Afghanistan War - History, Combatants, Facts, & Timeline - Britannica

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Afghanistan War
2001–2014
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Afghanistan War
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Date: December 2001 - 2014
Participants: Afghanistan • United States • al-Qaeda • Taliban
Context: September 11 attacks
Major Events: Battle of Tora Bora
Key People: George W Bush • Dick Cheney • Hamid Karzai • Barack Obama • David Petraeus
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Key People: George W. Bush • Dick Cheney • Hamid Karzai • Barack Obama • David Petraeus
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Afghanistan War, international conflict in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 that was

triggered by the September 11 attacks and consisted of three phases. The first phase—
toppling the Taliban (the ultraconservative political and religious faction that ruled
Afghanistan and provided sanctuary for al-Qaeda, perpetrators of the September 11
attacks)—was brief, lasting just two months. The second phase, from 2002 until
2008, was marked by a U.S. strategy of defeating the Taliban militarily and
rebuilding core institutions of the Afghan state. The third phase, a turn to classic
counterinsurgency doctrine, began in 2008 and accelerated with U.S. Pres. Barack
Obama’s 2009 decision to temporarily increase the U.S. troop presence in
Afghanistan. The larger force was used to implement a strategy of protecting the
population from Taliban attacks and supporting efforts to reintegrate insurgents into
Afghan society. The strategy came coupled with a timetable for the withdrawal of the
foreign forces from Afghanistan; beginning in 2011, security responsibilities would be
menu searchhanded over to the Afghan military and police. The newSubscribe
gradually Login keyboard_arrow_down
approach largely
failed to achieve its aims. Insurgent attacks and civilian casualties remained
Afghanistan War Table of Contentskeyboard_arrow_down
stubbornly high, while many of the Afghan military and police units taking over
security duties appeared to be ill-prepared to hold off the Taliban. By the time the
U.S. and NATO combat mission formally ended in December 2014, the 13-year
Afghanistan War had become the longest war ever fought by the United States.
Prelude to the September 11 attacks

The joint U.S. and British invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 was preceded by over
two decades of war in Afghanistan (see Afghan War). On December 24, 1979, Soviet
tanks rumbled across the Amu Darya River and into Afghanistan, ostensibly to
restore stability following a coup that brought to power a pair of Marxist-Leninist
political groups—the People’s (Khalq) Party and the Banner (Parcham) Party. But the
Soviet presence touched off a nationwide rebellion by fighters—known as the
mujahideen—who drew upon Islam as a uniting source of inspiration. These fighters
won extensive covert backing from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States and
were joined in their fight by foreign volunteers (who soon formed a network, known
as al-Qaeda, to coordinate their efforts). The guerrilla war against the Soviet forces
led to their departure in 1989. In the Soviets’ absence, the mujahideen ousted
Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government and established a transitional government.
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Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

A Soviet armoured vehicle rolling past a group of civilians during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
b
December 1979.
Image: Archive Photos/Getty Images
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The mujahideen were politically fragmented, however, and in 1994 armed conflict
escalated. The Taliban emerged and in 1996 seized Kabul. It instituted a severe
interpretation of Islamic law that, for example, forbade female education and
prescribed the severing of hands, or even execution, as punishment for petty crimes.
That same year, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was welcomed to Afghanistan
(having been expelled from Sudan) and established his organization’s headquarters
there. With al-Qaeda’s help, the Taliban won control of over 90 percent of Afghan
territory by the summer of 2001. On September 9 of that year, al-Qaeda hit men
carried out the assassination of famed mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Masoud, who
at the time was leading the Northern Alliance (a loose coalition of mujahideen
militias that maintained control of a small section of northern Afghanistan) as it
battled the Taliban and who had unsuccessfully sought greater U.S. backing for his
efforts.
The September 11 attacks and the U.S.-British invasion

