On September the 11th 2001 the post-Cold War world was shattered into pieces as four planes were hijacked by an obscure terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda. Three of the planes hit their targets with both towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon being hit leading to 2,977 being killed. The fourth plane that was destined to hit the White House however the passengers regained control of the aircraft and crashed it so it would not hit its intended target. These three targets were chosen to attack the symbols of US power political, military, and financial.
The new world that would be created after this incident would lead to three significant wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in the era of the Global War on Terror. Afghanistan would be the most justified of these three wars, but questions need to be asked of how it ended up in the situation it is currently in with the Taliban in control again as we watched the effects of the takeover during the summer of 2021. As such a year later, this piece seeks to look at the war from start to finish to see what went wrong and what went right.
The Build Up to 9/11
The 90s had been a time of optimism in the West as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and that heralded the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the same year the US fought in the First Gulf War that was a textbook campaign that helped shake the aversion that the US public had to conflict that was dubbed “Vietnam Syndrome”. The feeling of the time was captured in the famous book written by Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama “The End of History and the Last Man”. Fukuyama’s argument in the 1992 book was the Western Liberal Capitalist world had beaten both Nazism and Communism and as such the competition between competing ideologies that had been part of history up until this point would fade away as liberalism spread. Foreign policy began to shift from a focus on great power competition and instead began to focus on policing of Human Rights abuse such as the NATO intervention in the Balkans and Somalia.
While this was going on in the West a small group in the Middle East had started to grow. Al Qaeda was set up during the Soviet Afghan war by Osama Bin Laden. This group was made up of foreign radicals that came to fight in Afghanistan and tended to be highly educated and came from wealthy backgrounds. Osama’s father Mohammed Bin Awad Bin Laden made massive amounts of money in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia. Many members of the organization had similar backgrounds or were professionals such as doctors or engineers. Despite the stories they told about themselves they were not great fighters in comparison to the local Afghans. The real power that they brought to the resistance against the Soviets was funding.
They however made sure to project an image of military strength. The Soviet Afghan War was the first time that the Soviets would field the AK-74. As part of this move away from the AKM the Soviets also adopted a shortened version of the AK-74 known as the AKs-74u. This was issued to the likes of tank crews and helicopter crews as its small package made it ideal for stowing in cramped crew compartments. The range and accuracy loss in comparison to a full-sized rifle was negligible as these guns were to be used in a defensive manner if a crew had to bail from a vehicle or if a helicopter was shot down to that the crew could escape and evade enemy capture and make it back to safety. The AKs-74u started to become a status symbol in Afghanistan and the only way one would be able to get one is to either shoot down a helicopter or destroy a tank showing extreme courage. Bin Laden picked up on this and as such whenever pictured the AKs-74u would always be seen nearby (as seen below). The odds are this was bought and not acquired by the traditional means, but the propaganda impact was still there.
When the war ended in 1989 many members left Afghanistan and returned to their home countries. Bin Laden would be in Saudi Arabia as the US began its build-up of troops to liberate Kuwait. Bin Laden thought that the presence of US troops defiled Islamic lands or in his own words.
“The United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples.”
Bin Laden even went as far as to offer the services of Al Qaeda to the Saudi government to help kick Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, so they did not have to rely on the US. He would eventually be expelled from Saudi Arabia for his anti-American sentiments. He would move to Sudan where he would help an organization known as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to carry out an assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. The EIJ would be expelled from Sudan and pressure began mounting for Sudan to expel Bin Laden. In 1996 he was given the opportunity to leave Sudan for any country he wanted and as such he went back to Afghanistan.
