Worldandnation: The hunt for Omar

The hunt for Omar

The Taliban chief is said to have fled to the mountains.

Compiled from Times wires

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the vanquished Taliban regime, is thought to be holed up with hundreds of fighters in south-central Afghanistan, an intelligence officer for Kandahar's new governor said Monday.

After surrendering Kandahar more than a week ago, Omar retreated into the mountains near the town of Baghran, about 100 miles northwest of here, in neighboring Helmand province, said Haji Gulalai, the newly appointed director of intelligence for four provinces in southern Afghanistan.

Gulalai said Omar was accompanied by at least 400 soldiers. Witnesses had reported seeing him flee Kandahar in a convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers, Gullalai said.

Gulalai said he had passed the information to the U.S. authorities here. He described Omar as "an international war criminal." But he said capturing him was not a priority for the region's new government, led by Gul Agha Shirzai, who has become the governor of the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul.

"Once we get complete control of Kandahar, we will move to Helmand," Gullalai said. Asked whether he was afraid that Omar might leave Baghran, Gulalai said Omar had nowhere else to go.

The United States plans to offer a $10-million reward for Omar's capture.

"We're simply looking for him, and we're going to keep looking for him as long as it takes," the U.S. war commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, said Friday.

So far, he has proven hard to find.

Omar had instructed his followers to defend Kandahar to the death. But as opposition forces closed in this month, the Taliban agreed to surrender -- then bolted in the dead of night. When tribal forces entered the city on Dec. 7, Omar was nowhere to be found. An old friend, fellow Taliban founder Mohammed Khaqzar, said the Taliban leader had fled days earlier.

Monday's announcement by Gulalai was the first news on Omar's whereabouts in weeks.

Baghran is at the foot of a vast mountain range filled with caves and tunnels, where a fugitive could disappear for months or even years.

It dwarfs the Tora Bora region, where tribal fighters and U.S. special forces needed nine weeks to dislodge al-Qaida guerrillas and conquer their mountain warrens -- still finding no sign of the man most wanted by the United States, bin Laden.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said in Washington that there are indications Omar may still be in the area around Kandahar, although where was not certain. "There are forces who are looking for him," he said.

Asked if an offensive was being mounted in search of Omar, Stufflebeem said: "Our special operating forces are working with opposition groups around Kandahar."

Spokesmen for Shirzai previously said they knew the general area where Omar was, but would not identify it for what they called security reasons.

Almost no photographs exist of Omar, who lost an eye to a shrapnel wound while fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He received few visitors during Taliban rule, and spent his time studying the Koran at his Kandahar base.

As the Taliban took control of most of the country in 1996, Omar declared himself "Amir-ul-Mohmineen" -- king of the Muslim faithful -- and soon afterward his religious edicts were accepted by Taliban officials in Kabul as law.

Omar also began paying increasing attention to Osama bin Laden, calling the Saudi exile a guest and refusing to hand him over to the United States.

When the United States blamed bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it declared war on Omar as well, saying the Taliban had to be eliminated for harboring terrorists.

-- Information from the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.