article_snippet.sent: (CNN)Mullah Mohammed Omar is "still the leader" of the Taliban's self-declared Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
article_snippet.sent: Omar was famously camera-shy during the Taliban's six-year rule over most of Afghanistan.
article_snippet.sent: Omar then all but disappeared after a U.S.-led bombing campaign routed the Taliban from Kabul in 2001.
article_snippet.sent: The biography makes no mention of the fact that the U.S., allied with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, helped arm and bankroll the mujahedeen until the Soviet army withdrew in defeat in 1989.
article_snippet.sent: While the document denounces the Taliban's post-9/11 overthrow at the hands of a U.S.-backed coalition of rival Afghan fighters, the Taliban's post-9/11 overthrow makes no mention of the Taliban's alliance with bin Laden and al Qaeda.
article_snippet.sent: During a decade in exile, bin Laden continued to release periodic video and audio statements until bin Laden was killed by U.S. raid on bin Laden hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in 2011.
article_snippet.sent: Though Taliban militants have continued to battle the U.S.-backed government across Afghanistan, Omar has not been seen or heard from in years.
article_snippet.sent: The movement claims Omar continues to oversee a Taliban leadership council, judiciary and nine executive commissions, as well as military commanders who operate in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan.
highlights_snippet.sent: Mullah Omar, the reclusive founder of the Afghan Taliban, is still in charge, a new biography claims .
  