The hijacking and crashing of four U.S. jetliners on September 11, 2001, brought
instant attention to Afghanistan. The plot had been hatched by al-Qaeda, and some of
the 19 hijackers had trained in Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the attacks, the
administration of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush coalesced around a strategy of first
ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan and dismantling al-Qaeda, though others
contemplated actions in Iraq, including long-standing plans for toppling Pres.
Saddam Hussein. Bush demanded that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar
“deliver to [the] United States authorities all the leaders of al-Qaeda who hide in your
deliver to [the] United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your
land,” and when Omar refused, U.S. officials began implementing a plan for war.
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Mohammad Omar
Mohammad Omar.
Image: NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER/Reuters /Landov
The campaign in Afghanistan started covertly on September 26, with a Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) team known as Jawbreaker arriving in the country and,
working with anti-Taliban allies, initiating a strategy for overthrowing the regime.
U.S. officials hoped that by partnering with the Afghans they could avoid deploying a
large force to Afghanistan. Pentagon officials were especially concerned that the
United States not be drawn into a protracted occupation of Afghanistan, as had
occurred with the Soviets more than two decades prior. The United States relied
primarily on the Northern Alliance, which had just lost Massoud but had regrouped
under other commanders including Tajik leader Mohammed Fahim and Abdul
under other commanders, including Tajik leader Mohammed Fahim and Abdul
Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek. The Americans also teamed with anti-Taliban Pashtuns in
southern Afghanistan, including a little-known tribal leader named Hamid Karzai.
The CIA team was soon joined by U.S. and British special forces contingents, and
together they provided arms, equipment, and advice to the Afghans. They also helped
coordinate targeting for the air campaign, which began on October 7, 2001, with U.S.
and British war planes pounding Taliban targets, thus marking the public start of
Operation Enduring Freedom. In late October, Northern Alliance forces began to
overtake a series of towns formerly held by the Taliban. The forces worked with U.S.
assistance, but they defied U.S. wishes when, on November 13, they marched into
Kabul as the Taliban retreated without a fight.
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Afghanistan: U.S. Special Forces and Northern Alliance

U.S. Special Forces working with members of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, November 12,
2001.
Image: U.S. Department of Defense
Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan and the Taliban’s spiritual home,
fell on December 6, marking the end of Taliban power. It had been besieged by a
force led by Karzai that moved in from the north and one commanded by Gul Agha
Sherzai that advanced from the south; both operated with heavy assistance from the
United States. As the Taliban leadership retreated into Afghanistan’s rural areas and
across the border to Pakistan, anti-Taliban figures convened at a United Nations
(UN)-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany. With behind-the-scenes
maneuvering by the United States, Karzai was selected to lead the country on an
interim basis.
An intensive manhunt for Omar, bin Laden, and al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-
Zawahiri was undertaken. Prior to the killing of bin Laden by U.S. forces in 2011 (see
below), the Americans were believed to have come closest to bin Laden in the
December 2001 battle of Tora Bora (bin Laden’s mountain stronghold). But bin
Laden was thought to have managed to have slipped into Pakistan with the help of
Afghan and Pakistani forces that were supposedly helping the Americans. Critics
later questioned why the U.S. military had allowed Afghan forces to lead the assault
on the cave complex at Tora Bora rather than doing it themselves. (Indeed,
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry made this criticism repeatedly
during the 2004 general election campaign.) Al-Qaeda subsequently reestablished its
base of operations in the tribal areas that form Pakistan’s northwest border with
Afghanistan. Omar and his top Taliban lieutenants settled in and around the
Pakistani city of Quetta, in the remote southwestern province of Balochistān. One of
the final major battles of the first phase of the war came in March 2002 with
Operation Anaconda in the eastern province of Paktia which involved U S and
Operation Anaconda in the eastern province of Paktia, which involved U.S. and
Afghan forces fighting some 800 al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. The operation also
marked the entrance of other countries’ troops into the war: special operations forces
from Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway participated.
Iraq takes centre stage

