THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN – 25 YEARS LATER.
The War in Afghanistan was a conflict that took place in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. It started when the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate. The war ended with the Taliban regaining power after a 19 year and 8-month insurgency against allied NATO and Afghan Armed Forces. It was the longest war in US history, surpassing the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by roughly five months.
Following the 11 Sep 2001 attacks, George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban, then de facto ruling Afghanistan, hand over Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the attacks and until then freely operating within the country. The Taliban's refusal to extradite him led to the invasion of the country; the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies were mostly defeated and expelled from major population centers by US-led forces and the Northern Alliance, which had been fighting the Taliban since 1996.
Despite failing to find Bin Laden, the U.S. and a coalition of over 40 countries (including all NATO members) remained in the country and formed a U.N. sanctioned security mission called International Security Assistance Force to consolidate a new democratic authority in the country and prevent the return of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. At the Bonn Conference, new Afghan interim authorities (mostly from the Northern Alliance) elected Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan Interim Administration. A nationwide rebuilding effort was also made following the end of the Taliban regime.
Meanwhile, the Taliban reorganized under Mullah Omar and in 2003 launched an insurgency against the new Afghan government. Insurgents from the Taliban and other groups waged asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, turncoat killings against coalition forces and reprisals against perceived collaborators. The Taliban exploited weaknesses in the Afghan government to reassert influence across rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. Violence escalated from 2007 to 2009; ISAF responded by massively increasing troops for counter-insurgency operations to "clear and hold" villages, reaching its peak in 2011 when roughly 140,000 foreign troops operated under ISAF and US command in Afghanistan.
Following the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, NATO leaders commenced an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces. On 28 Dec 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF com-bat operations in Afghanistan and officially transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government. The NATO-led Operation Resolute Support was formed the same day to assist in consolidating the newly transferred responsibilities.
Unable to eliminate the Taliban through military means, coalition forces turned to diplomacy to end the conflict. These efforts culminated on 29 Feb 2020, when the U.S. and the Taliban signed a conditional peace deal in Doha which required that U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months so long as the Taliban cooperated with the terms of the agreement not to "allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including Al Qaeda, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the U.S. and its allies". However, insurgents belonging to al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-continent and ISIL-K continued to operate in parts of the country. The Afghan government was not a party to the deal and rejected its terms regarding release of prisoners.
After Joe Biden became president, he moved the target withdrawal date later, from 1 May 2021 to 11 Sep 2021, before moving it forward, to 31 Aug 2021. The Taliban, after the original deadline had expired, and coinciding with the troop withdrawal, launched a broad offensive in which they captured most of Afghanistan, finally taking Kabul on 15 Aug 2021.
The same day, the president of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the Taliban declared victory and the war over. On 16 Aug 2021, Biden confirmed the Taliban takeover, and on 30 Aug 2021, the last American military plane departed Afghanistan, ending 20 years of western military presence in the country. Following US withdrawal, around one thousand U.S. citizens and Afghans holding U.S. or other visas were held stranded by the Taliban. On 7 Sep 2021, an interim government headed by Mohammad Hassan Akhund as Prime Minister was declared by the Taliban.
According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, the war killed 176,000 people in Afghanistan; 46,319 civilians, 69,095 military and police and at least 52,893 opposition fighters. According to the U.N., after the 2001 invasion, more than 5.7 million former refugees returned to Afghanistan. However, since the renewed Taliban offensive of 2021, 2.6 million Afghans remain refugees or have fled, mostly to Pakistan and Iran, and another 4 million Afghans remain internally displaced persons within the country.
The war mostly consisted of Taliban insurgencies fighting against the Afghan Armed Forces and allied forces; the majority of ISAF/RS soldiers and personnel were American. The war was code-named by the U.S. as Operation Enduring Freedom (2001–2014) and Operation Freedom's Sentinel (2015–2021).
