Mullah Omar, the elusive one-eyed head of Taliban, is not only alive but fully in-charge of his hard-pressed guerilla movement, a media report said on Monday. However, despite his efforts, the Taliban's three-year-old guerrilla campaign against some 18,000 American troops and Kabul's ragtag military may be in danger of collapsing, the 'Newsweek' magazine said. According to the magazine, interviews with Taliban fighters, commanders and officials show that the mysterious Emir is alive and touring the countryside on a motorcycle in a bid to resuscitate his ebbing movement. "Mullah Omar has never been more active," Taliban spokesman Mufti Lutfullah Hakimi told 'Newsweek' in a secret meeting along the Pakistani-Afghan border. "Anyone who thinks he's isolated, hiding in a cave and fearing for his life couldn't be more wrong." One of the problems for him is that the Taliban seems to be getting less funding from Al Qaeda, largely because bin Laden is believed to feel that Mullah Omar's guerrillas are not putting up an aggressive and effective fight, the magazine said. "We are not getting as much money as we used to from Al Qaeda," Mullah Hai, a former close aide to Mullah Omar who lives near Quetta, was quoted as saying. "The Arabs complain that we lack organisation and solid battlefield results," he said.
| Yeah, there's that. Plus, the primary battlezone has moved to Iraq, that's where the money and manpower are going. |