How the Taliban used poetry to celebrate its founder, Mullah Omar

Mullah Omar, the elusive leader and founder of the Afghan Taliban is dead. In fact he may have been dead for the last two years, according to the Afghan government. The Taliban released a statement this week confirming his death, which had been reported by the Afghan government, and saying he died from natural causes.

Mullah Omar has long been a mysterious and iconic figure throughout the region, evading capture or assassination when many other Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders have fallen. Only a handful of grainy photographs of him are known to exist, and he rarely spoke to the media or gave public speeches.

Even today, he is a cult figure for Taliban fighters and supporters, symbolic of the history of their movement. That can be seen clearly in the propaganda poetry that the Taliban use to celebrate their successes, says Felix Kuehn, an expert on Afghan culture and politics.

When Kuehn edited an anthology of Taliban poetry, he found poems dedicated to Omar, including one entitled "Pride for the honor of Afghan Muslims." It calls on God to "grant him [Omar] honor forever" and describe the Taliban as a "clean generation" who have come to renew Afghan life.

The fact that poetry was used to praise Omar is unsurprising, Kuehn says. "Poetry is part of Afghan life — it's part of the lived culture, and it's part of the culture the Taliban grew up in." That emphasis on poetry even extends to the Taliban's education system,which included classical poetry from Persia.

For Kuehn, Omar's mythical status will make him hard to replace. Even now, Kuehn says junior soldiers who are too young to remember Omar's time in power in the 1990s still look to his example: "They will often ask their superiors if the orders given to them are in accordance with the will of Mullah Mohammed Omar." For Kuehn that poses a powerful problem to the Taliban.

"He's more than just a man, he's an institution."