KABUL, Afghanistan – The Taliban movement suffered a significant setback with the death of its top operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, but the brutal tactics he pioneered have likely left a lasting imprint on the insurgency, military officials and analysts said Sunday.
Dadullah, one of the most senior Taliban figures to be killed by Western forces in more than five years of fighting, died Saturday in a U.S.-led military operation in southern Afghanistan, said American and Afghan officials.
Although subordinate to the movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, Dadullah was considered the commander in chief of Taliban forces, in charge of day-to-day military operations.
A flamboyant leader with one leg and a penchant for casting himself in Taliban recruiting videos, Dadullah had escaped death so many times that Afghan authorities displayed his blood-splattered corpse as proof to reporters.
Dadullah “will most certainly be replaced in time, but the insurgency has received a serious blow,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
Dadullah, one of the most feared and ruthless Taliban commanders, was believed to have been the driving force behind insurgents’ adoption of Iraq-style tactics such as suicide bombings, abductions and assassination-style killings including beheadings, all of which increased sharply in the past year.
Analysts said that even with Dadullah’s death, Taliban fighters would press ahead with attacks, because they are the most successful way to fight NATO forces and intimidate Afghans. But analysts also called Dadullah’s death the most significant Taliban loss since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
And Rahimullah Yusufzai, an editor for the Pakistani newspaper The News and an expert on the Taliban, told the Associated Press that many Taliban fighters had been unhappy with Dadullah because of his beheadings, kidnappings and boastful videos.
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