From there he would link up with the leader of the newly formed organization the Taliban, Mullah Omar. From Afghanistan he would declare a fatwa which involved declaring war on the US in 1996. In the next few years, he would plan multiple attacks across the Middle East and Africa. The two most notable examples of these attacks were the 1998 US embassy bombings where Al Qaeda targeted the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania carrying out simultaneous attacks with truck bombs and the bombing of the USS Cole that was stationed in Yemen in 2000. The idea of these attacks was to scare the US into removing troops from the Middle East. When this did not work Bin Laden would orchestrate his magnum opus 9/11. This however would have the exact opposite effect than he intended with the US beginning to fight a twenty-year war in the Middle East against terrorism.
Invasion
After the end of the Soviet Afghan War the Mujaheddin would break up into different splinter groups and fight each other. The word Taliban comes from the Pashto word for student. The majority of what would become the Taliban were the children of those that fought in the Soviet Afghan war who were resettled in refugee camps in Pakistan throughout the war. Here they would receive education from Saudi Arabia that would inculcate a more radical form of Islam known as Wahhabism. The Taliban would also be made up of Pashtun fighters from the Soviet Afghan war such as the famous Haqqani Network and the likes of Mullah Omar. The Taliban received backing from Pakistan throughout the Afghan Civil war. The other group that came out of the Mujaheddin was the Northern Alliance. This was made up of Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups but were primarily Tajik . They were backed by Iran and Russia during the conflict. They also had veterans of the Soviet Afghan War fighting for them including the famous “Lion of Panjshir” Ahmed Shah Massoud. One can see the lines that were drawn and why Iran and Pakistan chose the sides they did based on the below ethnic map.
By 2001 the Northern Alliance had taken a significant beating and were backed into the north-east of the country. On September the 9th 2001 Bin Laden ordered an assassination attempt on Massoud which ended up being successful. This was a massive blow to the Northern Alliance. The next two days however would significantly shift the balance of power in Afghanistan. By the 7th of October the first US boots were making entry into Afghanistan on the side of the Northern Alliance.
A curious “unwritten pact” as described by Arash Azizi in his book “The Shadow Commander” would appear between Iran and the US in these few weeks. The IRGC was heavily involved with the Northern Alliance and there was a strong bond between Iranian General Qasem Soleimani (who would later be famously assassinated by the Trump administration in Iraq in 2019) and Ahmed Shah Massoud. As such he met with US diplomats and helped plan invasion routes for the US into Afghanistan. Iran used a two-pronged approach to diplomacy. On one hand Iran’s top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif met with Western leaders in the UN in New York and Geneva. On the other hand, Soleimani would meet with Northern Alliance commanders in mud huts surrounded by Taliban forces. Many meetings would take place in this time between Zarif and one of the US State Departments top Middle East experts, Ryan Crocker. Crocker was tapped to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan after the invasion. These ties that were cultivated would pave the way for the US invasion. This however would be short lived as in 2002 Bush would deliver the “Axis of Evil” speech where he claimed that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea stood as the biggest threats to democracy in the world. The name for this speech came from the combination of the Axis from the Second World War and Reagan’s name for the Soviet Union “The Empire of Evil”. This was written by David Frum with input from Cheney and Rumsfeld. This blindsided the State Department and as such after this it would collapse their relationship with Iran that had been built up in the first year of the GWOT.
Russia was also involved in helping the US lay the groundwork for an invasion. Curiously the way George W Bush heard of the death of Massoud was by a phone call from Vladimir Putin who warned Bush that something was afoot in Afghanistan and that he had a feeling something was about to change in the region. The Kremlin would liken the cooperation between the US and Russia in the wake of 9/11 to the cooperation between the Soviets and the US during the Second World War and as such it has been the biggest high point between Russia and the US since the collapse of the Soviet Union if not the Second World War. This cooperation involved like Iran introducing the US to its ties with the Northern Alliance as well as intelligence sharing and sharing lessons learned throughout the Soviet Afghan War. This like the Iranian example would also quickly collapse but this time it was not the fault of the US. Russia was not a fan of the US bases that were built in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but Putin gave this a pass as he thought that the US would respect Russia as it sees it deserves as a great power. When the “colour revolutions” happened and the US did not decry them Russia saw this as a betrayal of unsaid assurances that they thought the US gave them and is part of the build up to Russia’s current stance with the West.
