Kabul spurns claim Omar lived near US base in Zabul

KABUL.

Ms Dam made the claim in her book The Secret Life of Mullah Omar, The fugitive Taliban chief never hid in neighbouring Pakistan, she says, contradicting US allegations.

Mullah Omar lived just three miles from a major US Forward Operating Base in southern Zabul province, writes the Dutch journalist, who spent five years researching and interviewing Taliban members.

The writer reportedly interviewed both Afghan government officials and some of the most senior Taliban members. During the first four years of the insurgency, Omar lived in Qalat.

“Searching for an Enemy” reveals the Taliban chief lived as a virtual hermit, refusing visits from his family and filling notebooks with jottings in an imaginary language. He listened to the BBC’s Pashto-language news broadcasts in the evenings.

But President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman spurned the account: “We strongly reject this delusional claim and we see it as an effort to create and build an identify for the Taliban and their foreign backers.”

Haroon Chakhansouri tweeted the Afghan government had sufficient evidence of Mullah Omar having lived and died in Pakistan.

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