WASHINGTON/KABUL, 6 January — Taleban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar seems to have given US-led forces the slip once again, Afghan intelligence said yesterday after talks with formerly pro-Taleban forces failed to produce his surrender. The apparent escape is another blow for US forces who thought they were close to capturing the hard-line cleric, after they lost track of their other key target: Osama Bin Laden.
"The team we had sent to Helmand province to hold talks with pro-Taleban commanders reported to us that Mulla Omar has escaped from Baghran and the whole province of Helmand," intelligence official Nasratullah Nasrat told reporters. The commander of the US campaign, Gen. Tommy Franks, had said earlier that US intelligence believed Omar and his remaining fighters were near Baghran and Deh Rahwood in south-central Afghanistan.
Asked on Friday where Bin Laden was, Franks said: "We don’t know." Hopes the one-eyed Omar had been cornered and faced imminent capture were further raised Friday by Hamid Karzai, leader of Afghanistan’s new interim government, who said he hoped talks would lead to Omar’s surrender. Also yesterday, the US military in Afghanistan took control of Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef, the outspoken former Taleban ambassador to Pakistan, a senior US official said in Washington. The official told reporters that Zaeef, who was deported by Pakistan to Afghanistan, had become the most senior official of the vanquished Taleban movement now among 307 Taleban and Al-Qaeda "detainees" being held by the American military.
"After the termination of diplomatic relations with the Taleban government, Zaeef ceased to have diplomatic status," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan in Islamabad. "He was asked to leave the country, which he did." Zaeef’s family said Thursday that Pakistani security officials had picked up Zaeef from his Islamabad residence and taken him away for questioning. The Washington Post reported a high-ranking Al-Qaeda training officer had also been captured by Pakistani forces and was already in US hands.
The United Nations envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi said he was "very concerned" about "credible" reports of up to 52 civilians killed in the latest of a series of apparent US bombing blunders. Despite the report of civilian casualties in the latest US bombing raids and disquiet among Karzai’s UN-backed interim government at possible mishits, the new US envoy said the airstrikes would go on.
"Messages I have received, based on my telephone discussions with Afghan leaders, is that they are very supportive of the campaign," envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said in Kabul yesterday. "We do not like to bomb. It’s with reluctance and with a great deal of concern about the possible civilian implications or costs," he said. "But we also understand that these people, remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Taleban leaders, are dangerous so we will have to continue with the campaign until we have achieved our objective."
