Taliban Chief Omar Flees

QUETTA, Pakistan, Friday, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has appointed a long-time confidant as his new deputy and eventual successor, a close ally of the Islamic militia’s leadership said yesterday. A Taliban official said their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had fled his stronghold in the city of Kandahar for a more secure hideaway, leaving a deputy in his place. “Mullah Omar has shifted to an unknown place for security reasons,” Mullah Sayed Mohammed Hoqqani, a Taliban security official in charge at the border town of Spin Boldak near Pakistan, said. Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani has been handed the task of leading the Taliban should anything happen to Omar, according to Abu Abdul Rehman, a commander of the Pakistan-based Harakat ul-Mujahedin Islamic militant group. Rehman denied reports that Omar had left Kandahar, one of the last remaining Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. “He is in the same place and still monitoring his security,” said Rehman. “It is not possible (for US forces) to reach him.” “Mullah Mohammed Omar has selected Mullah Usmani as his successor,” Rehman said. “Mullah Omar and Usmani were school fellows. They both fought againt the Russians. “They both started together at the Jamia Farooq Aama” madrassa (religious school) in southern Kandahar province. “When they completed their studies they started teaching together.” Rehman said Usmani, like Omar, detested publicity and had only ever given one interview more than four years ago. He was a man of simple tastes who only ever ate bread and fruit. The Harakat ul-Mujahedin, which Washington lists as a terrorist organisation, is one of several Muslim militant groups fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir. But it is closely linked to the Taliban, and has sent its militants to fight and train alongside the militia in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the British International Development Secretary Clare Short has expressed the Downing Street’s frustration over the deployment of 6,000 elite troops in Afghanistan. “We and the French were ready to go, and others talking about going, to be there briefly while order is established and a new government is established, and there has been delay,” she told BBC radio. “That is regrettable,” above all for the humanitarian situation. The Americans seem keener on using troops to track down bin Laden and al-Qaeda than guarding humanitarian convoys. “What we see in Afghanistan is that the American government wants to go it alone,” a university academic Ferdinand said. Ends