The Taliban and their supporters are claiming that their former intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, who was presumed dead in a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan's Paktia province a few months ago, was alive.

If true, the story they are putting out as to how Ahmadullah faked his death is worthy of a spymaster.

Requesting anonymity, the low-level former Taliban officials and some of their Afghan supporters said Ahmadullah survived the furious bombing by U.S. B-52 bombers on a house where he was staying in Naka village in Paktia that night.

They said the Taliban intelligence head, who was slightly injured in the attack, came up with a bizarre plan to convince the Americans that he was dead by procuring the leg of one of the victims of the bombing and handing it over to his men to take it to his village in Ghazni province for burial. Soon everybody was convinced that Ahmadullah was dead.

At that time, it was reported as the death of the highest-ranking Taliban official since the start of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan on October 7. His death was also described as very demoralising for the Taliban.

The U.S. government was happy that it had eliminated a senior Taliban leader even though it would have preferred to get Qari Ahmadullah alive to glean intelligence information from him.

But it has now emerged that Qari Ahmadullah may still be alive. He is said to be constantly on the move to avoid his capture at the hands of the U.S. forces or their Western and Afghan allies.

Taliban members and their supporters maintained that they had no doubt that Qari Ahmadullah was safe and sound. They said the Taliban morale had been boosted by reports that he was alive.

Ahmadullah was staying in the house of another Taliban official, Mulla Taha, who was security chief in Jalalabad, in Naka village when it was bombed.

The bombing apparently was the result of information provided by Afghans in the pay of the U.S. military. Mulla Taha, grandson of Khalifa Sahib of Naka who was among the first ones to wage jihad against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, also survived the bombing but his two sons and some family members were killed in the attack. Aziz Gharwal, a Pakistani tribesman from Bajaur Agency who fought alongside the Taliban, was killed in the same raid.

The intelligence heads who have survived until now are Asadullah Sarwari and General Mohammed Qasim Faheem. If reports about Qari Ahmadullah being alive are true, he is the third Afghan lucky enough to survive after serving as the head of Khad.