About the Taleban leader

[Harshal Chhaya <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tip of the day:  Voice your opinion at
               http://www.mumbai-central.com/sawaal/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Recd. this via email. Original source unknown...

- 'shal



The supreme leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, 
refuses to be photographed or filmed and rarely travels far from his base in 
the southern town of Kandahar. Now in his early 40s he infrequently gives 
interviews and is thought to have met only two non-Muslims in the past few 
years. Nonetheless what Mullah Omar says passes as law in the Taliban's 
Afghanistan and to challenge him is unknown. 

The Commander of the Faithful, as he has become known, created the Taliban in 
the early 1990s and is their spiritual guide. Those who have met him say he 
casts an imposing figure -- bearded with a black turban and with one eye 
stitched shut; the result of a wound sustained during a gunfight with Soviet 
troops during their occupation of Afghanistan. In the wake of the Soviet 
withdrawal, Mullah Omar created the Taliban to overcome what he saw as 
Afghanistan's descent into warlordism and lawlessness. 

His recruits came from the Koranic schools within Afghanistan and in the Afghan 
refugee camps across the border in Pakistan. Driven largely by faith they swept 
across the country. Before the final assault on Kabul in 1996 Mullah Omar, 
entered Kandahar's grand mosque and took out a rarely seen holy cloth once 
carried by the Prophet Mohammed. Waving it from a rooftop he received an 
ecstatic response from his Taliban foot soldiers. 

Spiritual destiny
Inspired by religious fervor they moved on to take Kabul within a matter of 
days, bolstering Mullah Omar's belief in his spiritual destiny. With almost 95 
percent of the country under Taliban control he has set himself the goal of 
transforming Afghanistan into the purest Islamic state in the world, declaring 
himself Amir-ul-Momineen, or head of the Muslims. 

Whilst many ordinary Afghans disagree with his hardline interpretation of 
Islam, others say they are willing to endure the Taliban's excesses in exchange 
for the relative peace they have brought to the territory they now control. In 
building the perfect Islamic state he has shown little regard for the concerns 
of the outside world. Public executions and amputations are common and the 
Taliban's treatment of women has attracted much international condemnation. 

Earlier this year he rejected pressure from around the world -- including from 
many Muslim countries -- not to go ahead with plans to demolish two ancient 
statues of the Buddha carved into cliffs near the town of Bamiyan. The statues, 
described by many as world-class cultural relics, were blown to bits. Mullah 
Omar dismissed the global outcry saying the statues' destruction was 
merely "breaking stones". 


-- 
 http://www.mumbai-central.com : Where Mumbaikars meet

 Send email to get-bse@mumbai-central.com for the latest BSE listings
 and to get-nse@mumbai-central.com to get the latest NSE listings


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Subscribe [Unsubscribe] send a blank message to 
        nukkad-list-request@mumbai-central.com 
with the word 'subscribe' ['unsubscribe'] (without quotes) in the Subject 
of your message.
The list is archived at  http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html