‘Looking for the Enemy’: Journalist Bette Dam’s epic search for Taliban founder Mullah Omar

In July 2015, the Afghan authorities (and others) announced that Mullah Omar was dead. He had apparently died two years earlier in a hospital in Karachi where he was being treated for tuberculosis, claimed the Afghan secret service. The announcement caused confusion at first as there had been regular reports of Mullah Omar’s death since 2001, which were always seen as false. I was cautious too, when asked by various media to comment on the news, as the Taliban did not initially issue any response to the announcement.

A few weeks after the first report of Omar’s death, Mullah Mansour, who had now been appointed his successor, confirmed that the former leader had indeed died two years earlier. He also confirmed the cause of death but said that Mullah Omar had died not in Karachi but in Afghanistan, where he had remained after 2001. Mansour explained that the Taliban leadership had kept the “tragic news” secret for two years because at the time of Omar’s death senior Taliban thought they would be able to defeat the Americans in Afghanistan for good in 2014.

The state of affairs surrounding Mullah Omar’s death revealed once again how little the Americans (and I too) really knew about Omar; indeed, many senior figures in the Taliban were in a similar position.

For a long time, it looked as if I would have to end my book on Mullah Omar with this brief description of his final years. I sent my manuscript to the publisher in the summer of 2018. I agreed with them that while they were editing the book, I would have one last go at finding out more details about Mullah Omar’s life after 2001.

The name Abdul Jabbar Omari had regularly come up in the many conversations I had had about the Taliban leader over the years. Many people said he was the man who had assisted Mullah Omar after he disappeared from Kandahar in 2001. After Omar’s death, Omari had gone into hiding in Pakistan and later in Zabul, the province where he had been born, but he had been arrested in 2017 and it seemed he had probably been held in the notorious Bagram Prison near Kabul ever since. Perhaps he was the crucial link in Mullah Omar’s story. I decided to try my luck once more by travelling to Kabul to see if I could talk to Omari there.

In Dubai, on my way to Afghanistan, I met the man who was working on a biography of Mullah Omar for the Taliban. According to him, Omari was not in Bagram after all; he was being held under house arrest in Kabul by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan secret service.

Once in Kabul, I managed to arrange an interview with an NDS general who said he would reveal where Omari was being held. As I sat in his office, our conversation soon took a surprising turn. The general was brief: the secret service was holding Omari, but he would not introduce me because I shouldn’t waste my time talking to him since Omari didn’t know anything.

The NDS general then told me in detail what the secret service had found out about Mullah Omar’s final years. This account was completely contrary to what the Americans and Afghan authorities had been saying up to now. The general told me that the NDS knew for quite some time that Mullah Omar had never visited Pakistan after 2001, or perhaps only briefly – just across the border from Zabul. But he had spent all those years in Zabul Province. He had lived in a small village where he did not dare venture out onto the street.

Mullah Omar continued to lead his movement by sending out cassette tapes. Later on, he used written instructions that were circulated by a messenger. “You should speak to that messenger, Mullah Azizullah,” the general told me. This was the same name I had heard years earlier from Mutasim.

Of course I would have loved to talk to Mullah Azizullah, but that wasn’t a realistic option. The man, who had married the sister of Mullah Omar’s second wife, was now a Taliban in Helmand Province, which was often the scene of fierce fighting. All lines purporting to lead to Omari seemed to be dead ends. Intrigued by the N.D.S. general’s remarkable information, I decided to travel to Zabul with a stopover in Kandahar. Who knows, perhaps I would discover something once I got there.

In Kandahar, I spoke to various people in order to prepare properly for a possible trip to Zabul. Many of them advised me not to go, saying this province was too risky. But soon enough something came up. I remembered a local journalist from Zabul and called him. “Oh, Betty Dam, the famous author who wrote the Karzai book! I will come to you immediately!” He was at the Indian consulate and raced to my house with my Karzai book in his hand. I signed it and he told me that he had decided to study Political Science after reading my book.

I was very touched, and we chatted about how I do journalism. “What brings you here?” he asked. I explained my plan to him, choosing my words carefully: I was searching for Mullah Omar’s hiding place. The journalist didn’t really get why I was so secretive. “That story is out already in Zabul. Everyone there knows,” he said. I let him speak. He gave me the gist of the story.

Mullah Omar had been staying in Zabul at two locations, and he was able to point to evidence. Omari had been arrested by the local Zabul authorities, the journalist had met him, and Omari had told the story to the local authorities when he was flown to the Kabul safe house.

I did have a small local article about this arrest on my laptop, with a picture of Omari. “Is this him?” I asked, and the journalist nodded. “He’s now in Kabul.” The local journalist put me in contact with Atta Jan, a former administrator in the province. Apparently, he knew more about Omari’s arrest and was even supposed to have spoken to the man after he was detained. That turned out to be correct. We found Atta Jan the same evening at a dinner with one of the richest businessmen in Kandahar. We ate a meal fit for a king. “Wow, she’s the person who wrote the Karzai book!” I heard the Afghan guests saying.

