Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : History

Note this is just facts from the Internet.                                    The joint U.S. and British invasion of Afghanistan  in late 2001 was preceded by over two decades of war in Afghanistan. ... 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. Afghanistan war, international conflict in Afghanistan  beginning in 2001 that was triggered by the September  11attacks  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 gradually handed over to the Afghan military and police. The new approach largely failed to achieve its aims. Insurgent attacks and  civilian casualties remained 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. 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 device), 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. 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 Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek. The Americans also teamed with anti-Taliban Pashtuns  in southern Afghanistan, including a little-known tribal leader named Hamid Karzai.