In late 2001, Mullah Muhammad Omar’s prospects seemed utterly bleak. The ill-educated, one-eyed leader of the Taliban had fled on a motorbike after his fighters were swiftly routed by the Americans invading Afghanistan. Much of the world celebrated his ouster.

Eight years later, Omar is the leader of an insurgency that has gained steady ground in much of Afghanistan against much better equipped American and NATO forces. Far from a historical footnote, he represents a vexing security challenge for the Obama administration, one that has consumed the President’s advisors, divided the Democratic Party and left many Americans frustrated.

“This is an amazing story,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who coordinated the Obama administration’s initial review of Afghanistan policy in the spring. “He’s a semi-literate individual... And he’s staged one of the most remarkable military comebacks in modern history.”

US officials are weighing the significance of this comeback: Is Omar the brains behind shrewd shifts of Taliban tactics and propaganda in recent years, or does he have help from Pakistani intelligence? Might the Taliban be amenable to negotiations, as Omar hinted in a September 19 statement, or can his network be divided and weakened in some other way?

The man at the centre of the American policy conundrum remains a mystery, the subject of adoring mythmaking by his followers and guesswork by the world’s intelligence agencies. He was born, by various accounts, in 1950 or 1959 or 1960 or 1962. He may be hiding near Quetta or hunkered down in an Afghan village.

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