Atta Jan took time to talk to me and we adjourned to one of the many empty rooms in the villa. Atta Jan said Mullah Azizullah was a key witness to the secret life Mullah Omar led after 9/11. The same applied to Omari. According to Atta Jan, the NDS secret agents stationed in Zabul had had suspicions for years that Omari knew about Mullah Omar’s life after 2001. When Omar’s death was reported in 2015, the NDS made Omari a secret offer of witness protection if he talked to them about Mullah Omar.

He was offered his choice of luxury accommodation in a city such as Ankara, Doha or Istanbul. As Omari himself had disappeared immediately after Mullah Omar’s death, Atta Jan had relayed the secret service’s offer to Omari’s brother at the request of the Afghan President Ghani. Omari had never responded to this offer, Atta Jan said.

In 2017, Omari suddenly featured in the local press, in an article I have on my laptop (thanks to my good friend Anand Gopal). That article (in Pashtu) states that Mullah Omar’s bodyguard had been arrested in the centre of Zabul. According to the article, this happened during a random check of cars by the local police. Omari identified himself and requested the deal Atta Jan had offered earlier.

Later on I heard Omari was arrested in the local bazaar by the police, who treated him very roughly. This had prompted him to take up the NDS offer after all, and Atta Jan was called in to identify the man. Ever since then, Omari had been living in a heavily guarded villa in a secret location in Kabul.

Atta Jan put me in contact with an important Hotak leader from Zabul who lived near the village where Omari was born. I met the man in Kandahar and to my surprise he had Omari’s phone number. When I got back to my place, my Afghan colleague Patmal and I dialled the number – and again to my great amazement, Omari answered.

We had only been in Kandahar twenty-four hours, but it seemed everyone knew. The voice at the other end of the line sounded cheerful. When I spoke to him briefly in Pashto, he complimented me on my language skills. I asked him whether I could meet him in Kabul. In a calm voice, he replied that I would be very welcome, but I would need to arrange my visit via the head of the Afghan secret service. In the days following that phone call, I tried to contact Omari numerous times on the same number, but I never got an answer.

I decided not to go to Zabul but to return to Kabul instead. Once there, I did everything I could to get access to Omari. Atta Jan had told me that Mullah Omar’s hideouts in Zabul had always been arranged by Samad Ostad, a well-known driving instructor in Qalat. Ostad had been Omari’s driver during the days of the Taliban regime, and had been killed recently in Pakistan (I didn’t have time to find out why exactly but people say it was because of his job for Mullah Omar).

In Kabul, I talked to a man I knew from the early days of my investigations into Mullah Omar, Daud Gulzar, a Hotak leader and the former head of Zabul’s Provincial Council. In recent years, Gulzar has lived in an expensive apartment in the capital and worked as an adviser to the Afghan president. I sat in front of him, exasperated. “Gulzar, I should have listened to you,” I said.

It was Gulzar who, in the early days of my research, had told me to start my work on Mullah Omar in Zabul. “That’s his tribe’s area. That’s where his life starts – in the heart of the Hotak community.” I ignored this because I made a Western assumption: Mullah Omar had not been born in Zabul, so his personal life had not started in Zabul. But now I regret this. Omar did rely on his tribesmen when he needed them. I realize now that when I first spoke to Gulzar about this, Omar was still alive, and people in Zabul had been aware of his whereabouts.

Gulzar told me that Samad Ostad used to visit Gulzar in the reception room of his home in Qalat. “He didn’t have any money, so I would give him rice and flour. Now I know that this food was going to Mullah Omar,” said Gulzar with a laugh.

According to Gulzar, the Afghan secret service had had its eye on this driver at the time, something I had also heard from another tribal leader in Zabul. The secret service suspected that Ostad had some kind of connection with Mullah Omar, according to Gulzar, because they had been told as much by the Americans. But local shuras systematically protected the driving instructor.

Every time Ostad was ordered to report to the secret service’s office, he would call on one of his supporters. They included Daud Gulzar. “What do you want with this poor wretch?” Gulzar would ask the agents. And then they would leave him in peace for a while. Gulzar was struck by the fact that Ostad wore about twenty of the traditional good-luck taweez amulets around his neck. “But I didn’t know he was protecting Mullah Omar,” said Gulzar.

Every interview I did only convinced me further that I needed to talk to Omari if I was to find out more about Mullah Omar’s final years. After many days on the phone, I eventually got a chance to talk to the head of the Afghan secret service. I hoped he would give me permission to visit Omari in his safe house.

It turned out he was prepared to see me.

Excerpted with permission from Looking for the Enemy: Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban, Bette Dam, HarperCollins India.