He had all the freedom to explore his wild and brutal nature, which lurks behind his wit and easy manners.

Following the beliefs of the Sunni extremist SSP, he targeted Shiite Muslims in all three districts. Hundreds of Shiites have been killed either in open fighting or executions carried out by Hakimullah's death squad in recent years.

In mid-2008, he launched a series of raids on convoys carrying fuel, food and military supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi for NATO troops in landlocked Afghanistan through the Khyber district. The assaults forced the US and NATO to look for an alternative route running through Central Asia.

He is also believed to have masterminded a number of deadly suicide attacks, including one June 9 on the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, the main town in North-West Frontier Province, which borders the Khyber district. The suicide bombing killed around a dozen people, including UN officials.

Most of the bombers dispatched for those attacks were trained by Hakimullah's cousin Qari Hussain - the head of Baitullah's suicide squads. The influential Hussain later on helped him to become the new leader of Pakistan's Taliban.

'Hakimullah had replaced Baitullah in many ways, even during his life,' said journalist Zahir Shah Sherazi, who in November 2008 met the young militant leader who was the right hand of a man who was suffering from diabetes and kidney problems.

'Because of his illness, Baitullah had turned into a mere name, a symbol by then,' Sherazi said. 'Hakimullah was the actual man. He was overseeing all the operations and was also generating revenues for the TTP through ransom, bank robberies and other illegal activities.'

As a true loyalist to Baitullah, the young commander has been focusing more on spreading the Taliban ideology in Pakistan than fighting Western troops in Afghanistan - a trend that takes him on the wrong side of Islamabad's unacknowledged distinction between good and bad Taliban militants.

By that definition, the good Taliban are those who fight NATO troops in Afghanistan and the bad ones turn on their own countrymen.

With the accession of hardliner Hakimullah to the Taliban throne, the strategic equation might not change for NATO forces in Afghanistan, but the threat of destabilisation of nuclear-armed Pakistan and a key US ally in the fight against terrorism looms large - a prospect that compelled the US administration to go after Baitullah.

'If the Pakistani government continues with its policy of following American dictates, (some day) we can try to capture Peshawar, Hangu and even Islamabad,' Hakimullah told Sherazi and other visiting journalists.

'And we have the strength to do it,' Hakimullah boasted.