WASHINGTON: Rarely in history have President George W. Bush and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar whose destinies collided in battle on Sunday started their journey toward each other from so far apart.

Both men were born after World War Two, President Bush, 55, a child of privilege, Mullah Omar, 42, the son of a poor peasant. However, in their vastly different paths through life they had arrived, even before Sunday’s battle, at the same destination, a deeply held belief in their religions.

Bush is now the most photographed man in the world, his every appearance accompanied by pomp and circumstance. Mullah Omar is probably the most secretive leader in the world with not even a photograph of him known to exist.

There is an irony in that the two men go to war, not directly against each other, but over Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.

For the first 45 years of his life, Bush was not considered presidential material. Until 1994, when he was elected governor of Texas, he was known as the undistinguished son of a distinguished father, President George Bush.

The turning point in Bush’s life came in 1994, after his father was turned out of the White House by Bill Clinton, when he stepped forward to run for governor of Texas. The eldest son of George and Barbara Bush, George Walker Bush was born in 1946.

Mullah Omar by contrast was born in 1959 in the village of Nodeh near Kandahar in Afghanistan into a family of poor peasants. He lost his father when he was young and the job of fending for his family fell to him. A large man with a long, dark beard, he became a village mullah before joining the Mujahideen and fighting against the Soviet-established government from 1989 to 1992.

In early 1994, Omar enlisted about 30 talibs. In November 1994, his movement was strong enough to capture Kandahar. By early 1995, Mullah Omar’s fighters were sweeping north through Afghanistan and by the end of the year, Herat was in their hands. The taking of Kabul took another year, several setbacks and a siege that lasted months before the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on Sept 26, 1996. —Reuters