Mullah Omar
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Muhammad Umar Mujahid, commonly known as Mullah Omar or Muhammad Omar, was an Afghan militant and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. He founded t
Omar as hafiz student in his youth, 1978, colourised
A still from a 1996 video taken secretly by BBC Newsnight. It purports to show Omar (left) presenting the cloak of Muhammad to his troops in Kandahar, before their successful assault on Kabul.
The June 15, 1998 letter from Mullah Omar to "all Taliban members young and old", complaining that his orders are not being followed. The letter was found in an al-Qaeda safe house in Kabul.
Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan (pictured in 1976) in March 2001, receiving international condemnation.
Buddhas of Bamiyan
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The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two monumental Buddhist reliefs in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan, carved possibly around the 6th-century. Located 130 kilometres to the northwest of Kabul, at an elevat
Mullah Omar
…discriminating against religious and ethnic minorities, banning women from school and most employment, and destroying cultural monuments, including the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which Omar personally ordered by a decree. After al-Qaeda, which had previously been given sanctuary in Afghanistan by the Taliban, carried out the…
Smaller 38 m "Eastern" Buddha of Bamiyan, built between 544 to 595 CE