CHAPTER ONE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN Ihe Afghanistan War was an 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 ultra conservative 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 2002 2008 involved a U S strategy of defeating the Taliban militarily and rebuilding core institutions of the Afghan state The third phase began in 2008 and acceler ated with U S Pres Barack Obama's 2009 decision to dramatically 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 10
WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 11 PRE LUDE TO THE SE P TE MBE R 1 1 AT TA CKS The joint U S and British invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 was preceded by over two decades of war in Afghanistan On Dec 24 1979 Soviet tanks rum bled 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 Islamist fighters who won extensive covert backing from Pakistan Saudi Arabia and the United States and who were joined in their fight by foreign volunteers The guerrilla war against UNITIAL b E VA A convoy of Soviet armoured vehicles crossing a bridge at the Soviet Afghan border May 21 1988 during the withdrawal of the Red Army from
KEY FIGURES OF 12 THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN the Soviet forces led to their departure a decade later In the void civil war reigned with the Islamist fighters known as the mujahideen battling first to oust the Soviet backed government and then turning their guns on each other In 1996 the Taliban seized Kabul and instituted a severe interpretation of Islamic law that for exam ple 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 had won control of over 90 per cent 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 Massoud who at the time was leading the Northern Alliance a loose coalition of mujahi deen 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 U S BRITISH IN VASION After the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States for which bin Laden was considered the architect the United States demanded that
WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 13 THE TALIBAN After a bloody decade long war in Afghanistan a group intent on establishing a new society based on Islamic law came to power in the mid 1990s The group was known as the Taliban Most of the faction's members were former students of religious training institutes set up in the 1980s for Afghan refugees in northern Pakistan In addition to enforcing strict Islamic law known as Shari ah the Taliban allowed Afghan istan to be a haven for Islamic militants from throughout the world including an exiled Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden who stood accused of organizing numerous terrorist attacks against U S interests The Taliban's refusal to extradite bin Laden to the United States following the ter rorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washing ton D C on Sept 11 2001 prompted a military confrontation with the United States and allied powers The U S led forces began aerial attacks on Afghanistan on Oct 7 2001 and U S special forces were later deployed on the ground With U S backing the Northern Alliance an Afghan opposition force that had controlled a small portion of the country in the north advanced southward on the ground The Taliban surren dered Kandahar its political and religious base on December 7 Taliban control of Afghanistan officially ended on Dec 9 2001 after the regime gave up the province of Zabul its last remaining territory Bin Laden was eventually killed in a raid by U S forces in Pakistan in 2011
