By Paul McGeough
Washington: If you are in the killing business, you understand that proof of life counts for something.
But it's been more than 14 years since we clapped eyes on Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spectral leader of the Afghan Taliban, and stubbornly, he still refuses to emerge from hiding – or even to send a verifiable message.
Afghan border policemen escort a suspected Taliban fighter in Paktika province near the border with Pakistan.Credit: Reuters
Despite restlessness and infighting on the fringes of some of the 20-odd militias that coalesce under the banner of the Taliban, and a belittling questioning of his spiritual and jihadist credentials by the leadership of the so-called Islamic State, the one-eyed Omar sits tight, fuelling speculation in some quarters that perhaps he is dead or that his activity is constrained by his likely hosts - Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the ISI.
In recent days, the challenge from Islamic State became more than rhetorical. The IS claim of responsibility for a suicide bombing in the eastern city of Jalalabad on April 18, in which 35 civilians died and another 125 were wounded, was as much a stab at the Taliban as at the government in Kabul.
An Afghan man has his eye scanned for identification in Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan.Credit: AFP
The regional stage is set for what would be a dramatic entrance, should Omar feel the urge to flag to followers that he is indeed in charge of his movement or - even more daringly - to make a public appearance.
If, as most analysts agree, Omar is alive, then he is one of history's survivors. He has outlived his troublesome former guest, Osama bin Laden; he's seen off all but the last few thousand US and coalition troops who came to hunt him; and he has survived Hamid Karzai's decade as president of the country that Omar himself ruled from 1996 to 2001.
Were he to emerge, Omar would find some new players in the never-ending drama of "what's to become of Afghanistan". Karzai's successor, the more worldly Ashraf Ghani, seems more amenable to Afghanistan's neighbours; Beijing has arrived on the scene, offering itself as a broker of peace; but the Islamic State has arrived too, bent on war.
Despite repeated denials by Washington and the Taliban in particular, it seems that talks about talking are underway.
A US soldier points his rifle at a doorway after coming under fire by the Taliban in southern Kandahar province, one of the Taliban's strongholds.Credit: Reuters
A Taliban delegation went to China in January; despite its history of double-dealing, Pakistan these days insists that it wants a negotiated settlement; and despite the $US10 million price that Washington has on Omar's head, the White House has long acknowledged that talks are its only ticket out of the Afghan quagmire.
To get to "talking about talking" indicates that the Taliban might be wrestling seriously with the existential question that confronts all insurgencies: do they fight on, seriously believing that they can win back full control; or do they negotiate from a position of strength?
Muhammad Naeem, left, a spokesman for the Taliban, at the opening of the Taliban political office in the Qatari capital Doha in June 2013, part of the fitful process of "talks about talks".Credit: Reuters
Both Bin Laden and Omar did a bunk as US-led forces invaded in October 2001. Al-Qaeda's leader escaped over the border into Pakistan, where an American dragnet finally tracked him down in May 2011. Pakistan was also believed to be the destination of Omar, last seen riding pillion on a motorcycle driven by his brother-in-law as it sped away from Kandahar, the Taliban's southern stronghold.
Bin Laden stayed in touch; Omar became invisible. These days, senior commanders openly complain, giving foreign media interviews in which they criticise Omar's reclusiveness and voice distrust of his number two - Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour - who some accuse of installing his own cronies.
Afghan soldiers carry out a controlled detonation of a roadside bomb in Wardak province.Credit: New York Times
"If Mullah Omar was in good condition, he'd send proof that he's alive," a former aide told a foreign reporter, before noting that a $US25 million bounty on the head of al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri did not stop Bin Laden's successor from communicating with his followers.
Mullah Abdul Raqib Takhari, an outspoken commander who reportedly threatened to act as he pleased unless he was allowed to meet Omar, was executed in February. Another commander said to be in league with a rival of Mansour's was killed last year, according to reports.
Brutality: Taliban fighters execute a woman, reputed to be the wife of one of their members, for adultery in footage from Parwan province in July 2012.Credit: AFP/Parwan Provincial Government
IS worries the Taliban leadership. They sent a two-man delegation last year, reportedly to demand that self-appointed "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi accept, as al-Qaeda had, the precedence of Omar as Amir al-Mu'mineen ("commander of the faithful"), a title that traditionally belonged to Islam's caliphs as successors of the prophet Muhammad.
The Taliban were rebuffed. Baghdadi dismissed Omar as a fool and an illiterate, arguing that IS had achieved more in two years than the Taliban had in a decade.
