The Taliban's founder hid right under the nose of the U.S. military for years, new report says

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban, spent the last years of his life hiding in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2013, a new report details. The U.S. government and the CIA, meanwhile, long believed that Omar had fled to Pakistan, reports The Wall Street Journal, which exclusively reviewed the findings from the Zomia Center, a research group in New York affiliated with the nonpartisan think tank New America.

Omar initially went into hiding after U.S. military forces expelled the Taliban from Afghanistan following the post-9/11 invasion of the country. The consensus among U.S. intelligence experts and officials at the time was that the Taliban leader made his way into Pakistan, where they believed he remained until his death in 2013. But through interviews with "previously inaccessible sources," including members of the Afghan government, the Afghan intelligence agency, the Taliban, and Omar's bodyguard, the Zomia Center discovered that he did not leave Afghanistan.

At times, the report says, Omar was right under the nose of U.S. military and intelligence officers. Special forces once searched the house of Omar's driver, where Omar was secretly living, but they did not scour the room in which he was hiding. Later, he was living at another safe house when the U.S. established a new permanent military base just a few minutes' walk away. Omar moved yet again — this time to a hiding spot that was only a few miles away from another, smaller U.S. base. The report said that Afghan intelligence agents would often try to question Omar's driver, but they were repeatedly blocked by provincial officials.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Afghan government released a statement on Twitter denying the veracity of the report, while former CIA Director David Petraeus, told the Journal that it was "unlikely" Omar remained in Afghanistan. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.