Mullah Omar Father of Taliban Died inside of Pakistan in Karachi

Even in the prime of his life, at the height of his power, it was difficult for anyone to learn about, much less meet, Mullah Omar. He was simply the most reclusive, secretive leader in the world.

Word of his death Wednesday confirmed just how much of a phantom the father of the Taliban had become. Afghan officials said Omar has been dead for "a couple years."

"I can confirm that Mullah Omar is dead," the spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security Abdul Hassib Sediqi told NBC News. "According to our intelligence Mullah Omar has died in a hospital in Pakistan a couple years ago."

Mullah Omar was rarely seen or heard. It's believed he was photographed only twice. But his legend was real enough.

He was famously one-eyed, having lost his right eye to a shrapnel injury, one of four he sustained fighting Soviet troops who occupied Afghanistan in the 1990s. He was so adept with an RPG rocket launcher against Soviet armor that he rose quickly.

Mullah Omar is shown in this undated photo from the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. National Counterterrorism Center / Reuters

His experience as a Mujahadeen commander gave him the confidence to fight another superpower, the United States.

It also taught him to shun any easily traceable means of communication. He sent messages through trusted couriers on tiny, rolled-up pieces of paper, avoiding mobile phones, satellite phones, video recordings —anything that might identify him to an enemy.

The Taliban claim he was born in 1960 to a religious family who lost at least four members fighting the Soviets and Americans. His years fighting Soviet troops in the depths of Afghan winters led to ill health. Reports about his death suggest he had hepatitis, as well as chest and heart trouble.

Omar was one of the world's most wanted men — the U.S. government put a $10 million bounty on his head — because of his leadership of the Taliban insurgency against U.S. and coalition troops following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban say his uncle was killed on the first day of the American bombardment in October 2001.

But before that he was a head of government, an enforcer and a spiritual leader.

The "Commander of the Faithful," as he became known, created the Taliban in the early 1990s to fight the warlords and the chaos tearing Afghanistan apart after the retreat of Soviet troops. Before the final victory in Kabul, Omar took a shroud thought to have been worn by the Prophet Mohammad and draped himself in it, receiving a rapturous response from fighters who, from then on, saw him as a spiritual and military leader."SIMPLE DRESS, SIMPLE FOOD, SIMPLE TALK, FRANKNESS AND INFORMALITY ARE HIS NATURAL HABITS"

He headed the Taliban council that invited Osama bin Laden, a fellow fighter against the Soviets, to be a guest of the nation in Jalalabad. After 9/11, the council met to decide how to respond to the U.S. demand to hand over bin Laden.

It decided — narrowly, it's believed — to refuse to give him up. That decision led to the overthrow of Omar's government just weeks later. He fled, first to Kandahar and then out of the country.

Little is known of his life after that. Afghan leaders and military commanders say they found it impossible to arrest or kill a man they couldn't identify. It's almost certain he lived in hiding in Pakistan, like bin Laden — probably in the city of Quetta, where he directed the council that led the insurgency against U.S. troops.

It's believed Omar lived humbly, rarely seeing visitors outside his close inner circle. Earlier this year, the Taliban produced a biography of him, claiming he had no home and almost no money but "a special sense of humor."

Mullah Omar in his Youth While in Training with ISI against Russians 

Any sense of humor was lost on a world that saw only a humorless, ruthless Taliban government that banned television, dancing and kite-flying, whose Ministry of Vice and Virtue patrolled the streets beating women for showing an inch of flesh in public.

This undated file photo reportedly shows Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. ASSOCIATED PRESS, file

But some, especially Omar's fellow ethnic Pashtuns, yearn for the stability he brought as Afghanistan fails to emerge cleanly from decades of corruption and conflict.