With the ouster of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the international focus shifted to
reconstruction and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. In April 2002 Bush
announced a “Marshall Plan” for Afghanistan in a speech at the Virginia Military
Institute, promising substantial financial assistance. But from the start, development
efforts in Afghanistan were inadequately funded, as attention had turned among U.S.
officials to the looming confrontation in Iraq. Between 2001 and 2009, just over $38
billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan was
appropriated by the U.S. Congress. More than half the money went to training and
equipping Afghan security forces, and the remainder represented a fraction of the
amount that experts said would be required to develop a country that had
consistently ranked near the bottom of global human development indices. The aid
program was also bedeviled by waste and by confusion over whether civilian or
military authorities had responsibility for leading education, health, agriculture, and
other development projects.
Despite military commitments from dozens of U.S. allies, the United States initially
argued against allowing the other foreign forces—operating as the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—to deploy beyond the Kabul area. That choice was
directed by the Pentagon, which insisted on a “light footprint” out of concern that
Afghanistan would become a drag on U.S. resources as attention shifted to Iraq (see
Iraq War). When ISAF did begin to venture beyond Kabul, its efforts were hampered
by the “caveats” of its component countries restrictions that kept all but a handful of 8/25
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by the caveats of its component countries—restrictions that kept all but a handful of
the militaries from actively engaging in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The force, overseen by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the
organization’s first mission outside Europe, was also hamstrung by a lack of troops as
international commitments to Afghanistan flagged.
The United States consistently represented the largest foreign force in Afghanistan,
and it bore the heaviest losses. By spring 2010 more than 1,000 U.S. troops had been
killed in Afghanistan, while the British troops suffered some 300 deaths and the
Canadians some 150. Both Britain and Canada stationed their troops in Afghanistan’s
south, where fighting had been most intense. More than 20 other countries also lost
troops during the war, though many—such as Germany and Italy—chose to focus
their forces in the north and the west, where the insurgency was less potent. As the
fighting dragged on and casualties escalated, the war lost popularity in many
Western countries, creating domestic political pressure to keep troops out of harm’s
way or to pull them out altogether.
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Kandahar, Afghanistan: Stephen Harper visiting troops

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing Canadian soldiers at their base in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, March 2006.
Image: Tom Hanson/AP Images
Initially, the war appeared to have been won with relative ease. On May 1, 2003, U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced an end to “major combat” in
Afghanistan. On the same day, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln,
President Bush announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” At
that time, there were 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The first democratic Afghan
elections since the fall of the Taliban were held on October 9, 2004, with
approximately 80 percent of registered voters turning out to give Karzai a full five-
year term as president. Parliamentary elections were staged a year later, with dozens
of women claiming seats set aside for them to ensure gender diversity. The 2004
constitution provided Afghanistan with a powerful central government and weak
regional and local authorities—a structure that was in opposition to the country’s
long-standing traditions.
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Iraq War: George W. Bush with sailors

Pres. George W. Bush with sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003.
Image: Tyler J. Clements/U.S. Navy
Despite vast powers under the constitution, Karzai was widely regarded as a weak
leader who grew increasingly isolated as the war progressed. He survived several
assassination attempts—including a September 2004 rocket attack that nearly struck
a helicopter he was riding in—and security concerns kept him largely confined to the
presidential palace in Kabul. Karzai’s government was beset by corruption, and
efforts to build a national army and a police force were troubled from the start by
inadequate international support and ethnic differences between Afghans.
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Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, 2004.
Image: Robert D. Ward/U.S. Department of Defense
Taliban resurgence
Beginning in 2005, violence climbed as the Taliban reasserted its presence with new
Beginning in 2005, violence climbed as the Taliban reasserted its presence with new
tactics modeled on those being used by insurgents in Iraq. Whereas early in the war
the Taliban had focused on battling U.S. and NATO forces in open combat—a
strategy that largely failed to inflict significant damage—their adoption of the use of
suicide bombings and buried bombs, known as IEDs (improvised explosive devices),
began to cause heavy casualties. Between January 2005 and August 2006,
Afghanistan endured 64 suicide attacks—a tactic that had been virtually unknown in
the country’s history before then. At first the attacks caused relatively few casualties,
but as training and the availability of high-powered explosives increased, the death
toll began to climb: in one particularly vicious attack in November 2007, at least 70
people—many of them children—were killed as a parliamentary delegation visited the
northern town of Baghlan. Less than a year later, a bombing at the Indian embassy in
Kabul killed more than 50; the Afghan government accused elements of Pakistan’s
intelligence service of complicity in the attack, a charge Pakistan denied.
The Taliban’s resurgence corresponded with a rise in anti-American and anti-

Western sentiment among Afghans. Those feelings were nurtured by the sluggish
pace of reconstruction, allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention facilities,
widespread corruption in the Afghan government, and civilian casualties caused by
U.S. and NATO bombings. In May 2006 a U.S. military vehicle crashed and killed
several Afghans, an event that sparked violent anti-American riots in Kabul—the
worst since the war began. Later that year NATO took command of the war across the
country; American officials said that the United States would play a lesser role and
that the face of the war would become increasingly international. This shift reflected
the greater need for U.S. troops and resources in Iraq, where sectarian warfare was
reaching alarming levels. By contrast, the war in Afghanistan was still regarded in
Washington as a relative success.
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Afghanistan War
U.S. special operations forces conducting a mounted combat patrol in search of Taliban fighters in
Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 2007.
Image: Sgt. Daniel Love/U.S. Department of Defense
For commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, however, it was apparent that the
Taliban intended to escalate its campaign, launching more frequent attacks and
intensifying its fund-raising from wealthy individuals and groups in the Persian Gulf.
Another source of money was Afghanistan’s resurgent opium industry. International
pressure had forced the Taliban to curb poppy cultivation during their final year in
power, but after their removal in 2001 the opium industry made a comeback, with
revenues in some areas of the country benefiting the insurgency. Western-backed
campaigns to eliminate poppy cultivation or to encourage farmers to grow other
crops had little discernible impact; Afghanistan soon became the supplier of over 90
percent of the world’s opium.
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Orūzgān province, Afghanistan: eradication sweep of opium poppies

