27 Facts About Mullah Omar

Mullah Omar died of tuberculosis in 2013, which was not revealed to the outside world until 2015.

Mullah Omar's father was Mawlawi Ghulam Nabi, his grandfather Mawlawi Muhammad Rasool, and his great-grandfather Mawlawi Baz Muhammad.

Mullah Omar's father, born in Khakrez District, was a poor, landless itinerant teacher who taught the Quran to village boys and received alms from their families.

Mullah Omar's studies were interrupted before he completed them and he did not properly earn the title "Mullah".

Mullah Omar's recruits came from madrassas located in Afghanistan and the Afghan refugee camps which were located across the border in Pakistan.

Apparently, Mullah Omar became sickened by the abusive raping of children by warlords and turned against their authority in the mountainous country of Afghanistan from 1994 onwards.

Many of those who later formed the core of the Taliban, including Mullah Omar, fought under the command of factions that were loyal to Nabi Mohammadi.

Mullah Omar's movement gained momentum through the year and he quickly gathered recruits from Islamic schools totaling 12,000 by the year's end with some Pakistani volunteers.

Mullah Omar summoned bin Laden to meet him in 1996 after bin Laden's declaration of jihad against the United States the same year.

In 2000, Mullah Omar ordered bin Laden to not attack the United States, after advisors warned him that bin Laden might be planning to do so.

In July 1999, Mohammed Mullah Omar issued a decree in favor of the preservation of the Bamiyan Buddha statues.

On 5 December 2001, Mullah Omar held a meeting in Kandahar of top Taliban leaders and asked them what they wanted to do.

Mullah Omar had very little active involvement in the Taliban from the end of 2001.

Mullah Omar sent a cassette tape to the rest of the Taliban leadership in Quetta in 2003, reaffirming that Obaidullah was the supreme leader and naming who should be on the leadership shura.

Mullah Omar sent at least one other cassette tape, in 2007, but stopped that practice after the messenger was briefly detained in Pakistan, and thereafter messages were just relayed person-to-person.

Mullah Omar's hideout was connected to underground irrigation channels that ran up into the hills.

In 2019, the Taliban released a picture of the supposed hideout where Mullah Omar spent the last years of his life.

Some believed that Mullah Omar hid in the mountains of southern Afghanistan for over a year before he fled to neighboring Pakistan in late 2002.

In January 2007, it was reported that Mullah Omar made his "first exchange with a journalist since he went into hiding" in 2001 with Muhammad Hanif via email and courier.

In November 2009, The Washington Times claimed that Mullah Omar, assisted by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, had moved back to Karachi in October.

In January 2011, The Washington Post, citing a report which was published by the Eclipse Group, a privately operated intelligence network that may be contracted by the CIA, stated that Mullah Omar had a heart attack on 7 January 2011.

On 23 May 2011, TOLO News in Afghanistan quoted unnamed sources as saying that Mullah Omar had been killed by ISI two days earlier.

In 2012, it was revealed that an individual claiming to be Mullah Omar sent a letter to President Barack Obama in 2011, expressing slight interest in peace talks.

In December 2014, acting Afghan intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil stated that he was not sure "whether Mullah Omar is alive or dead".

On 29 July 2015, Abdul Hassib Seddiqi, the spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, said "officially" that Mohammed Mullah Omar had died at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, in April 2013, and the office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed that information on his death was "credible".

Many Islamist and jihadist movements expressed condolences following Mullah Omar's death, including Ajnad al-Kavkaz, Ansar Al-Furqan, Islamic Front's Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish Muhammad, Ansar al-Din Front, Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna, Jaish al Ummah, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Caucasus Emirate, Jaish al-Islam, Al-Nusra Front, AQAP, AQIM, and Al-Shabaab.

Mullah Omar refused to and never made a pilgrimage to Mecca, despite receiving a personal invitation from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to do so in 1998.