Why is Mulla Omar still missing?

ISLAMABAD: Even though the US-led Allied Force finally withdrew from Afghanistan on December 28 after 13 long years of war, the reclusive ameer of the Afghan Taliban Mulla Mohammad Omar is conspicuously missing from the scene despite Pentagon’s clear-cut announcement that the remaining American forces in Afghanistan won’t target Mulla Omar and other key Taliban leaders unless they pose a direct threat to the US.
Mullah Omar, who is considered to be their ameerul momineen by the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban alike, has been in hiding since the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent toppling of his regime in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and his subsequent refusal to hand over bin Laden to the US.
The FBI had then included Mulla Omar in its list of most wanted terrorists while describing him “one of the original planners of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in US”.
It has been 156 months or 4,745 days that the supreme commander of Afghan Taliban vanished into the inhospitable, mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, never to be seen again, even on a video like Osama bin Laden or Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri. Ever since the US-led Nato forces invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, the American intelligence sleuths had repeatedly claimed that the fugitive Taliban leader continues to guide his forces and run his Shura while hiding somewhere in a Pakistani urban locality either in Quetta or Karachi. On the other hand, Pakistan has refuted these allegations.
However, in a most recent development, a day after the withdraw of the Nato forces from Afghanistan, the chief of the Afghan intelligence, Rahmatullah Nabil, claimed on December 30, 2014, that Omar is alive and hiding in Karachi “There is a lot of doubt whether he is alive or not. But we are more confident that Omar is alive in Karachi,” Nabil was quoted as saying in a New York Times report.
According to the Afghan intelligence chief, Mulla

Omar has always functioned more as the spiritual and ideological leader of the Taliban movement than as an operational commander. “Mulla Akhtar Mansour has risen to the number two role and become the main link to Mulla Omar, allowing him to place his loyalists up and down the ranks,” Nabil added. Interestingly, barely a few days before the withdrawal of Nato forces, Aimal Faizi, spokesman for ex-President Hamid Karzai had alleged on December 23, 2014, that Mulla Omar is in the custody of the Pakistani security forces in Karachi and the issue was shared by US Secretary of State John Kerry. “Secretary of State John Kerry had shared the issue with Karzai during a meeting in Kabul. Karzai asked Kerry why the United States is not taking any action to arrest him while there is a US bounty on him and ordinary civilians are being targeted by the Afghan Taliban on daily basis under his leadership,” Faizi added.
The remarks by Aimal Faizi came as some western media reports earlier suggested that Mulla Omar has possibly passed away and his group has divided into three different factions led by Mulla Akhtar Mansoor, Mulla Qayum Zakir and Mulla Agha. But the most glaring aspect is that the Afghan Taliban have not yet refuted the reports of his having been arrested and being kept in Pakistan, as had been the case in the past when they used to react immediately. In July 2010, the Afghan Taliban had strongly reacted to media reports about Mulla Omar’s arrest in Pakistan, terming them as propaganda of the enemies. “This is 150 percent untrue. He is safe and sound and leading the Taliban in Afghanistan. By spreading such rumours about Ameerul Momineen, the US wants to demoralise our Mujahideen and the Muslims supporting jehad all over the world,” so said Qari Yusuf, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban. “Except his close men, nobody has even seen him, yet so how they can claim he has been captured. If he were arrested, the US and his allies would have declared their victory in Afghanistan,” the spokesman had argued at that time.
But the million-dollar question which continues to trouble the minds of the Americans and the Afghans alike at this stage remains: as to why Mulla Omar is still reluctant to resurface even after the withdrawal of the US-led forces from Afghanistan and the announcement by the Pentagon that the Americans don’t intend to target either Omar or any other key Afghan Taliban leaders. “Being a member of the Taliban doesn’t mean that the United States is going to prosecute operations against you for that reason alone,” the Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told a recent news briefing in Washington.
Having ended its operations in Afghanistan and leaving the Afghan army and police in charge of security, the Nato’s role in the war-torn country will largely be restricted to training, advising and assisting the army and police. On the other hand, the Afghan Taliban had responded mockingly to the end of Nato’s war in Afghanistan, describing the US-led mission as a fire of barbarism and cruelty that only drowned Afghanistan in a pool of blood. “We consider the withdrawal step a clear indication of their defeat and disappointment,” the Taliban spokesman said. However, questions have popped about the whereabouts of Omar, primarily because of his silence in the face of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, with analysts saying that if Omar were ever to assert himself more publicly; this would have been the time to do it. His conspicuous absence also raises the question as to who is actually pulling the Taliban’s strings.