In the land of the blind

THIS picture is the only one of Mullah Omar that is confirmed as genuine. It was taken in 1993, the year before he founded the Taliban, when he was merely a fighter against the Soviet occupation of his country. He needed it as evidence that he had lost his right eye to enemy shrapnel, so that he could claim compensation. He never knowingly faced the camera again, since it was contrary to Islamic law.

The flyers dropped by American planes over Kandahar later, offering $10m for information about him, showed a photograph; it was not him. Portraits appeared of a man among yellow chrysanthemums, turning his right eye away. It was not him. Even when, as leader of the Taliban, he became emir of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, he so seldom left his house in Kandahar that most of his followers had no idea what he looked like. He saw almost no journalists, and hardly talked when he did. Discussion was difficult, and negotiation impossible. After 2001 he was in hiding, flitting between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Nobody recognises him,” said Hamid Karzai, who led Afghanistan in his turn. “This is a man nobody has seen.”

There was a story...

from The Economist: Obituary http://ift.tt/1W3NjRD