US special forces would enter Afghanistan on the 6th of October to assist spotting Taliban targets for B-52 bombing raids in support of the Northern alliance. The most important battle of the early days of the war was the Battle of Tora Bora. Tora Bora is a region near the Khyber Pass which is one of the main lines between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This region had been Al Qaeda’s headquarters in Afghanistan, and this is where Bin Laden was located. A combined force of US Delta force and the CIA, UK SBS and MI6 and the German KSK would fight embedded with the Northern Alliance (as seen below).
Bin Laden would escape this attack through the numerous cave systems that existed in the region that would lead into Pakistan. Many including 2004 Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry would criticize the decision to allow the Northern Alliance to play the central role on this attack rather than sending more US troops.
With US support the Northern Alliance would continue to push back the Taliban and retake the majority of the country as can be seen below.
On December 6th Kandahar the spiritual home of the Taliban would fall which would lead to key Taliban figures fleeing to the rural tribal regions. Many of the prominent anti-Taliban figures would convene in Bonn Germany at a UN sponsored conference. Here Hamid Karzai would be selected to be the President of Afghanistan. At this time the Northern Alliance would start to be reformed into a proper Afghan military and Police force the ANA (Afghan National Army) and the ANP (Afghan National Police). On September 12th NATO article 5 was triggered for the first time in the organization’s history meaning that a large coalition of Western forces would take part in assisting Afghan and US forces in the counter insurgency operations that would come in trying to root out Taliban support around the country as well as the man hunt for Bin Laden and his second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Iraq
By 2002 Bush passed a “Marshal Plan” for Afghanistan to pay for the Afghan security forces and humanitarian and reconstruction projects. This however was chronically underfunded. Between 2001 and 2009 this aid came up to a total of $38 Billion. The issue with this was that it may have been enough to fight a war and for humanitarian relief, but experts would say that it missed modernizing Afghanistan’s infrastructure. This presented itself in Afghanistan continuing to show up near the bottom of the human development index year after year.
As the year went on the administration wanted to retain a light footprint in Afghanistan to keep resources for the build-up for the war in Iraq. The toppling of the Saddam regime would become a higher priority for the Bush administration. This combined with the US reluctance to allow other coalition forces to operate outside of Kabul would lead to the Taliban gaining ground again. Karzai despite having vast powers under the constitution was considered to be weak and became more isolated. He would be targeted with four assassination attempts that he survived. The government was also beset with difficulties uniting the multiple tribal groups in Afghanistan and large-scale corruption. All of these would lead to a crisis of confidence in the government.
By 2005 the Taliban would start to make a resurgence. This would see the Taliban switch tactics and instead of engaging coalition forces in combat they would instead start to use IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and suicide bombings. Between January 2005 and August 2006 Afghanistan would see 64 suicide attacks something that was exceedingly rare up until this point. This resurgence was seen as anti-Western sentiment began to breed among Afghans. This reaction was not just seen from extremists. In May 2006 a US military vehicle crashed and killed Afghan civilians. As such there were large demonstrations in Kabul. In response to this the US would let NATO take the lead in operations in Afghanistan and would shift focus of the Afghan campaign to a more international front. This however was really to free up more US troops for Iraq that was starting to see a violent civil war between Sunni and Shia groups. The Bush administration still saw Afghanistan as more of a victory in comparison to Iraq and as such little attention was paid to Afghanistan. Commanders on the ground however could tell that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.
The Surge
In 2008 Barrack Obama would be elected partially due to a souring of public support for the war in Iraq. Obama would flip the attention that the Bush administration had and try to solve the issue that was going on in Afghanistan and to try and draw down troops from Iraq that would be finally carried out in 2011. In February 2009 Obama would replace General David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal. This was to try a strategy known as “a surge” that was used in Iraq. This involved adding an additional 30,000 troops on top of the 32,000 NATO troops and the 36,000 US troops already in Afghanistan. This was done to give extra momentum to offensive operations against the Taliban to retake territory. These troops however were not there long term. When the gains were made against the Taliban then the numbers would recede back down to their pre-surge levels to police the territory.
