WAR IN
AFGHANISTAN
WHAT
War caused by the terrorist attacks of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden against the United States in 9/11, leading to the overthrow of the Taliban government and death of bin-Laden.
WHEN
7 October 2001- present
WHERE
Afghanistan and Pakistan
Why: Causes and Context
The outbreak of war in Afghanistan was contingent upon the terrorist attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. On the following week, United States’ president George W. Bush gave the Afghani Taliban rulers an ultimatum: hand over those responsible for 9/11 or “share their fate”. However, these leaders chose to protect their long-term terrorist ally, Osama bin-Laden- a decision that has already cost them nearly one trillion dollars. America’s ultimate target had now become to “remove the Taliban from power, find bin-Laden and his lieutenants, and destroy his organization [Al-Qaeda]” (news-basic).
WHO
Nations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, United States
Factions: Al-Qaeda, Taliban
WHAT WAR ON AFGHANISTAN?
War officially began in 7 October 2001, with an U.S. airstrike to the city of Jalalabad, capital of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar- supposedly, the next Taliban target of conquest. Part of the United State’s success in invading the country was civilian cooperation, considering that Afghani soldiers who opposed the terrorist regime were willing to fight alongside the foreigners to remove it from power. By November 12, the Taliban had been successfully removed from Kabul, finding refugee in the Hindu Kush Mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. After this successful campaign, the American government helped bring to power Hamid Karzai, hoping to transform the country into a Western-style democracy.
Incidents in the beginning of 2012 inflamed Afghan’s to abhor the American military, thus Obama decided to speed up the removal of troops, expected to be evacuated completely until December 2014. Primarily, four U.S. marines were videotaped urinating on the corpses of Taliban insurgents, an incredibly disrespectful video that went viral on YouTube and deleted too late. Three weeks later, a second video was made, this time depicting the incineration of various copies of the Qur’an in a trashcan inside the military base. These then led to a series of riots by the
TIMELINE
the official leader of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Nevertheless, his people complained continuously of the growing inequality in the country and how corrupt his government was, leading to scandals about money laundry and embezzlement in 2006. In 2009, Karzai ran again for the presidency and was theoretically re-elected; the generalized sentiment was that the elections were fraudulent considering it was a well-known fact internationally that his people were discontent with his government as a whole.
For years, the U.S. made no major advancements in discovering the location of the Taliban hideout or combating them, considering how they had been gradually re-strengthening their army and and how hard it is to fight an enemy “hidden in remote caves and mountains” (news-basics). Progress - if this can be called so - was only achieved in 2011 when in 2 May, after the violent assassination of bin-Laden by the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under Operation Neptune Spear. He was murdered in Pakistan, his body then being taken for recognition in Afghanistan and buried in the North Arabian Sea.In 6 May, Al-Qaeda confirmed the death of their esteemed leader through posts on militant websites, promising to revenge their leader’s brutal and humiliating assassination. The killing was embraced contently by the majority of the American public, and despite a few objections made by Cuban president Fidel Castro, Amnesty International and Hamas Gaza Strip Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah, no nation or institution saw an issue with the U.S.’s break of Pakistani and Afghani sovereignty and the murder of a man who was unarmed. President Obama then vowed that he would begin to withdraw troops from Afghanistan considering that the United State’s main goal had been achieved, and all that was now required was to ensure that the Taliban did not return to power and that Al-Qaeda remained inactive.
In 2002, Karzai was appointed by Bush as the Interim President for the following two years, an after the ’04 presidential elections, he became
Afghans against the American presence in their nation, stating that such acts of disrespect should not be tolerated and pressing their government to take a firmer stance on the issue. The final catalyst for the acceleration of the withdrawing was when, in March, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales went around the village of Belambay in the province of Kandahar and murdered 16 innocent people of which were ten women, five children and one elder. Despite the fact that he pled guilty and was sentenced to a lifetime in prison, Hamid Karzai declared that all military troops should leave the village regions on his country and be confined to their military bases.
Currently (December 2013), the near totality of Canadian and French troops were already removed from the Afghani territory, and we now wait for the remaining withdrawal of the American troops, wondering about the possible resurgence of the Al-Qaeda forces with a new extremist leader, the overthrow of the democratic government by the Taliban, the end of corruption under Karzai. There has perhaps never been a war in the history of the 20th and 21st Centuries with so meager disclosure.