Personal Life
Omar is thought to have been born around 1959 or 1962 in Nodeh, near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in Afghanistan to a landless peasant family. He grew up in a village in the Maiwand area of Kandahar Province, next to Helmand Province. He is an ethnic Pashtun from the Hotak tribe, which is part of the larger Ghilzai branch. His father is said to have died before he was born and the responsibility of fending for his family fell to him as he grew older.
Omar fought as a guerrilla with the anti-soviet Mujahideen under the command of Nek Mohammad and others, but did not fight against the Najibullah regime between 1989 and 1992. It was reported that he was thin, but tall and strongly built, and "a crack marksman who had destroyed many Soviet tanks during the Afghan War."
Omar was wounded four times. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef claims to have been present when shrapnel destroyed one of his eyes during a battle in Sangsar, Panjwaye District shortly before the 1987 Battle of Arghandab. Other sources place this event in 1986 or in the 1989 Battle of Jalalabad.
After he was disabled, Omar may have studied and taught in a madrasah, or Islamic seminary, in the Pakistani border city of Quetta. He was reportedly a mullah at a village madrasah near the Afghan city of Kandahar.
Unlike many Afghan mujahideen, Omar speaks Arabic. He was devoted to the lectures of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, and took a job teaching in a madrassa in Quetta. He later moved to Binoori Mosque in Karachi, where he led prayers, and later met with Osama bin Laden for the first time.
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