In 1996, his Taliban membership grew by the day as provinces fell to the austere but law-enforcing young men – some only 14 years old – who followed the still-youthful 37-year-old cleric.But he remained a shy, reclusive man, reportedly spending hours in contemplation on his prayer mat, a cleric who initially appeared to be a social reformer but who – once the Taliban had captured most of Afghanistan – adopted an extreme version of the Hanafi Sunni religious sect, believing the duty of a Muslim was to create the ideal society that supposedly existed under the Prophet. Amusement, the social role of women, distraction and leisure were all to be erased. A literal interpretation of Islam, which laid down that a man’s beard must be the length of two fists, suddenly dominated Afghanistan. Rather than plan a future for the country – the economic rebuilding of the world’s most bombed nation with its 20 million mines, its wrecked roads, bridges and dams – he regarded individual and group morality as the focus of human society.Hence the Department for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue was busier than the ministries of economy or defence. Punishment was an educative process – and a brutal one.No one is certain how the relationship between Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden developed. Mr bin Laden’s arrival followed shortly after the Taliban’s 1996 victory and, in the years that followed, the Taliban’s political statements, such as they were, became increasingly anti-Western and anti-American.Mr bin Laden’s “War against Crusaders and Jews” may not have been encouraged by Mullah Omar, but his desire to bring down the “treacherous Muslims” running the pro-American regimes of the Gulf must have seemed uncannily similar to Mullah Omar’s earlier campaign against the “criminal and treacherous group” of Afghans who were the Taliban’s original enemy.Now that “treacherous” group is at the gates of Kandahar, how true his claim that they had sold themselves to “foreign colonialists” must seem to Mullah Omar today.

Back on 24 September, he announced that handing over Mr bin Laden “would mean we were no longer Muslims and that Islam was finished”.Now Mullah Omar is reported to be in the city he made great, but his Taliban appears almost finished. Unless, of course, he decides to keep his word and fight to the end, “to the last breath”, as he put it, against the Americans and the “traitors” of the Northern Alliance.. US Marines attacked a Taliban convoy near Kandahar, killing seven fighters in their first offensive ground action since setting up base in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman said on Friday No Marines were injured. No Marines were injured.
The Marines also fired mortars into the surrounding desert after detecting Taliban fighters “probing the perimeter of the base,” and two servicemen were injured when a UH­1N Huey helicopter crashed near the airstrip, Capt David Romley said. The helicopter crash did not appear due to enemy action, he said.Three vehicles approached a “hunter­killer” team of patrolling Marines at high speed on a road Thursday night, and the Marines attacked from the ground and from the air, Romley said.”The enemy were shot dead,” Romley said. “The forces killed were believed to be al­Qa’ida and Taliban forces.”Some of the Taliban and al­Qa’ida forces were in vehicles and some jumped out, fighting from the ground, he said.

The Marines on the ground destroyed one of the vehicles, and US aircraft destroyed two more. Flares lit up the flat, dusty desert around Camp Rhino while journalists crouched in trenches. The Marines also used an automatic grenade launcher, Romley said.Journalists in the camp, who were issued military flak jackets and helmets, could see no incoming fire. However, they heard shouting outside the camp and the sound of gunfire.