The invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. forces in October 2001 began as a
quick and effective strike, ousting a tyrannical government and sending
terrorist forces into hiding. For a number of reasons, the Afghanistan
War dragged on for years after the invasion, allowing the enemy a chance
to regain some of its power.
Retaliation for a terrorist attack
Within hours of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center and Pentagon, the administration of President
George W. Bush (1946–; served 2001–) determined that members of
the al-Qaeda terrorist network were responsible for the attacks. Two airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade
Center, a third airliner crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth jet
crashed into a Pennsylvania field before arriving at its intended target.
Al-Qaeda was led by the Saudi Arabian multimillionaire Osama bin
Laden (1957–) and others who had embraced a radical form of Islam
while fighting in Afghanistan during that nation’s ten-year war with the
Soviet Union (1979–89). Al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan,
where the ruling Islamic regime, the Taliban, had been providing it shelter. After September 11, the Bush administration demanded that the
Taliban turn bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders over to the United
States. The Taliban stalled for weeks, claiming no knowledge of bin
Laden’s whereabouts.
The Bush administration prepared for war. Since an invasion of
Afghanistan could be viewed as an act of self-defense, the administration
did not seek United Nations approval for a multinational force. Instead,
Bush called on the help of Great Britain. Canada and Australia later also
contributed troops to the allied force. This mission was named
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
The invasion
On October 7, U.S. and British forces launched air strikes against
Afghanistan. At the same time, the United States provided the Northern
Alliance, a loose coalition of Afghan military groups that had long opposed the Taliban, with funding and support for an offensive against the
Taliban on the ground. The strikes initially focused on the area in and
around the cities of Kabul, Jalalabad, and Qandahár. Within a few days,
most al-Qaeda training sites had been severely damaged, and the
Taliban’s air defenses had been destroyed. The air strikes then targeted
the Taliban’s communications systems.
By November 9, 2001, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif had
fallen to the Northern Alliance; four days later, a combination of allied
air assaults and ground maneuvers by the Northern Alliance forced the
Taliban to surrender Kabul, the capital. On November 18, the Taliban
announced that it would no longer provide protection to bin Laden, but
the U.S. government was no longer inclined to believe the regime’s
promises. A week later, opposition Afghan leaders met in Bonn,
Germany, with U.S. support to plan the post-Taliban government.
Some five hundred U.S. Marines landed in Afghanistan on
November 26, the first major entry of American troops. Within hours of
the marines establishing their base, U.S. planes launched air strikes
against a Taliban stronghold outside the southern city of Qandahár.
The Taliban surrendered Qandahár on December 7. But both bin
Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar (c. 1959–) had escaped from the city. December 16 saw the fall of Tora Bora, a cave complex that had provided a fort for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Six days later, on December 22, a temporary Afghan government was established, with
Hamid Karzai (1957–) sworn in as chairman. At that point, the Bush administration’s invasion appeared to be complete and successful, but in
many ways the war had just begun.
Afghan-Pakistani border region
Although the opening offensives of the war came to a close at the end of
2001, the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces had not given up. They had simply moved into the region that surrounds the border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan. There they were able to reorganize more or
less in the open. The Taliban arose from a large tribal group called the
Pashtuns, who number about forty million and live in tribal units in
eastern and southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. When
Pashtuns in Pakistan learned of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, they
joined with other anti-Western groups in the area to offer refuge to the
fleeing Taliban and to al-Qaeda. Pakistan had long been an ally of the
Taliban in Afghanistan, and the new war strengthened ties between the
Taliban and certain Pakistani groups. The president of Pakistan, Pervez
Musharraf (1943–), had vowed to help the United States in its war
against terrorism, but the Pakistani government was apparently unable to
stop the buildup of insurgents in the remote regions of northwestern
Pakistan.
In the border regions in 2002, the Taliban began to build training
camps and recruit new soldiers from both sides of the border. The new
recruits soon began launching car bombs and suicide bombings against
the U.S.-U.K.-Northern Alliance coalition. They managed to regain
control, at least temporarily, of areas that had already been liberated by
the coalition forces.
On March 2, 2002, the United States launched Operation
Anaconda, the largest ground operation of the war. Involving some two
thousand U.S., Afghan, and allied troops, its purpose was to eliminate
any Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters remaining in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan. An estimated one thousand to five thousand alQaeda and Taliban forces had gathered in the Shahikot mountains in
early 2002, where they could use the high-altitude caves to fire upon approaching coalition soldiers from relative safety. When the Anaconda offensive came to a close on March 17, the mountain caves were cleared and there were many enemy casualties, but hundreds of al-Qaeda and
Taliban soldiers escaped once more into the border areas of Pakistan.
To build a state, or not
Afghanistan had long been a very poor country. Many Afghan people
hoped that, after ousting the Taliban, the United States would bring in
enough money and resources to supply stability and build a new economy. Among the top Bush administration officials there was disagreement. To commit large amounts of troops and money to bring political
and economic stability was seen as “state-building” or “nation-building,”
the attempt of a powerful country to build the political and economic
institutions of a weak or failing nation, and most conservatives opposed
such a plan, saying it overstepped the federal government’s authority.
The administration wavered on these issues, announcing major reconstruction efforts but not providing the number of soldiers or amounts of
money that the Afghan advisers requested.
NATO steps in
In 2002, the United States began to talk with other countries, mainly
European, who were willing to help stabilize Afghanistan. In this peacekeeping and reconstruction plan, called the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), Germany was to train an Afghan police force,
Japan would disarm the warlords and their armies, England would fight
the drug business, Italy would help Afghanistan reform its court system,
and the United States would train a large Afghan army. The United
States, wanting to carry out its war on terrorists, committed an additional eight thousand troops to searching out al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. None of these efforts was very successful.
In November 2003 Zalmay Khalilzad (1951–), an Afghan
American, was appointed to serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Upon becoming ambassador, Khalilzad convinced the Bush administration to put more resources into the war in Afghanistan. He played a very
strong role in his year and a half as ambassador, from November 2003
until June 2005. Khalilzad helped the new government draft a constitution, hold democratic elections (in which Karzai was elected president),
and organize a parliament. But as things began to improve, President
Bush urgently needed him for another post—in Iraq.
In March 2003, the Bush administration had launched an attack on
the nation of Iraq. (See Iraq Invasion.) At first, the engagement went
smoothly and did not require the efforts of the military personnel in
Afghanistan. By 2005, though, the experienced military leadership in
Afghanistan were being recruited in large numbers to help calm the insurgency (uprising) in Iraq.
At the end of 2005, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO; a mutual security and self-defense agreement formed in 1949
among European and North American nations to block the military
threat of the Soviet Union) took command of the fight against insurgents
in Afghanistan. NATO forces there were comprised of 31,000 to 37,000
soldiers from 37 countries; approximately one-third of them were from
the United States. The NATO mission was to stabilize Afghanistan.
In 2006, Afghanistan experienced a major increase in deadly attacks
by suicide bombers and individuals with homemade explosives. The
trend continued into 2007. Insurgents poured into Afghanistan from the
training camps in the Pakistan borderlands. While pursuing the insurgents, NATO and U.S. air strikes have killed a large number of Afghan
civilians, resulting in widespread anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. Poverty in Afghanistan was widespread, and years of war had
taken a heavy toll on the population.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced in early 2008 that the
number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was around twenty thousand, the
highest number since the war began in October 2001. An additional
three thousand troops were expected to be sent there by summer to combat the increasingly formidable Taliban forces.