[DAWN] ENIGMATIC and reclusive in life, his death is no less mysterious. Since his famous escape on a motorbike from Kandahar after the US invasion in October 2001, very little was heard of Mullah Omar except for occasional audio messages. Those too went silent few years ago.Well-crafted Eid messages posted on the Afghan Taliban website attributed to him remained the only hypothetical communication with his supporters. The last such message appeared just a week before the breaking of the highly kept secret about his death, which it seems occurred some two years ago.
The circumstances and place of Mullah Omar’s death are still not known. The belated disclosure was bound to fuel all kinds of conspiracy theories. But the news of the death of a man with a bounty of $10 million on his head did not stir the world. Rather, there is concern over the possible unravelling of the radical Islamic movement.