Mawlawi Mohammad Nabi Omari is a key member of the Haqqani Network and currently serves as the First Deputy Minister for Security Affairs at the Ministry of Interior in the Taliban's government. Prior to his current position, he served as the Governor of Khost province from November 2021 to October 2022. He first joined the Taliban in 1996 and worked as chief of security in Qalat, Zabul province, as well as radio operator in the chief of communications office in Kabul. He later worked for the head of the Taliban’s borders department, who maintained a direct reporting line to the then-Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. Following the U.S. ouster of the Taliban in 2001, Mawlawi Nabi Omari returned to Khost and engaging in used car sales before being captured by U.S. forces. He was held in the Bagram Detention Facility before being transferred to the Guantanamo Detention Facility, Cuba, in October 2002. His Guantanamo file outlines he maintained “strong operational ties to al-Qaeda” and that he was a member of a “joint al Qaeda/Taliban cell in Khost.” In 2014, he was released from Guantanamo in a prisoner exchange between the United States and the Taliban, a deal which involved four other senior Taliban members from Guantanamo, commonly known as the "Taliban Five" in exchange for the release of a U.S. sergeant, Bowe Bergdahl. Upon his release, he was relocated to Doha, Qatar, where he served as a member of the Taliban’s Political Office and its negotiating team until August 2021. Born in 1968 in Metakhan village, Khost province, Nabi Omari was reportedly educated in Naryab and Kahi madrassas in Kohat, Pakistan. He was a resident of Miranshah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan.
