Where are you, Mullah Omar? Are you dead or living? If killed, were you then in Pakistan or Afghanistan? And if you speak please tell us who killed you? He should be able to answer these questions because the reports about his demise emanated from Kabul, which cannot be trusted. There is a clear aspect of fabrication to the report of Mulla Omar's death.
First, it was a private television which said 'one Afghan intelligence source told a handful of journalists, on condition of anonymity, that Mulla Omar was killed in Pakistan by the ISI'. Then, it was Afghan secret service spokesman Nutfullah Mashal who said Mulla Omar has 'vanished from his hiding place in Quetta for two days'. The Taliban leader was said to be transported from Quetta to North Waziristan at the advice of General Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief, but the agency killed him on the way.
Of course, the report has been termed an outlandish claim bereft of reality by the Pakistan government as well as by Hamid Gul. Not that Pakistan would like to see Mulla Omar alive and kicking, but it is definitely intriguing that the report of his missing has been fabricated by the Afghan agency known for its close liaison with its Indian counterpart RAW.
That the Kabul government official gave an eye-witness account of Mulla Omar's stay in Quetta and his day-to-day movements and yet kept it a secret from the Americans who have placed a 10-million dollar bounty on his head and want him dead or alive at any cost - if this is not canard what else is it?
However, there is a mystery to this fabrication; while the Afghan government would like to see Mulla Omar dead, the Americans and their coalition partners may be having second thoughts about the value of this target under the rapidly changing Afghan scenario. A kind of contact is said to have materialised between the Americans and the Taliban top leadership courtesy the government of Germany. They are reported to be meeting for the second session after their first late last year in Qatar.
After the disappearance of Osama bin Laden from the scene, the Afghan Taliban leaders can and may think of putting up their separate identity as a nationalist movement independent of al Qaeda's goals. Given the July-2011 President Obama's deadline to begin troop drawdown the need to initiate a dialogue with the Afghan Taliban leadership and strike some kind of power-sharing deal is bound to acquire importance.
Obviously, the pro-India bureaucracy in Kabul is pleasantly disposed to any such development, and would very much wish to see that Mulla Omar is removed from the scene before he becomes indispensable for the coalition game plan in Afghanistan. Rightly then, the Afghan Taliban spokesman has dubbed the claim of Mulla Omar's death "pure propaganda".
A point not to be missed is that the Kabul claim of Mulla Omar's disappearance from Quetta and his killing at the hands of the ISI has been made when Pakistan is caught in the vortex of criticism over its perceived failure in hunting out Osama bin Laden. It is aimed at provoking the United States and its allies against Pakistan by alleging that it's the ISI that has moved the Taliban leader somewhere else from the hideout of the so-called Quetta Shura. But that's a crude attempt for the coalition forces are better equipped than the Kabul administration. If he is alive he must be somewhere in Kandahar city, leading the Taliban resistance against foreign forces.