Hazara youths accompany one of their friends to his wedding in Kabul. Both Islamic State and the Taliban have made the Shiite Hazaras their targets.Credit: Getty Images
The IS leader then dispatched his own recruiters to Afghanistan and Pakistan where - despite great distrust of outsiders - they have made limited progress. Last year a dozen Taliban commanders, more from Pakistan than from Afghanistan, pledged their allegiance to Baghdadi. Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, who commanded a reported 300 fighters in the south, was anointed leader of IS in Afghanistan.
Much to the irritation of some in the Taliban, maps of the global region that IS claims as its caliphate include Afghanistan and neighbouring Iran, to which they give the ancient Islamic name Khorasan.
This "age-progressed" image created by the FBI offers a computerised impression of what Mullah Mohammad Omar might look like if he is alive today.
In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Ismail Khan, a warlord dominant in the west of the country, claimed that IS had a presence in the provinces of Herat and Farah.
In February, Shiite community leaders accused IS supporters of abducting 13 Hazara Shiites in Zabul. In Kunduz, in the north, provincial governor Mohammad Omar Safi claimed that 70 IS-affiliated fighters were on the move. And in Helmand, in the south, Afghan forces claimed two former Taliban commanders who were actively recruiting in the name of IS had been killed - and that Khadim was one of those accounted for.
A NATO helicopter flies over the site of a bomb blast in Kabul.Credit: Reuters
All of this could be dismissed as local politicking, but on April 5 the Taliban did an odd thing - it used that infidel creation, the internet, to publish a 5000-word hagiography of Omar, in which it claimed that he was "still the leader in the present hierarchy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" and that all in the Taliban must unite and obey him.
Claiming he still controlled 95 per cent of Afghanistan, it boasted of his management of the leadership council and military commanders in Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Straight-faced, it also celebrated the leader's charisma, sense of humour, compassion and expertise with weapons - especially rocket launchers.
There was no proof of life, but the date of publication was telling - it was the 19th anniversary of a day in Kandahar when Omar paraded with one of the most precious objects held by Afghanistan: a cloak said to have belonged to the prophet Muhammad. That day Omar was acclaimed as commander of the faithful.
But for all their rival claims, Baghdadi and Omar have a hideous common point of reference. Years before IS even came into being, the Taliban had resorted to the same brutal tactics that cause so much revulsion around the world: massacres; ethnic cleansing; brutal repression and abuses, of women in particular; adulterers were stoned; and the stadium executions of accused wrongdoers were government-sponsored spectacles.
A series of recent predictions of willingness by the Taliban to talk peace remain just that - predictions. And as the snow melts to herald the start of Afghanistan's summer fighting season, there are reports of the IS-style beheading of Afghan government forces in the country's north-eastern Badakhshan province.
Taliban scholar Ahmed Rashid observes: "The ISI, which helped arm and fund the Taliban after 2001, has now made a U-turn and is trying to persuade the Taliban to talk to Kabul.
"The [Omar biography] suits the ISI and the moderate wing of the Taliban, which are keen to get peace talks started. To do that, the ISI needs to demonstrate that Omar is alive and in command. Pakistani and Afghan officials have told me that for peace talks to start, an endorsement by Omar is vital to persuade all Taliban to come on board – the essay could be the start of a Taliban campaign to do just that."
But despite all the efforts to talk peace, war still rages. Last year was the worst since the US-led invasion of 2001 for Afghan soldiers and civilians killed - and the toll for the first quarter of 2015 is up eight per cent on last year, according to the United Nations.
For now at least, analysts don't see IS taking root in Afghanistan.
"I am a sceptic about IS in Afghanistan, given the Taliban's entrenched position there and the support they have from [Pakistani intelligence]," Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and former White House adviser now at the Brookings Institution, told Fairfax Media. "Mullah Omar and his loyalists have fought too long and too hard to let a usurper spoil their plans when they believe victory is only two years away. The Pakistani army shares those convictions."
Professor Daniel Markey agreed, arguing that as a brand for splinter factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, IS's courting of Taliban commanders does not amount to a serious power struggle.
Yet having made that point in an email exchange, Markey second-guesses himself: "Then again, similar points were made about al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Also, as compared to al-Qaeda, [IS] is pursuing a state-building strategy in ways that could be quite appealing to both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, who see themselves as insurgents and defenders of their faith and nation, not terrorists.
"Moreover, as [Afghan President Ashraf Ghani] pointed out in his recent trip to DC, Afghanistan holds a special place in the jihadist mythology, such that [IS] is likely to make it a focal point."
All of which raises a question. Who's driving - Pakistani intelligence or the Commander of the Faithful? And perhaps another - if the Taliban didn't have Omar, would we still have the Taliban?