Taliban founder on the line

2004-07-08 13:17

Kabul - Afghan intelligence agents have spoken with fugitive Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar after commandeering a satellite phone being used by his top aide, an Afghan official claimed on Thursday.

Mullah Omar, along with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has escaped a US-led dragnet which now numbers some 20 000 coalition soldiers since the ousting of his Islamic fundamentalist regime in late 2001.

A man believed to be Omar's aide, Mullah Sakhi Dad Mujahid, was captured on Tuesday while carrying a satellite telephone containing the phone numbers of top members of the ousted fundamentalist regime, Kandahar intelligence chief Abdullah Laghmanai said.

"We contacted Mullah Omar by Mullah Mujahid's phone," he said.

"But when he (Omar) realised it was not his man, he cut off the phone."

Mullah Mujahid, as he is locally known, was arrested during a raid in Dara-i-Noor, some 70km north of southern Kandahar city.

The area is in the rugged border area between south-central Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces and known to US military officials as the "Taliban heartland."

Mujahid served as Mullah Omar's secretary under the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, according to Laghmanai.

"Currently he was serving as Mullah Omar's military assistant," he said.

Omar ignoring "strange numbers"

Kandahar military spokesperson General Abdul Wasay confirmed the arrest of the senior Taliban official.

"The arrest of Mullah Mujahid will pacify Taliban's activities in the area," where he was captured, he said, without elaborating on further details.

Laghmanai said that subsequent efforts to contact Omar on the phone again had been unsuccessful as the one-eyed Taliban boss refuses to answer phone calls "from strange numbers".

"Maybe Omar has found out that his friend is under our control," he said. "He doesn't answer his telephone."

More than two and a half years after Mullah Omar's fundamentalist regime was toppled by a US-led military offensive for harbouring bin Laden, both men are still on the loose despite massive international efforts to capture them.

Thousands of troops under the leadership of the United States have been in Afghanistan to hunt militants including Omar and bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the 9/11 attacks on America.

Laghmanai claimed that intelligence reports as well as information received from Mujahid suggested that Mullah Omar is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas near Kandahar and close to the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

"The information Mujahid provided, and also our intelligence, suggests that Omar is in Pakistan's tribal areas," he said.

- AFP