US and Afghan Intel Services Investigating Reports of Taliban Leader Mullah Omar‘s Death

Rod Nordland

July 29, 2015

Reports of Taliban Leader Mullah Omar’s Death Spur Afghan Inquiry

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government said on Wednesday that it was investigating new reports that Mullah Muhammad Omar, the elusive leader of theTaliban, is dead.

The reports are the latest in a chorus of unsourced or anonymous claims. The BBC had earlier on Wednesday quoted unnamed government officials confirming Mullah Omar’s death, and the Afghan president’s office convened a news conference at which Sayed Zafar Hashemi, a spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said he had ordered an inquiry into the claims.

In recent days, breakaway insurgents have said that Mullah Omar, who has not been seen in public since before the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, died, and that it is well known among the Taliban that he was buried in Zabul Province.

Mr. Hashemi said at the news conference, “We have seen those reports, but we are still in the process of assessing those reports.”

A number of Pakistani news organizations, which are notoriously unreliable, have recently published similar claims.

Rumors of Mullah Omar’s death have surfaced periodically over the years, always denied by Taliban officials, who said he remained incommunicado for protection against American airstrikes and raids.

Last week, a group known as Feday-e-Mahaz, a Taliban splinter group, made the death claims, while The News, a Pakistani newspaper, wrote that Mullah Omar’s son Yaqoub would be replacing him. Commentators for that newspaper have also blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the C.I.A. for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

Afghan officials have previously killed off their nemesis, in reports at least, with the spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate for Security, Lutfullah Mashal, having been quoted in 2011 as saying that the Pakistani intelligence service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, had killed Mullah Omar after United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden.

American officials in Washington said on Wednesday that they were looking into the reports, but had no immediate comment.