The surge would begin in early 2010 with an assault by the US Marine Corp on the Taliban controlled town of Marja. The majority of the fighting during the surge would take place in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand in the south. It also involved a ramping up of drone strikes to target Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders operating in Waziristan (one of the Pashtun provinces on the Pakistani side of the border). This more aggressive posture would lead to double the combat deaths from 2009 to 2010.
As this was going on Hamid Karzai said he would start to seek a peaceful solution with the Taliban. This would be the first attempt at peace talks however they would be a failure. Karzai would invite Mullah Omar to meet with him however he refused. The US did not want this happening and started pressuring Karzai to stop. He threatened to join the Taliban if the international community would not get out of Afghan affairs. In response Obama threatened to cancel a visit Karzai had scheduled to visit the White House. However, this visit would take place with both leaders wanting to mend the relationship. Pakistan offered to mediate discussions between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but they were not trusted due to the ISI’s support for the Taliban.
The Abbottabad Raid
In the early hours of May, the 2nd 2011 two silent hawk helicopters took off from Jalalabad filled with operators of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (Devgru) more commonly known as Seal Team 6 and some CIA Special Activities Division officers. These choppers were bound for Abottabad Pakistan where the CIA tracking Bin Laden’s courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti to a compound. There was no way to tell if it was him inside, but the risk was taken to raid the compound (seen below) anyway in what would become known as Operation Neptune Spear.
As the helicopters reached the compound one of them crashed over the compound itself. There were no injuries from this crash, however. The seals proceeded to clear the compound. On initial entry three men were killed Bin Laden’s son Khalid, the courier Abu Ahmed and his brother Abrar. One woman would also be killed being the wife of Abrar. Bin Laden himself would be found on the third floor and was killed. According to the Seals he was reaching for his signature weapon the AKs-74u before being shot. The Seals would carry out SSE operations to gather any intelligence left on site and they would also lay charges on the downed helicopter and blew it up so that the top secret modified stealth Black Hawk would not be able to be reverse engineered by other nations. Despite this after the raid Pakistan would allow China to come in and inspect the wreckage due to their close ties.
When the helicopter went down a Chinook that was on standby came across the border in order to pick up the rest of the troops that survived the helicopter crash. Chinooks do not have stealth capabilities and as such this was picked up by the Pakistani Air Force who scrambled their F16s. After the Seals were loaded up and, on the way, out of Pakistan the Pakistani Air force caught up with the helicopters and chased them to the Afghan border. It got so close that the Pakistani F16s had locked onto the helicopters and had to take countermeasures including launching flares. On making it back to Jalalabad Bin Laden’s body was confirmed using multiple different techniques such as DNA, visual, measurements and facial recognition software. At 11:35 pm EST or 8:35 am Pakistan standard time President Obama would announce the death of Bin Laden. By 11 am local time the body would be buried at sea from the USS Carl Vinson that was operating in the North Arabian Sea.
End to Combat Operations
As 2012 rolled around a few events would lead to a souring of relations between the Afghan and US government. In January a video surfaced of Marines urinating on the corpses of dead Afghans. A few weeks later there were reports of Qu’rans being disposed of on US bases by burning them. After all of this a US solider went AWOL broke into several homes and killed 17 Afghans mostly women and children. The combination of these three events would trigger large scale protests against the US presence in the country.
