Kandahar, Afghanistan — The whereabouts of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed spiritual leader of the Taliban and America's most wanted man after Osama bin Laden, is confounding his U.S. and Afghan pursuers.
Is he hidden in the hills of south-central Afghanistan under the protection of loyal tribesmen who follow an ancient code of honor or on the run with his faithful interior minister?
Anti-Taliban Afghan fighters and U.S. Special Forces troops continue to search for Mullah Mohammad Omar, spiritual leader of the Taliban. In this file photo, a guard shows a bomb hole where in October U.S. forces struck Omar's compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Until Saturday, anti-Taliban Afghan fighters had believed they had Omar surrounded near Baghran in the mountains north Kandahar.
Until Saturday, anti-Taliban Afghan fighters believed they had Omar surrounded near Baghran in the mountains north of his former stronghold, Kandahar.
Now they say he may never have been there and if he was, he likely has fled by now.
"I have read reports that he may have fled on a motorbike," Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman, Omar Samad, said on Saturday.
Tribes' surrender of Omar unlikely
Some Afghan officials have said in recent days there had been negotiations with tribes around Baghran to hand over the Taliban leader. But there were doubts any tribal leader would ever surrender Omar, knowing he would likely be given to the Americans.
"We don't know where Omar is. If we knew where Omar was, we would probably take pretty direct action," Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, said Friday, though he said there were "indications" he was in Baghran.
Baghran seemed the likeliest site for Omar to hide out immediately following the surrender of Kandahar, the last major city in Taliban hands, in December.
In the last days of Taliban control of the city, Abdul Wahid the tribal chief of Baghran and a close ally of Omar's was in Kandahar, Mullah Naqib Ullah, a leading commander in Kandahar, told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Wahid helped negotiate the surrender of the area to forces loyal to Hamid Karzai, the man who now leads Afghanistan's interim government, Ullah said.
Two likely hide-outs
The night before the agreed surrender of Kandahar took place, Omar, Wahid, Taliban Defense Minister Obeidullah Akhund and Interior Minister Abdul Razzak fled the city with hundreds of Taliban fighters.
It was chaos.
As the dust settled, speculation mounted about Omar's whereabouts. Some former Taliban soldiers said two likely hide-outs were Baghran, northwest of Kandahar, or Maruf, a mountainous region to the northeast where his Hottak tribe lives.
The focus turned to Baghran because of Wahid's presence in Kandahar on the eve of its surrender and the fact that Omar lived for a short time at a mujahedeen base in the rugged mountains around Baghran during the 1980s Soviet invasion of his homeland.
Baghran also sits in the first of six mountain ranges that sweep across Afghanistan, stretching from Helmand province in the south to the northwestern border with Turkmenistan to Bamiyan province in the center.
Last week, Ullah had said officials from Kandahar's governor, Gul Agha, were negotiating with tribal leaders in Baghran for Omar's surrender.
But tribesmen in southern Kandahar say it's unlikely.
"No one will hand him over because they know that Gul Agha will give him to the United States," said Mir Jan Akhund, a Kandahar resident.
The U.S. presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Saturday in Kabul that Omar "will have to be brought to justice ... but the ultimate decision as to where he is tried, and how, is an issue that will have to be discussed."
Taliban still finding sympathy
On Thursday in Qalat, a city in Zabul province northeast of Kandadar, several former Taliban soldiers said Omar and Razzak were reported in the area. Lined with mountain ranges, Zabul was a Taliban stronghold, and sympathies for the Taliban remain strong even after their downfall.
"Here there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to the Taliban," said Tahir, a teacher in Qalat.
Some resent Omar's single-minded support for bin Laden.
"For one man, he betrayed all Pashtuns," Taher said of Afghanistan's majority ethnic group and the source of most Taliban warriors from Afghanistan.
But still, Tahir said there are no tribesmen in the south and east of Afghanistan who would hand over Omar.
"It is not possible that we could hand him over. It is not in our tradition," he said.
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