Kabul: Taliban leader Mullah Omar is commanding rebel forces in Afghanistan from across the border under the protection of Pakistan's ISI, a spokesman for the Afghan secret service said on Wednesday, citing a captured insurgent.
According to the testimony of the high-ranking rebel, Omar was operating from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta and was being protected by the ISI, the spokesman said in Kabul.
Former ISI head Hamid Gul was supporting a training centre for Taliban suicide attackers in Peshawar on the Afghan border that had been disguised as a madrassa, he said.
The testimony is believed to have come from former Taliban spokesman Mohammed Hanif, who was arrested in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Monday as he crossed the border from Pakistan.
"Hanif told us that without the help of the ISI, the Taliban would not be able to offer any resistance (to the international troops and the Afghan government) and that the ISI played a major role in arming and financing the Taliban," Afghan secret service spokesman Sayed Ansari said.
Omar went into hiding after the fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001.
The news came as Afghan and NATO troops captured another Taliban leader in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not release the name of the person detained but said he was placed into Afghan police custody and was being interrogated. He did not put up a fight, ISAF said on Wednesday.
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