Mullah Omar operates Taliban from his base in Pakistan: report

New York, Aug 4 (PTI) Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar is believed by Afghan and Western officials to
be running the militant organisation from his base near
Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province in Pakistan.
Mullah Omar runs a shadow government, complete with
military, religious and cultural councils, and has appointed
officials and commanders to virtually every Afghan province
and district, just as he did when he ruled Afghanistan, the
Taliban claim, the New York Times reported Monday.
He oversees his movement through a grand council of 10
members, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed told the Times in
a telephone interview.
Mullah Bradar, one of the Taliban's most senior and
ruthless commanders, who has been cited by human rights groups
for committing massacres, serves as his first deputy.
He passes down Mullah Omar's commands and makes all
military decisions, including how foreign fighters are
deployed, the paper said, citing Waheed Muzhta, a former
Taliban Foreign Ministry official who lives in Kabul and
follows the progress of the Taliban through his own research.
The Taliban even produce their own magazine, Al Somood,
published online in Arabic, where details of their leadership
structure can be found, he said.
Pakistani officials say ties between their powerful spy
agency I.S.I. and Taliban have been broken. But the Times
claims there is no doubt that the Taliban continue to use
Pakistan to train, recruit, regroup and re-supply their
movement.
The advantage of that haven in Pakistan, even beyond the
lawless tribal realms, has allowed the Taliban leadership to
exercise uninterrupted control of its insurgency through the
same clique of mullahs and military commanders who ran
Afghanistan as a theocracy and harboured Osama bin Laden until
they were driven from power in December 2001, the paper noted.
But while the Taliban may be united politically, the
insurgency remains poorly coordinated at operational and
strategic levels, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of the
N.A.T.O. force in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying by the
Times.
Taliban forces cannot hold territory, and they cannot
defeat N.A.T.O. forces in a direct fight, other N.A.T.O.
officials say. They also note that scores of senior and
midlevel Taliban commanders have been killed over the past
year, weakening the insurgents, especially in the south.
But the objectives of the war have become increasingly
uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not
feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to
outfight the U.S. and N.A.T.O. forces to defeat them — only to
outlast them in a region that is in any case their home, the
paper says.
"The Taliban are now mounting a hit-and-run war against
their enemies," said Mujahed, the spokesman. "It doesn't need
much money or weapons compared to what the foreign troops are
spending."
The Taliban's tenacity, military officials and analysts
were quoted as saying, reflects their success in maintaining a
cohesive leadership since being driven from power, their
ability to attract a continuous stream of recruits and their
advantage in having a haven across the border in Pakistan.
While the Taliban enjoy such a sanctuary, they will be
very hard to beat, military officials told the Times as the
U.S. officials stepped up pressure on Pakistan to take more
action against the Taliban and other militants groups there.
Even so, Western officials were quoted as saying the
Taliban have a steady stream of financing from Afghanistan's
opium trade, as well as from traders, mosques, jihad groups
and sympathisers in the region, and Arab countries.
The Taliban have used terrorist tactics — which include
beheadings, abductions, death threats and summary executions
of people accused of being spies — as well as a skillful
propaganda campaign, to make the insurgency seem more powerful
and omnipresent than it really is, the report said.
Some of that brutality may be attributed to the growing
influence of Al Qaeda, the paper says, adding that much of it
has by now taken root within the insurgents' ranks.
Pakistan's tribal areas along the border are now the main
pool to recruit fighters, Gen McKiernan said. Insurgent groups
in the region — Pakistani Taliban — have also become a potent
threat to the security and stability of Pakistan itself.
To avoid jeopardising their sanctuary or their hosts,
however, the Taliban have always maintained the pretence that
their leadership is based inside Afghanistan and that the
insurgency is made up entirely of Afghans, the Times says.
The two Afghan Taliban spokesmen, Mujahed and Qari Yousuf
Ahmadi, who speak regularly by telephone to local journalists,
never reveal their whereabouts. They profess sympathy for
their Muslim brothers, the Pakistani Taliban, but deny that
there is any joint leadership or unified strategy, it said.
They also claim that the Afghan Taliban broke with Al
Qaeda after the September 11 attacks.
Afghan and N.A.T.O. officials were quoted as saying that
the Taliban today operate much as the mujahedeen did in the
1980s, when they used Pakistan as their rear base, to drive
out the Soviet Army, which had invaded Afghanistan.
Many members of President Hamid Karzai's government, who
were themselves mujahedeen, told the paper that the Taliban
are even using some of the same contacts from 20 years ago,
including a well-known trader in Quetta who handles logistics,
housing and other supplies.
Meanwhile, Taliban spokesmen dismiss the idea of
negotiations or power-sharing deals with the Afghan
government.