Another element of the US presence that was not popular with Afghans were night raids. One staple of the operations in Afghanistan became special forces night raids. The US since the First Gulf War prided itself on “owning the night” and as such US special forces would use the technological advantage that night vision would give them to move to a target. These raids would be conducted on HVTs (High Value Targets) in their home when they would be sleeping and would usually come with capture or kill orders. These raids would often not involve large firefights but would either end in special forces coming in and out very swiftly approaching by helicopter or ground vehicles. At most there may be resistance from the occupants of the house being raided and as such fire may be traded. These raids however could be quite disruptive even if there were not engagements. The sound of helicopters, breaching charges and megaphone call outs all would wake up a residential area. This would cause outrage for those living in the area and as such a political problem for Karzai. Afghan forces would begin to take the lead on these types of operations so that it would become more amenable to the public. This however would come with its own downsides as Western special forces were significantly better trained and there was less of a chance for leaks about the nature of raids that were to be conducted.
As support for US presence continued to wane the effort to train the Afghan Army and Police would be undermined as green on blue attacks would start to occur. In military terms blue forces refer to friendly forces, red forces refer to enemy forces and green forces refers to partner forces. The Taliban would begin to infiltrate the Afghan Army and Police and in training or on operations they would start shooting at US and NATO forces that they were operating with. This would lead to an air of mistrust between the Afghan forces and Western forces.
These challenges would lead to negotiations between the US and Afghanistan which would lead to the US agreeing to end combat operations by 2014. What this would mean would however be up in the air. A framework would be created stating that the US would continue to support Afghanistan economically and militarily. A large question loomed over whether US troops would remain in country in advisory and assistance roles. A separate pact would be drafted known as the Bilateral Security Agreement to allow some troops to remain. This was a political catch twenty-two for the Afghan government. On one hand the presence of US troops was deeply unpopular, but they were also needed to ensure the Taliban did not take over. Karzai would not sign this agreement however he was coming towards the end of his term. The new president Ashraf Ghani would make his first priority when entering office to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement. This would leave 13,000 troops in country to train and assist Afghan troops.
ISIS
Two factors would shift the Jihadist landscape between 2011 and 2014. The combination of the war kicking off in Syria triggered by the Arab Spring and the death of Bin Laden would lead to Al Qaeda in Iraq breaking away from AQ and forming a new group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) under a new leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The philosophy of the group would change and now creating a caliphate or an Islamic State. The group would rapidly expand taking territory all across Iraq and Syria and carrying out a spate of terrorist attacks across Europe.
This more virulent form of Jihadism would also affect Afghanistan. Some members of the Taliban were not happy with the organization as they saw it as too tepid. As such about 3,000 members of the Taliban from Nangahar Provence would swear allegiance to ISIS in 2015 creating ISIS Khorasan Province often shortened to ISIS K or ISIS KP. These Jihadists would be some of the most violent that Afghanistan has seen. They would target girls’ schools and maternity wards with terrorist attacks including executions. The organization has fought Western forces, Afghan forces and the Taliban. Despite its battles with the Taliban, it also has ties with one of the biggest allies of the Taliban the Haqqani Network. This organization is led by the Haqqani family, and they gained some of the largest amount of support from the US and Pakistan during the Soviet Afghan War. They are highly trained and also are involved heavily in the drugs trade in Afghanistan.
Doha Agreement
President Trump came into office in 2016 and he ran on a promise of ending “forever wars” as such he was to try and revisit a strategy that was used by the Karzai administration which was to seek a peace deal with the Taliban. In July 2018 US diplomats would meet with Taliban delegates in secret in Qatar. At the same time Russia would host peace talks between the Afghan government’s high peace council and the Taliban. In February 2019 official talks would begin between the US and the Taliban. The Taliban would refuse to allow the Afghan government at these talks as they stated it was a puppet government of the US however, they would meet and talk with prominent Afghans such as former president Hamid Karzai. On the 29th of February 2020 a deal was signed that would see an exchange of prisoners and all US troops pulling out in fourteen months. President Ghani would go on to criticize this agreement stating that it had been carried out “behind closed doors”.
