By the relatively young age of 33, Hakimullah Mehsud had acquired all the trappings of a Taliban warrior: a fearsome record in the battlefield, a $5 million price tag on his head, and numerous reports of his death that had proved premature
Loosely in command of some 30 militant groups in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, the boyish-looking militant was responsible for some of the Taliban's most damaging strikes against Western interests in the region, organising repeated attacks against Nato convoys heading through the Khyber Pass region to neighbouring Afghanistan.
Washington suspected him of helping mastermind the single deadliest strike against the CIA in the last quarter century, when a Jordanian suicide bomber, posing as an al-Qaeda informant, blew himself up during a rendezvous at a CIA base near Khost in Afghanistan in 2009. Having previously gained their confidence with promises of information, the bomber did not undergo a routine body search, allowing him to detonate a suicide vest at close quarters that killed seven CIA agents and wounded another six. The incident was later recreated in the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark 30.
The attack on the CIA base was believed to be in revenge for a US drone strike four months earlier that killed the previous overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud. Hakimullah then took over from him, having distinguished himself in battle previously by leading a raid that captured 300 Pakistani soldiers in 2007.
His youthful looks and fondness for the media – he was a regular caller to the BBC's Urdu Service – went hand in hand with a fierce anger and a visceral loathing of both the United States and Pakistan's government, which he vowed to replace with an Islamic one. He also had a keen since of showmanship. In 2007, he terrified a BBC crew who came to interview him by demonstrating his skills with a Toyota pick up truck, hurtling around razor-sharp mountain bends and then pulling up just inches short of a precipitous drop.
Only last month, he gave an interview to one of the corporation's local journalists, in which he said he was willing to engage in peace talks with the Pakistani government as long as US drone strikes were stopped. He denied being responsible for terror attacks on Pakistani civilians, which have killed thousands in recent years.
The interview was the first time he had surfaced publicly in more than a year, and was proof that several previous claims by both Western and Pakistani intelligence sources that he had been killed in a drone strike were untrue. But with hindsight, it seems the US was closing in all the time. During last month's audience with BBC journalist Ahmed Wali Mujeeb, which was held at a remote mountain hideout, drones regularly flew overhead. "Don't be afraid, we all have to die one day," he told Mr Mujeeb – a prophecy that came true perhaps sooner than he expected.
