IEA digs up Mullah Omar’s car, buried to escape US troops

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) members have dug up a white Toyota used by their founding leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid, to escape invading US troops twenty years ago. 

Photographs posted to Twitter on Tuesday show a group of men digging up what appears to be a white Toyota station wagon that was covered in a sheet of plastic.

An IEA member, Muhammad Jalal, who posted the images to Twitter said: “This Toyota wagon was used by the late Amir to travel from Kandahar to Zabul province during the start of US-led invasion.”

“It is in good condition,” he said.

Senior IEA officials have called for the vehicle to be put on display at the national museum in Kabul, which already houses cars and coaches of former kings and prime ministers.

Another senior IEA member, Anas Haqqani tweeted: “A man travelled in this car who took part in the most amazing events in history.”

“He relied on God Almighty, he commanded in an unequal war against dozens of invading countries, and won. This memorial … should be kept in the country’s national museum.”

An IEA source meanwhile told the Guardian that Defence Minister Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub – Mullah Omar’s son – ordered officials to uncover the car, which had been buried for around 20 years.

The Guardian also reported that according to Bette Dam, the author of a biography of the late leader, Looking for the Enemy, Omar was known to have left his Kandahar base in a white Toyota at the end of 2001 after US-backed forces toppled the government in Kabul.

In her book she stated Omar would spend the rest of his life within walking distance of US bases despite a $10 million bounty on his head. US forces once searched a house where he was hiding, an aide told Dam, but did not find the entrance to a secret room that hid him.

Mullah Omar died in 2013, but the IEA only announced his death two years later.