After years of speculation on the whereabouts of notorious Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, he was declared dead July 29.

Officials from the office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced the Taliban leader died two years ago in Pakistan.

The announcement was the first time the Afghan government made any declaration on Omar’s whereabouts, and United States officials consider it a credible report.

U.S. officials then publicly urged the Taliban, considered a radical insurgent group allied with Al-Qaeda, to seize the opportunity and pursue peace talks with the Afghan government — something Ghani has been working on for years.

Who was Mullah Mohammed Omar?

Born in the Afghan province of Uruzgan in 1962, Omar led the Taliban in an uprising against Afghan warlords in the Kandahar area in 1994, and eventually came to control the whole country by 1998, calling it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan while the Taliban were in power.

Omar defended Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. Both of them had been resistance fighters against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, where Omar lost an eye in battle.

His support of Al-Qaeda was his downfall when the U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden and then drove the Taliban from power in 2001. The one-eyed cleric then oversaw the Taliban’s rebirth as a militant insurgency, and the U.S. put a $10 million bounty on his head.

The Taliban revered Omar, and published a biography of him in April 2015.

Who are the Taliban?

The Taliban is a hardline movement that wants to enforce a strict interpretation of Islam in Afghanistan. The movement began in northern Pakistan in the early 1990s as Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Taliban groups now control areas in the country’s northwest, where they’re blamed for suicide bombings and other attacks. Observers say the movement is splintered among different factions and militant groups with little coordination among each other.

Their interpretation of Islam includes public executions of murderers and adulterers, banning television, film and music, but more importantly, discouraged girls over the age of ten from going to school. The group was behind the attack on Malala Yousafzai as she was going home from school in Mingora, Pakistan in October 2012.

But the group has also received public support for stopping corruption, cracking down on criminals and improving roads for commerce.

Did the announcement say how Omar died?

The Afghan government didn’t say how or where Omar died, but Hasib Sediqi, spokesman of the country’s intelligence agency, NDS, said the agency knew Omar “died suspiciously”in a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, in April 2013.

Omar hadn’t been seen in public since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and he never released a single video or audiotape afterward. Only a few photos and one short video of him exist.

The Taliban confirmed Omar’s death (contradicting the Afghan declaration by saying Omar never left Afghanistan) and announced that the Taliban’s new leader will be Omar’s deputy, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

The Afghan government is interested in making peace?

Officially, yes.

The Afghan government launched the peace process in 2014, calling on “all armed opposition groups to seize the opportunity and join the peace process.” Afghan women met with Taliban representatives in Oslo, Norway in June 2015, where they discussed peace and emphasized that the Taliban would have to respect women’s rights in any type of peace deal.

In July, an official Afghan government delegation met with three Taliban representatives outside Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. But after the meeting, the Taliban’s political office in Qatar denied that those three Taliban men actually represented the group. However, a statement (supposedly written by Omar) endorsing the peace talks was published on the Taliban’s website a week after the meeting.

Could there be peace soon in Afghanistan?

It depends on whom you ask.

Omar’s death could either help or hurt the peace process. Experts considered the man the one element that held the Taliban movement together for more than a decade as it fought the U.S., Afghanistan and their allies.

Omar was the Taliban’s leader, and was a figurehead revered by the different factions associated with the movement. His absence could clear the way for Taliban commanders who support reconciliation to move peace talks forward — or itcould further splinter the Taliban into different fighting factions, freeing up room for a more radical group like the Islamic State.

Mansoor’s ascension was not a unanimous decision, and Omar’s eldest son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoub, is reportedly fighting Mansoor for succession.

A second round of peace talks to be held in Pakistan Fridaywere postponed given uncertainty over the Taliban’s leadership and whether or not the movement’s leadership wants to pursue peace.

Brief contributed by Nassim Benchaabane

More Information:

• The Guardian: Taliban Leader Mullah Omar is dead, says Afghan government
• BBC World News: Profile: Mullah Mohammed Omar
• PBS Frontline: Afghanistan — The Other War: Who are the Taliban?
• The New York Times: Taliban Confirm Death of Mullah Omar and Weigh Successor
• Reuters: Why the West may miss the Taliban’s Mullah Omar