After signing the agreement, the Taliban resumed its assault on the Afghan government with attacks being carried out in Helmand and Kunduz provinces. On the 4th of March the US would launch retaliatory airstrikes. The tempo of Taliban attacks would significantly ramp up. In the 45 days after the agreement was signed there would be 4,500 attacks on Afghan government positions an increase of 70% from the year before. This would lead to 900 Afghan service men dead. ISIS K would also use this chaos as an opportunity with it carrying out multiple terrorist attacks in Kabul. By June the Afghan government would report its “bloodiest week in 19 years” with it loosing 219 members.
Draw down and Kabul Airport
On May the 1st 2021 the Taliban would continue a renewed summer offensive on Afghan forces. President Biden would be sworn into office in January 2021, and he would extend the date of the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 US troops to September the 11th 2021 twenty years to the day since 9/11. Throughout June and July, the Taliban would gain control of many small towns around Afghanistan on the 14th of August two of Afghanistan’s most important cities fell to the Taliban, Mazar i Sharif and Jalalabad. These cities are vitally important as they control Afghanistan’s only passable routes out of the country into Pakistan and Uzbekistan. As these cities fell the Taliban would appear on the outskirts of Kabul. President Ghani would be evacuated from his presidential palace by helicopter and the Taliban would take Kabul unopposed.
As the Taliban took control of the city 5,000 US and NATO troops would move to Kabul airport and hold it as the only way out of the country. The US would also authorize 2,000 more troops from the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Expeditionary Unit (seen below) to assist in securing the airport. The US would evacuate many civilians through the airport with priority given to citizens of Western countries and interpreters that had worked with the US and Afghan special forces who were both seeing reprisal killings being carried out by the Taliban.
The US would provide round the clock air cover over the airport with the US Navy flying its F-18’s off the USS Ronald Reagan based in the North Arabian Sea and the US Air Force providing F-16s, AC-130’s and B-52’s. CIA director William Burns would secretly meet with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in order to secure a cease fire around the airport. However, on the 26th of August ISIS K would carry out a suicide bombing on the 26th of August killing 12 Marines and over 70 Afghan civilians. On the 28th a US CRAM system would intercept artillery fire fired at the airport from ISIS K this however would have no casualties. The last military planes would leave Kabul on the 30th of August.
One last fight would happen in the Panjshir valley as Afghan troops began to coalesce around Ahmad Massoud the son of the famous Lion of Panjshir Ahmad Shah Massoud. This would become the National Resistance Front. On the 6th of September the Taliban would take control of the Panjshir valley, but the group is still active with Massoud in Iran currently.
One side effect of the draw down was large amounts of equipment such as helicopters, armoured personnel carriers, night vision, and guns have fallen into the Taliban’s hands. A video surfaced a few days after the US withdrawal of the Taliban using some of these helicopters to hang those who worked with the US and its allies. A danger exists of these high-tech weapons being sold on the international arms trade and showing up in other conflict zones in the Middle East or Africa. State actors such as China, Russia and Iran will also want to get their hands on some of the equipment such as night vision to be able to reverse engineer some of the technology.
Conclusion
There are many questions that need to be asked about how the US’ most justified war since the Second World War ended so disastrously. From the failure to capture or kill Bin Laden at Tora Bora, the focus on Iraq, the failure of the surge, trying to make peace with a terrorist organization or the lack of will to continue operations we get a very hazy view of what could have been done. Were more troops the right answer or the wrong answer? Is a negotiated peace good or bad? Unfortunately, all the potential lessons seem to contradict each other. It is said that hindsight is 20/20 but nothing can be further from the truth. Many people may say that looking at how the war turned out it was not worth fighting in the first place, but it did also significantly degrade Al Qaeda and eliminate the worlds most wanted terrorist. It can be easy for one to post-hoc criticize but it is also important to put yourself in the shoes of those making decisions days and weeks after 9/11 and see the world through their eyes before coming to conclusions about the need to fight this war.
Brilliant.