Editing Mullah Omar (section)

=== Seclusion ===
On 5 December 2001, Omar held a meeting in Kandahar of top Taliban leaders and asked them what they wanted to do. Many were ready to stop fighting and willing to surrender. Omar handed over the Taliban leadership to his defence minister, Mullah [[Obaidullah Akhund|Obaidullah]], in writing. Two days later Omar left Kandahar and went into hiding in [[Zabul province]] in Afghanistan.<ref name=Dam_Zomia>{{cite web |url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bf5692f4611a019a7c69ea6/t/5c77f4fdeef1a10b17f2abda/1551365379168/Secret+Life+of+Mullah+Omar-FINAL3.pdf |title=The Secret Life of Mullah Omar |first=Bette |last=Dam |date=2019 |publisher=Zomia Center |access-date=24 September 2021}}</ref><ref name="tg1">{{cite web |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/fugitive-taliban-leader-mullah-omar-lived-short-walk-from-us-base-book-claims |title=Fugitive Taliban leader lived short walk from US base, book reveals|date=10 March 2019 |work=The Guardian|author=Emma Graham-Harrison}}</ref> In the following years, there was speculation about his location{{snd}}with some believing that he went to Pakistan along with other Taliban leaders{{snd}}and his circumstances and purported communications. But according to [[Bette Dam]], in research published in 2019, and Borhan Osman, a senior analyst at International Crisis Group (ICG), Omar spent the rest of his life living in Zabul province.<ref name="wsj1">{{cite web |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-last-days-of-taliban-head-mullah-omar-11552226401 |title=The Last Days of Taliban Head Mullah Omar |date=10 March 2019|work=Wall Street Journal |first=Jessica |last=Donati}}</ref> Dam said that her research relied on interviews with current and former members of the Afghan government, the Afghan intelligence agency [[National Directorate of Security]], the Taliban, and Omar's bodyguard Jabbar Omari. She said that her findings, confirmed by Afghan officials as well as the Talibans, depicted the US intelligence failure and cast even further doubt on US claims in the Afghan war.<ref name=Dam_Zomia />

Omar was protected in hiding by Jabbar Omari, a former Taliban [[List of governors of Baghlan|governor of Baghlan province]], who was from Zabul province and belonged to the Hotak tribe, as Omar did. They spent four years living in the provincial capital [[Qalat, Afghanistan|Qalat]] at a private home owned by Abdul Samad Ustaz, Omari's former driver. Omar's wives moved to Pakistan and Omar declined when Omari offered to bring his son to visit. He had very little active involvement in the Taliban from the end of 2001. He sent a cassette tape to the rest of the Taliban leadership in Quetta in 2003, reaffirming that Obaidullah was the supreme leader and naming who should be on [[Quetta Shura|the leadership shura]] (council). The shura sent a messenger every three to seven months, when they wanted his advice on some matter. He sent at least one other cassette tape, in 2007, but stopped that practice after the messenger was briefly detained in Pakistan, and thereafter messages were just relayed person-to-person. Omar kept in touch with events in the world by listening to BBC Pashto radio. [[Bette Dam]] wrote, "Though Mullah Omar did not venture outside for fear of being caught, according to Jabbar Omari, in the four years they hid in that home, they felt relatively safe." The house was searched by the US military once, but they did not enter the concealed room where Omar was hiding.<ref name=Dam_Zomia /><ref name=tg1 />

After the US established [[Forward Operating Base Lagman]] a few hundred metres from the house in 2004, Omar relocated to a shack in a remote hamlet on the edge of a river, about 20 miles southeast of Qalat in [[Shinkay District]], close to the [[Durand Line]]. His hideout was connected to underground irrigation channels that ran up into the hills. Soon after moving there, the US started building Forward Operating Base (FOB) Wolverine an hour's walk or about three miles away, but Omar stayed put. The FOB eventually housed about 1,000 United States troops, and sometimes other NATO troops.<ref name=Dam_Zomia /> To avoid detection, he would occasionally hide in the underground irrigation tunnels connected to his hideout, as US planes flew over or if US or Afghan troops came to search the area. People in the village knew that Taliban personnel were living there and offered gifts of clothes and food to Omari and Omar.<ref name=Dam_Zomia /> In 2019, the Taliban released a picture of the supposed hideout where Omar spent the last years of his life.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/11/taliban-back-report-mullah-omar-hid-death-afghanistan-near-us/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/11/taliban-back-report-mullah-omar-hid-death-afghanistan-near-us/ |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Taliban release pictures of Mullah Omar's 'hideout in Afghanistan'|date=11 March 2019|work=Telegraph UK|author=Ben Farmer and Saleem Mehsud}}{{cbignore}}</ref> The pictures show a modest mud house with a small garden in which Omar "used to sit in the sun", according to a Taliban spokesman.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taliban-leader-mullah-omar-hid-mud-house-afghanistan-militant-group-n982036|title=Taliban leader Mullah Omar hid in mud house in Afghanistan, militant group says|date=12 March 2019|publisher=NBC News|author=Mushtaq Yusufzai and F. Brinley Bruton}}</ref>

Jabbar Omari said that Omar grew ill in 2013, refusing to visit a doctor and dying of illness on 23 April. Omari and two helpers buried him that night, with Omari videoing the burial as proof. Omari went to Quetta, returning with Omar's son Yaqoob and brother [[Abdul Manan Omari]], who had not seen him since 2001. Yaqoob insisted that the grave be opened so that he could see his father. Omari went to Quetta and met with ten senior Taliban to describe the 12 years he spent with Omar. Obaidullah had died in 2010 and [[Akhtar Mansour]] was the operational leader of the Taliban. Four religious scholars at the meeting decided that Mansour should continue as leader, but that Omar's death and Mansour's succession should not be disclosed publicly yet, while the United States was preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Some at the meeting unsuccessfully argued for openness.<ref name="Dam_Zomia" /> Omar's death remained a secret for two years.<ref name="tg1" /> The Taliban were extremely successful at keeping Omar's death hidden during these two years even from highly experienced experts on the upper echelons of the Taliban. Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst [[Michael Semple]], for example, wrote in a December 2014 report that "Mullah Omar remains the Taliban supreme leader and the source of all authority in the movement."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Maley |first1=William |title=The Afghanistan Wars |year= 2020 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-352-01101-2 |pages=242–243 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PpJKEAAAQBAJ&q=william+maley |language=en}}</ref>