fanatic and recluse who hardly ever met outsiders and knew little of the world at large, he was perhaps best known as the man who gave asylum to the equally fanatical Saudi Arabian founder of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden. And it was from the safe haven of Afghanistan that Bin Laden ordered the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.
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