Afghan policemen destroying opium poppies during an eradication sweep in Orūzgān province, 2007.
Image: AP Images
The United States, meanwhile, had had only limited success in killing or capturing
Taliban commanders. In early 2007, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund—the Taliban’s
number three leader—was captured in Pakistan, and months later Mullah Dadullah—
the Taliban’s top military commander—was killed in fighting with U.S. forces. But
those were the exceptions. Top insurgent leaders remained at large, many of them in
the tribal regions of Pakistan that adjoin Afghanistan. This reality prompted the
United States to begin targeting insurgent leaders who lived in Pakistan with missiles
fired from remotely piloted drones. The CIA program of targeted killings was publicly
denied by U.S. officials but was widely acknowledged in private. Pakistani officials in
turn denounced the strikes in public but privately approved of them as long as
civilian casualties were limited. The United States repeatedly threatened to expand
its drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal areas and into regions such as Balochistān if
Pakistan did not demonstrate greater cooperation in battling the Taliban, a group it
had long fostered.
U.S. troop surge and end of U.S. combat mission

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama went to the White House promising to focus attention and
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Afghanistan War | History, Combatants, Facts, & Timeline | Britannica
resources on the faltering war effort in Afghanistan. On February 17, 2009, he
approved sending an additional 17,000 U.S. troops, on top of the 36,000 U.S. troops
and 32,000 NATO service members already there. Three months later Obama took
the rare step of removing a commanding general from a theatre of war, replacing
Gen. David McKiernan with Gen. Stanley McChrystal. While McKiernan was shifting
U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, Obama and other top officials had concluded that a
more radical change was needed. McChrystal was brought in to implement a new
strategy modeled after the surge strategy in Iraq—one in which U.S. forces would
focus on protecting the population from insurgents rather than simply trying to kill
large numbers of militants. The strategy also involved trying to persuade enemy
fighters to defect and ultimately encouraging reconciliation between the Karzai
government and Taliban leaders.
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Barack Obama, Hamid Karzai, and Asif Ali Zardari

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama meeting at the White House with Pres. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan
and Pres. Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, May 2009.
Image: Pete Souza—Official White House Photo
Soon after assuming command, McChrystal concluded that he did not have enough
troops to execute the new strategy, and in September 2009 he laid out his concerns
in a confidential report, which was subsequently leaked to the press. McChrystal
predicted that the war would be lost within a year if there was not a significant troop
surge. After an intensive Afghan policy review—the second one by the Obama
administration in less than a year—the president delivered a speech at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point on December 1 in which he announced a major
escalation in the war effort, with 30,000 additional troops being deployed to
Afghanistan by the summer of 2010. The new strategy led to an increase in U.S.
combat deaths; notably, during the first three months of 2010, U.S. deaths were
approximately twice what they had been over the same period in 2009.
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Stanley McChrystal and Barack Obama

