Pakistani official: No, we didn’t capture Mullah Omar
Despite what you might have read, the Pakistani government did not arrest Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a senior Pakistani government official confirms to The Cable. "Neither the U.S. government nor the Pakistani government are saying this is true and it is not true," the official said, adding that he was never captured by the Pakistani ...
Despite what you might have read, the Pakistani government did not arrest Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a senior Pakistani government official confirms to The Cable.
Despite what you might have read, the Pakistani government did not arrest Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a senior Pakistani government official confirms to The Cable.
"Neither the U.S. government nor the Pakistani government are saying this is true and it is not true," the official said, adding that he was never captured by the Pakistani military or intelligence services and is not in Pakistani custody.
"It just doesnt make sense that we would arrest a man and keep it a secret," the official went on, saying the reports by online sites including Big Government and The Jawa Report are totally off the mark.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn’t believe that Omar is captured, but she did say recently that she thinks the Pakistanis have some information on his whereabouts that they aren’t sharing with the U.S.
"I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more cooperation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11," she said Sunday on CBS 60 minutes.
The White House declined to comment on the reports of Omar’s capture.
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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