The United States launched war in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The conflict spanned two decades and spanned four US presidencies, becoming the longest war in American history.
In August 2021, the war began to end with the Taliban regaining power two weeks before the United States was ready to withdraw all of its troops from the region. Overall, the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and a price tag of $ 2,000 billion. Here is an overview of the key events of the conflict.
The war on terrorism begins
Investigators have determined that the 9/11 attacks – in which terrorists hijacked four commercial planes, crashing two against the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one at the Pentagon near Washington, DC and one in a field of Pennsylvania – were orchestrated by terrorists working from Afghanistan, which was under the control of the Taliban, an extremist Islamic movement. Osama bin Laden, leader of the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda, led the plot that killed more than 2,700 people. The Taliban, which seized power in the country in 1996 following occupation by the Soviet Union, was believed to be harboring bin Laden, a Saudi, in Afghanistan.
In a speech on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush called on the Taliban to hand bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders over to the United States, or to “share their fate.” They refused.
On October 7, 2001, US and British forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a campaign of airstrikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets, including Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad, which lasted for five days. Ground forces followed and, with the help of Northern Alliance forces, the United States quickly overtook Taliban strongholds, including the capital Kabul, in mid-November. On December 6, Kandahar fell, marking the official end of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and causing the flight of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
Go to reconstruction
In a speech on April 17, 2002, Bush called for a Marshall Plan to help rebuild Afghanistan, with Congress allocating more than $ 38 billion to humanitarian efforts and training Afghan security forces. In June, Hamid Karzai, chief of the Popalzai Durrani tribe, was chosen to lead the transitional government.
While approximately 8,000 US troops remained in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-supervised International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), US military attention turned to Iraq in 2003, the same year that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said “major combat” operations had taken place. to its end in Afghanistan.
A new constitution was quickly promulgated and Afghanistan held its first democratic elections since the start of the war on October 9, 2004, with Karzai, who served two five-year terms, winning the presidential election. ISAF’s focus shifted to peacekeeping and reconstruction, but with the United States waging a war in Iraq, the Taliban regrouped and attacks intensified.
Reinforcement of troops under Obama
In a written statement released on February 17, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama pledged to send an additional 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan by the summer to join the 36,000 US forces and 32,000 US forces. NATO already deployed there. “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, leadership and resources it urgently needs,” he said. US troops peaked at around 110,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2011.
In November 2010, NATO countries agreed to a transition of power to local Afghan security forces by the end of 2014, and on May 2, 2011, after a 10-year manhunt, the US Navy SEALs located and killed Bin Laden in Pakistan.
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the National Security Team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011, Washington, DC
Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
After bin Laden’s death, a decade after the start of the war and in the face of calls from lawmakers and the public to end the war, Obama issued a plan to withdraw 33,000 American troops by the summer of 2012 , and all troops by 2014. NATO transferred control to Afghan forces in June 2013, and Obama announced a new schedule for troop withdrawal in 2014, which included 9,800 US troops remaining in Afghanistan to continue to train local forces.
Trump: “We will fight to win”
In 2015, the Taliban continued to intensify their attacks, bombing the parliament and the airport in Kabul and carrying out multiple suicide bombings.
During his first months in office, President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to make combat decisions in Afghanistan, and on April 13, 2017, the United States dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb, called the “Mother of all bombs “. on a cave complex remote from ISIS.
In August 2017, Trump delivered a speech to US troops promising “we will fight to win” in Afghanistan. “America’s enemies must never know of our plans, or believe they can be waiting for us,” he said. “I won’t say when we’re going to attack, but attacking we will.”
The Taliban continued to escalate their terrorist attacks and the United States began peace talks with the group in February 2019. An agreement was reached that included US and NATO allies pledging to a total withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban pledged not to harbor terrorist groups. . But in September, Trump called off talks after a Taliban attack that left a US soldier and 11 others dead. “If they can’t agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful deal anyway,” tweeted Trump.
Still, the United States and the Taliban signed a peace accord on February 29, 2020, although the Taliban’s attacks on Afghan forces continued, as did the American airstrikes. In September 2020, members of the Afghan government met with the Taliban to resume peace talks, and in November Trump announced that he planned to reduce US troops in Afghanistan to 2,500 by January 15, 2021.
Withdrawal of American troops
The fourth president in power during the war, President Joe Biden, set April 2021 as the symbolic deadline of September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, as the date for the full withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, with withdrawal effort from May.
Faced with little resistance, in just 10 days, from August 6 to 15, 2021, the Taliban quickly overtook the provincial capitals, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and, finally, Kabul. As the Afghan government collapsed, President Ashraf Ghani fled to the United Arab Emirates, the United States Embassy was evacuated, and thousands of citizens rushed to Kabul airport to leave the country .
As of August 14, Biden had temporarily deployed around 6,000 US troops to assist with the evacuation efforts. Facing close scrutiny of the Taliban’s swift return to power, Biden said, “I was the fourth president to preside over a US troop presence in Afghanistan – two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not and will not pass this war on to a fifth.
During the war in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 Allied troops were killed, including 2,448 American servicemen, and more than 20,000 Americans were wounded. Brown University research shows that around 69,000 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed, along with 51,000 civilians and 51,000 militants. According to the United Nations, some 5 million Afghans have been displaced by war since 2012, making Afghanistan the third largest displaced population in the world.
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The American War in Afghanistan, Council on Foreign Relations
Costs of the War in Afghanistan, in Lives and in Dollars, Associated Press
Who are the Taliban and what do they want ?, The New York Times
Highlights of Operation Enduring Freedom, CNN
Afghanistan: Why is there a war ?, BBC News