Stanley McChrystal (right) and U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, 2009.
Image: Official White House photo by Pete Souza
The surge in U.S. forces was accompanied by a dramatic escalation of U.S. drone
strikes in Pakistan—one of which killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
But the CIA also paid a price in late December 2009 when an al-Qaeda double agent
But the CIA also paid a price in Afghanistan
16/02/2022, 21:56
late December 2009 when an al Qaeda double agent
War | History, Combatants, Facts, & Timeline | Britannica
detonated a suicide bomb at a Bagram air base in the eastern province of Khost,
killing seven from the agency.
In early 2010 the surge began with an assault on the insurgent-held town of Marja, in
the southern province of Helmand. U.S. Marines achieved a relatively quick victory,
even as McChrystal planned a more ambitious offensive in Kandahar. Obama visited
Afghanistan for the first time as president on March 28, delivering a stern message to
Karzai that he needed to clean up corruption in his government. Karzai had won a
new five-year term in an August 2009 election that was tainted by widespread
allegations of fraud. Karzai vowed in his inaugural address to stamp out corruption in
his government, but there were few signs in the short term that he had done so.
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Afghanistan War
An Afghan National Police officer leading U.S. troops on a patrol in Khost province, Afghanistan, 2010.
Image: Sgt. Jeffrey Alexander/U.S. Department of Defense
Meanwhile, Karzai announced that he would attempt to reconcile with the Taliban;
he repeatedly invited Mullah Omar to meet with him, but the Taliban leader
steadfastly refused. Under intense pressure from the United States, Karzai lashed out
in April 2010 and even threatened to join the Taliban if the international community
did not stop meddling in Afghan affairs. Troubled by the comments, the White House
threatened to revoke Karzai’s invitation to meet with Obama in Washington, D.C.,
but the visit occurred as scheduled, with Karzai and Obama at least outwardly
making efforts to mend their relationship.
Pakistan offered to mediate Afghan peace talks, but Pakistan’s ultimate attitude
toward the Taliban remained a matter of great controversy. In February 2010,
Pakistani security forces arrested the Afghan Taliban’s second-in-command, Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar, a move interpreted by many U.S. officials as a reflection of
Pakistan’s desire to work with the U.S. and Afghan governments to stem the group’s
influence. But others, including Kai Eide, the former top UN official in Kabul, said
Baradar had been a leading Taliban proponent of reconciliation and that the arrest
was intended to scuttle efforts to end the war through a political, rather than military,
solution.
The military command structure in Afghanistan abruptly changed again in June

2010, when Obama replaced McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus after McChrystal
and some of his aides made disparaging remarks to a Rolling Stone magazine
reporter about Obama and other top administration officials, including Vice Pres. Joe
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Afghanistan War | History, Combatants, Facts, & Timeline | Britannica
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Biden, National Security Advisor James L. Jones, and special representative to
Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke. The comments underscored festering tensions

between U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan and some members of the Obama
administration’s civilian leadership. In explaining the change of command, Obama
said, “I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division.” Despite the
switch, Obama vowed that U.S. strategy in Afghanistan would not change. Petraeus,
considered the leading architect of counterinsurgency doctrine in the U.S. military,
was expected to continue McChrystal’s emphasis on protecting the Afghan
population from insurgents, building Afghan government institutions, and seeking to
limit civilian casualties.
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Stanley McChrystal: resignation

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama announcing the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal while
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surrounded by (left to right) Adm. Mike Mullen, Vice Pres. Joe Biden, Gen. David Petraeus, and
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, June 24, 2010.
Image: Official White House Video
Griff Witte
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Shortly after McChrystal’s dismissal, a cache of classified documents relating to the
Afghanistan War was published online by the whistle-blowing journalistic
organization WikiLeaks and prereleased to several newspapers, including The New
York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian. The information was mainly in the form
of raw intelligence gathered between 2004 and 2009, and WikiLeaks cumulatively
termed it the “Afghan War Diary.” It detailed previously unreported civilian deaths,
indicated that a U.S. special forces unit was tasked with capturing or killing the
persons on a list of insurgent leaders, revealed that the Taliban had employed heat-
seeking missiles against aircraft, and suggested that the Pakistani intelligence service
had been working with Taliban forces in spite of substantial U.S. aid to Pakistan for
its assistance in combating militants. The U.S. government criticized the disclosure
as a security breach but stated that the substance of the leak corresponded with other
known intelligence and did not contain new information.
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Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a press conference, 2010.
Image: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images News
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Witness the historic speech by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama announcing the killing of
Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces, May 2011
Pres. Barack Obama announcing that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden, May 2011.
Image: Official White House Video
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Developments with some of the primary objectives of the war—apprehending key al-
Qaeda leaders and dealing with the Taliban—were front and centre in 2011. Nearly 10
years after eluding capture at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, bin Laden was killed by U.S.
forces on May 2, 2011, after U.S. intelligence located him living in a secure compound
in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The operation, a raid carried out by a small team that
reached the compound by helicopter led to a firefight in which bin Laden died The
reached the compound by helicopter, led to a firefight in which bin Laden died. The
next month U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed for the first time that
the U.S. government was holding reconciliation talks with the Taliban, although he
stressed that efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict were still in the preliminary
stages. Then, on June 22, Obama announced an accelerated timetable for the
withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying that the United States had largely
achieved its goals by disrupting al-Qaeda’s operations and killing many of its leaders.
The plan called for the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be reduced by as
many as 30,000 within a year, in preparation for a complete withdrawal of combat
forces by the end of 2014. Hours after Obama’s announcement, French Pres. Nicolas
Sarkozy announced that France would also begin to withdraw its 4,000 soldiers from
Afghanistan. In September, efforts to end the long-running conflict suffered a
setback when Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and a key figure in
reconciliation negotiations, was assassinated by a suicide bomber.
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U.S. government officials during the Osama bin Laden mission

