Taliban leader Mullah Omar declared dead, but does it even matter now?

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is dead. It happened over two to three years ago. Or so claim Afghan government sources. This is by no means the first “confirmation” of the death of the former Head of the Supreme Council of Afghanistan (between 1996 and 2001), but the significance of his “death” has waned over the years. Aside from a statement celebrating the exchange of five Taliban members detained at Guantanamo for U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in June 2014, Omar had been a ghost. Perhaps literally, if the latest confirmation is anything to go by. [caption id=“attachment_433706” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A file photo of Mullah Omar.[/caption] That is until his Eid Felicitation Message released on the Taliban’s official website Shahamat two weeks ago, in which he called for the “unity of Jihadi front in Afghanistan” in the face of the Islamic State (IS) and made the usual references to… The invasion of Afghanistan by the occupying alliance headed by America was in reality an explicit brutal aggression, contradicting all humane principles, on an integral part of the Muslim Umma and subsequently, the initiation of Holy Jihad against this aggression became a binding individual obligation upon us.    For most of India, the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in December 1999—in which he was supposedly a conspirator—is the biggest link to Omar, following which he pretty much became an irrelevant chapter in India’s fight against terrorism. In fact, in 2012, Omar had even praised India for resisting American pressure to “transfer the heavy burden to their [India’s] shoulders, to find an exit and to flee from Afghanistan”, while noting that India is a “significant country in the region”. But by and large, he had stopped being relevant to India a long time ago. The emergence of the IS—a disavowed offshoot of the Al-Qaeda—and its plans to brutally rub out the Sykes-Picot Agreement, dealt a further blow to Omar’s relevance. But it wasn’t until his Eid Felicitation message that he actually referred—albeit subtly—to the IS, and its “armed Jihad”. This may seem odd coming from a man whose organisation was characterised in the mid-1990s by “killings, torture, imprisonments, public floggings, denied civil rights, disregard for women’s rights, and the deprivation of an entire generation from education, healthcare, and sports”. It is the message’s acknowledgement of “political endeavours and peaceful pathways for achieving sacred goals” that means that some people will still care if he’s alive or dead. If the reports of his death are once again an exaggeration, Omar’s role in a possible reconciliation with the Afghan government could be crucial. His influence could create a semblance of unity among the Taliban heading into peace talks. At the same time, his death, if it has indeed occurred, could see a split within the Taliban, followed by various factions jostling for power. This has the potential to wreak further havoc on a region from which NATO forces have all but exited. Maybe Omar wasn’t all that irrelevant after all.