[13] When the Taliban regime fell in December 2001, Dadullah escaped capture by Northern Alliance forces in Kunduz province.

[15] Dadullah masterminded the 2006 Taliban offensive and had earned a notorious reputation amongst NATO forces by the end of the year.

Some Americans nicknamed him the "Afghan Zarqawi," drawing parallels to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

[18] In 2006, he claimed to have 12,000 men and to control 20 districts in the former Taliban heartland in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Orūzgān.

[20] In the summer of 2006, he was reportedly sent by Omar to South Waziristan to convince local Pashtun insurgents to agree to a truce with Pakistan.

[21] In October 2006 it was rumored[22] that the Afghan government was considering giving control of its defense ministry over to Dadullah as part of a reconciliation plan with the Taliban to stop the ongoing insurgency.

According to an interview he gave to the BBC, he had hundreds of suicide bombers waiting for his orders to launch an offensive against NATO troops.

[3] Dadullah oversaw Taliban negotiations for the hostage-taking of Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and his two Afghan assistants in March 2007.

"[24] Afghan officials reported on May 13, 2007 that Dadullah was killed the previous evening in Helmand Province in a raid by joint Afghan and NATO forces known to have included C Squadron, Special Boat Service (SBS), a British special forces unit, after he left his "sanctuary" for a meeting with fellow commanders, in southern Afghanistan.

[25] Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province, put the body of Dadullah on display at his official residence.

[26] On June 7, 2007, the Taliban said that Dadullah's body had been returned to them, in exchange for four Afghan health ministry workers who had been held hostage, and had been buried by his family in Kandahar.

One Taliban commander later recalled in a 2014 interview: When he was alive, half of Helmand was in our hands, as well as many districts of Kandahar province.