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama (seated second from left) and various government officials—including Vice
Pres. Joe Biden (seated left), Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates (seated right), and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton (seated second from right)—receiving updates in the Situation Room of the White
House during the Osama bin Laden mission, May 2011.
Image: Pete Souza—Official White House Photo
A series of incidents in early 2012 heightened tensions between the U.S. and the
Afghan government and provoked public outrage. In mid-January, a video showing
U.S. Marines urinating on dead Afghans circulated in the media, drawing apologies
from U.S. officials. Weeks later, Afghans rioted and held protests over reports that
U.S. soldiers had disposed of copies of the Qurʾān at a military base by burning them.
Then, on March 11, a U.S. soldier allegedly left an American base near Panjwai and
broke into several homes, shooting dead 17 Afghans, mostly women and children.
The incident provoked widespread demonstrations and a sharp condemnation from
Karzai. Days later, the Taliban suspended participation in talks with the United
States and the Afghan government.
Later that year NATO’s efforts to train and equip the Afghan army and police were
hampered by an increase in attacks in which Afghan soldiers and police turned their
weapons on NATO soldiers. These attacks forced NATO troops to institute more
rigorous screening procedures and to suspend the training of certain units.
Meanwhile, in early 2012, U.S. and Afghan negotiators reached agreements regarding
two issues that had been sources of friction between the Obama and Karzai
administrations. The first agreement, signed in March, set a six-month timetable for
the transfer of Afghan detainees held by the U.S. military to Afghan custody. The
the transfer of Afghan detainees held by the U.S. military to Afghan custody. The
second agreement, signed in April, established that Afghan forces would oversee and
lead night raids to apprehend or kill Taliban leaders. These raids, previously led by
U.S. special forces, had since 2009 become a major component of the campaign
against the Taliban. Afghan leaders, however, had long objected that the raids
violated Afghan sovereignty and that surprise invasions of private homes ultimately
alienated public opinion and increased support for the insurgency.
The agreements in March and April concerning detainees and night raids cleared the
way for the United States and Afghanistan to reach a further agreement in May
outlining a framework for economic and security cooperation between the two
countries following the withdrawal of NATO combat troops in 2014. The agreement
expressed the United States’ commitment to continuing military support for the
Afghan government after 2014, although it left unanswered the question of whether
or not some U.S. and NATO forces would remain in Afghanistan as trainers and
advisers after 2014. That was to be determined by a separate pact, the Bilateral
Security Agreement. Even though the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan
remained deeply unpopular, many Afghans feared that a sudden withdrawal would
allow the country to slip into civil war or chaos.
The issue of leaving foreign troops in the country after the end of NATO combat
operations remained unresolved until the last half of 2014. Karzai—by then in the last
months of his presidency—had refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement
before leaving office, and the election of his successor was delayed by a lengthy
recount. In late September 2014 Ashraf Ghani was finally inaugurated as president
and immediately signed the Bilateral Security Agreement. The U.S. and NATO
formally ended their combat mission in Afghanistan on December 28, 2014, but
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retained a reduced force of approximately 13,000 troops to support and train Afghan
troops until a drawdown was implemented in 2020. A full withdrawal of U.S. troops,
initiated in 2020 and continued into 2021, anticipated the end of U.S. deployment to
Afghanistan, but the resurgence of the Taliban during the withdrawal left the country
in similar straits to when U.S. forces had arrived 20 years earlier.
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Ashraf Ghani
Afghan politician Ashraf Ghani (right) shaking hands with his rival for the Afghan presidency,
Abdullah Abdullah, August 2014.
Image: U.S. Department of State
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16/02/2022, 21:56 Afghanistan War | History, Combatants, Facts, & Timeline | Britannica

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