For many in the West, Omar was a cartoon villain, one-eyed and blind to the modern world. For his followers, he was, as the Taliban described him recently, "a unique and charismatic personality":

"Contrary to (other) leaders, he does not want to show off. He is not eager or excited to speak if it is unnecessary to do so. And if needed, his words ... are keen, perceptive and logical. He has adopted a simple and plain style in all aspects of his life. Simple dress, simple food, simple talk, frankness and informality are his natural habits."

Omar had been reported dead many times in recent years. The rumors began when he failed to send audio messages, although they had never been frequent. The only evidence he still was alive was an occasional statement on a Taliban website, the most recent being a comment, purported to be from him, supporting recent peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Reports he died years ago cast serious doubt on the authenticity of those statements.

The latest claim that Omar was dead is equally contentious. It's claimed he died in Quetta two years ago, probably of hepatitis. A senior member of the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan said, "I am 100 percent sure Mullah Omar is dead, but will not share other information until we have chosen his successor."

Who will that be? There appears to be a succession battle, between Omar's eldest son, Yaqoob, and his deputy Mullah Mansour. Even this is disputed: Some say the reports are part of a CIA plot to destabilize the organization at a crucial moment in peace talks and to encourage factional fighting and defections from the Taliban. Several commanders have left this year to join ISIS.

In life and in death, like bin Laden, Omar was hated and hunted by the West while an inspiration and an icon to generations of his followers — a man who stood up to both the major superpowers of the modern era and who refused to betray the guest of his nation to one.

source: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mullah-omar-dead-father-afghanistans-taliban-died-pakistan-n400451

Military courts are not for Taliban Terrorist they will be Used Against You for Sure.

Why Military courts are being Asked for ???  when there is FCR Frontier Crimes Regulations in FATA  ( In Human with God Like Power to Bureaucracy in FATA that can be Applied to Tribal Areas where most of Terrorists are ) , and also Protection of Pakistan Ordinance and Many Brutal Laws and Even Article 245 which has Implemented Martial law in Pakistan in Some Areas ?. 

These Military Courts is beginning of End of Pakistan Federation it seems , and these Will be Used for Political Powers and Civil Society and also against Intellectuals and some Freedom Seekers who will Labeled as Terrorists for sure . 

The Punjabi Establishment is not Interested in Eradicating Taliban for sure as Mullah Military Alliance Which it made Itself as Means to Conquer AF-Pak and has made Jihadi Economy as Most Profitable Business with almost 5 Trillion Rupees Flowing Towards Punjab while the Blood is being run like Rivers in Pakhtunkhwa + FATA and Baluchistan .

Gul Bukhari


The agencies are not interested in convictions of extremist guys.” Every week, the prosecutors would get a visit from ISI and military intelligence officers to discuss the terrorism cases, to find out how many were being tried, how many pending. “And always they’d say, ‘Why are you going after good Muslims?’ or ‘What is the case against [Lashkar-e-Janghvi leader] Akram Lahori? He is working for Islam. Why are you working against him?’” – Buriro, prosecutor of Sindh ATC to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on prosecuting terrorists.

“Buriro produced the video in open court. He cross-examined the defendants’ witness, an ISI colonel. The prosecutors withstood anonymous phone threats; they turned down bribes to let the case return to the regular courts, where it would fade away. The security apparatus was especially furious that uniformed men were being tried in the anti-terrorism court. ‘During the process of the case I was threatened by the naval agencies. I was threatened by the ISI,’ Buriro said. The prosecutors were excoriated for not damaging evidence in the case as instructed.” - Buriro to CPJ on his prosecution of Rangers men for shooting to death unarmed Sarfaraz Shah in a park in Karachi in 2011. They were caught on camera and the case became a publicized one.

CPJ’s full report on the roots of impunity in Pakistan is a horrifying, heart-stopping indictment of primarily the military and its intelligence agencies. Political parties and governments, in particular the MQM, are not spared either, but the clear illustration of how intelligence agencies perpetrate atrocities and prevent justice through civilian law enforcement and courts is petrifying. 

The blood runs cold reading how journalist Mukarram Khan Aatif reporting on a Taliban hideout being only two kilometers from the Salala Checkpost on the Pak-Afghan border was murdered. 

