From:
jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com
THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: HOW IT STARTED AND HOW IT IS ENDING
April 23, 2021
BY DAVID ZUCCHINO
The New York Times
April 23, 2021
Even with violence escalating in the country, President Biden is bringing American troops home after nearly 20 years of war.
Members of the 101st Airborne Division in Paktia Province in April 2013.
Members of the 101st Airborne Division in Paktia Province in April 2013.Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
President Biden, declaring that the United States had long ago accomplished its mission of denying terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan, announced on April 14 that all American troops would leave the country by Sept. 11.
A combat mission that has dogged four presidents — who reckoned with American casualties, a ruthless enemy and an often corrupt and confounding Afghan government partner — will at last come to an end.
Mr. Biden conceded that after nearly 20 years of war, America’s longest on foreign soil, it was clear that the U.S. military could not transform Afghanistan into a modern, stable democracy.
“War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” Mr. Biden said in an address from the White House Treaty Room.
Mr. Biden said the roughly 2,500 to 3,500 remaining American troops would be back home by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, the seismic event that precipitated the initial military invasion.
Now, as the president pledges to continue support for Afghanistan and as peace talks remain deadlocked, the enduring objective of the two-decade war remains unchanged: ensuring that Afghanistan is never again used to plan and launch terrorist attacks.
WHY DID THE UNITED STATES INVADE AFGHANISTAN?
Weeks after Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, President George W. Bush announced that American forces had launched attacks against the terrorist group and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.
“These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime,” the president said.
Mr. Bush said the Taliban, which then governed most of Afghanistan, had rejected his demand to turn over Al Qaeda leaders who had planned the attacks from bases inside Afghanistan. He said he intended to bring Al Qaeda leaders to justice, adding, “And
now the Taliban will pay a price.”
Even then, the president warned that Operation Enduring Freedom would entail “a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.”
By December 2001, the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other top commanders had fled to safety in Pakistan, a nominal U.S. ally. American forces did not pursue them, and Pakistan ultimately evolved into a safe haven for Taliban commanders and fighters,
who in subsequent years crossed the border to attack American and Afghan forces.
Inside Afghanistan, American troops quickly toppled the Taliban government and crushed its fighting forces as 2001 drew to a close. In May 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced an end to major combat operations in the country.
Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, after his inauguration in Kabul in December 2001.
Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan’s interim government, after his inauguration in Kabul in December 2001.Credit…James Hill for The New York Times
HOW DID THE MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN EVOLVE?
After routing the Taliban, the United States and NATO pivoted to rebuilding a failed state and establishing a Western-style democracy, spending billions trying to reconstruct a desperately poor country already ravaged by two decades of war, first during
the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and then during the proceeding civil war.
There were early successes. A pro-Western government was installed. New schools, hospitals and public facilities were built. Thousands of girls, barred from education under Taliban rule, attended school. Women, largely confined to their homes by the
Taliban, went to college, joined the work force and served in Parliament and government.
But corruption was rampant, with hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction and investment money stolen or misappropriated. The government proved unable to meet the most basic needs of its citizens. Often, its writ barely extended beyond the
capital, Kabul, and other major cities.
In 2003, with 8,000 American troops in Afghanistan, the United States began shifting combat resources to the war in Iraq, launched in March of that year.
Afghan soldiers rushing a wounded police officer to an American helicopter in Kunar Province in March 2010.
Afghan soldiers rushing a wounded police officer to an American helicopter in Kunar Province in March 2010.Credit…Moises Saman for The New York Times
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BATTLEFIELD?
The Taliban rebuilt their fighting capabilities, despite a steady influx of American and NATO troops, who secured territory previously controlled by the Taliban and sought to win over Afghans with promises of new schools, government centers, roads and
bridges.
With the Taliban posing an enhanced military threat, President Barack Obama deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan as part of a “surge,” reaching nearly 100,000 by mid-2010. But the Taliban only grew stronger, inflicting heavy casualties on
Afghan security forces despite American combat power and airstrikes.
In May 2011, a U.S. Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he had been living for years near a Pakistan military training academy. In June, Mr. Obama announced that he would start bringing American forces home
and hand over responsibility for security to the Afghans by 2014.
By then, the Pentagon had concluded that the war could not be won militarily and that only a negotiated settlement could end the conflict — the third in three centuries involving a world power. Afghan fighters defeated the British army in the 19th
century and the Russian military in the 20th century.
With the war at a stalemate, Mr. Obama ended major combat operations on Dec. 31, 2014, and transitioned to training and assisting Afghan security forces.
Nearly three years later, President Donald J. Trump said that although his first instinct had been to withdraw all troops, he would nonetheless continue to prosecute the war. He stressed that any troop withdrawal would be based on combat conditions, not
predetermined timelines.
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