LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Taliban: Senior Taliban
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After the Taliban's fall, Mullah Omar effectively vanished. Still, he did not quit the jihad. As his men regrouped, he gradually emerged from hiding and in 2004 began traveling from camp to camp in remote Taliban-held areas. Only a few trusted assistants know where the fugitive leader is now. But wherever he is hidden, he is closer than ever to many of his followers-not only to long- neglected fighters like Ghul Agha, but even to members of the Taliban's ruling council, the Shura, Newsweek reports. In the past, according to Mullah Rahman, the group's deputy commander in Zabul province, it could take six weeks for senior Taliban officials to send a message to the leader and get a reply.
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Pakistani Taliban gunmen have clashed violently with Pakistani security forces, and are reportedly providing refuge for scores of foreign fighters. There is speculation that among these could be several senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Gannon is skeptical, saying that while many among the Pakistani Taliban would be willing to harbor bin Laden, the bounty for him makes it "very hard for Osama to hide in the tribal area without being fingered."
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Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a senior representative of the Taliban designated as the roving Ambassador visited the US in March, 2001. He represented the Taliban's action not as an act of irrationality, but as an act of rage over UNESCO and some western governments denying the Taliban use of the funds intended for the repairs of the war-damaged statues of the Buddha. He contended that the Taliban intended to use the money for drought relief.
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The CIA supposedly backs the Taliban around the same time the Pakistani ISI starts strongly backing them (see Spring-Autumn 1994). According to a senior Pakistani intelligence source interviewed by British journalist Simon Reeves, the CIA provides Pakistan satellite information giving the secret locations of scores of Soviet trucks that contain vast amounts of arms and ammunition. The trucks were hidden in caves at the end of the Afghan war. Pakistan then gives this information to the Taliban. “The astonishing speed with which the Taliban conquered Afghanistan is explained by the tens of thousands of weapons found in these trucks….”
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The Taliban seized power in the 1990s after decades of civil war and imposed an Islamist regime. Many of its followers died in the U.S.-led intervention, and others, including several senior leaders, switched sides under a government amnesty program.
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Five months after the release of the 21 surviving South Korean hostages who had been captured by the Taliban in July, Afghan insurgents are claiming that Seoul paid a hefty ransom for the Christian missionaries' freedom. In an interview in this week's edition of Afaq, a Pashtu-language magazine published in neighboring Pakistan, senior Taliban leader Ustad Yasir confirmed that a large ransom indeed had been paid. "If we were going to free them without any payment, [the hostage taking] would not have been worth it," he said. "The best way to release them was with a ransom payment." Two hostages were executed before the others were released.
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