Mukarram’s reports on Deewa Radio were pointing to the possible reason the Americans attacked the Salala checkpost killing 24 Pakistan Army soldiers. His reports came too close to exposing the military-militant nexus, and the military’s double games. 

The people of the country were rightly angry the Americans had killed innocent soldiers of the Pakistan Army, unprovoked. However, the people of Pakistan were to be prevented from understanding what actually led to the accident.

Yet, in response to the massacre of 140 children in the APC Peshawar attack, the most significant anti-terror measures announced by the Prime Minister, and acquiesced to by the rest of the parliamentary parties, is to cede ‘justice’ to the military and to lift the moratorium on death penalty for terrorists. Both were dictated by the military.

‘All day on Wednesday, according to a participant of the meeting held at the PM House, the military leadership stressed the need to set up military courts as the “(civilian) justice system had failed to deliver.” – front page of Dawn, December 25th.

 In light of the CPJ report, which merely acts to confirm what many of us have known, are military courts then the solution? Is the military the solution or part of the problem? The narrative being built for the justification of military courts is wrong: that the civilian judges and law enforcement agencies are too weak, inept, and cowardly to convict terrorists. 

All, I repeat all, terror groups, be they of the Taliban ilk (whom the military has for sometime turned against) or sectarian in nature like the SSP and LeJ, were formed by the military for its various domestic and foreign security policies.

 And the police’s and courts’ intimidation by the military intelligence agencies is in no small part responsible for the broken civilian justice system. One cannot exonerate the political elite for not trying to strengthen the policing and courts systems, but in the face of the powerful army, and with having to watch over their shoulders’ every moment for the next coup, one cannot blame them entirely either.

The decision to lift the moratorium on death penalty also reeks of vengeance and of being seen to be tough on terrorists. 

However, the manner in which non-terror related crimes or ordinary civilians are being charged and tried in anti-terror courts, bodes ill for the cause of justice. People like Imran Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman have been charged under the Anti Terrorism Act, so vaguely is terrorism defined in the act. 

How then, is lifting the moratorium a wise step? The case of Shafqat Hussain perhaps is the ideal example of the flaws existing in the system, due to which such knee jerk measures really only serve to right one wrong with another.

 He was sentenced to death when he was 14 years old. An extract from Reprieve’s report reads, ‘(Hussain) is set to be among the first executed as Pakistan lifts its moratorium on the death penalty.… although Pakistan’s Prime Minister has said those to be executed will be “terrorists,” Shafqat was convicted of involuntary manslaughter (by an ATC), what the courts described as an accidental death in the course of a kidnapping. 

The conviction was based on a forced ‘confession’ extracted from him after nine days of police torture – he was beaten, and the scars are still visible where he was burned with cigarettes. The case has nothing to do with terrorism.”

How does killing an innocent person, already a terrible victim of the broken justice system of this country, serve the purpose of fighting terrorism? What is really required is to provide training to police in forensics, evidence preservation, framing of charges etc.; provision of foolproof protection to judges, lawyers, prosecutors and witnesses; depoliticizing and making independent the police service. 

Yes, these are long term measures, but the Prime Minister’s plan does not even mention this as a long-term goal. Instead, it delegitimizes and disenfranchises the civilian setup further by ceding all control to the military.

The important issue here is that even if the decision is now done, the parliament must debate very carefully and at length the issue of military courts and civilian oversight and ultimate authority over these courts. 

Even more importantly, the government and all political parties must at the same time work on a war footing to fix the justice system and lay the groundwork for bringing back terror cases under their own purview. 

The military must also acknowledge its own role in this terrible tragedy that Pakistan is today, and begin to make amends and support the civilian democratic project as at least one act of penance.

The writer is a human rights worker and freelance columnist. She can be contacted at gulnbukhari@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter

source: http://nation.com.pk/columns/28-Dec-2014/military-courts