why is there war in afghanistan

The CIA program of targeted killings was publicly denied by U.S. officials but was widely acknowledged in private. The new approach largely failed to achieve its aims. Barack Obama went to the White House promising to focus attention and resources on the faltering war effort in Afghanistan. Afghanistan War, international conflict in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 that was triggered by the September 11 attacks and consisted of three phases. The plot had been hatched by al-Qaeda, and some of the 19 hijackers had trained in 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 war in Afghanistan has its roots in the invasion of the country and subsequent occupation by the Soviet Union. It instituted a severe interpretation of Islamic law that, for example, forbade female education and prescribed the severing of hands, or even execution, as punishment for petty crimes. Why was there a war? But that gave the Taliban momentum, as they seized territory and detonated bombs against government and civilian targets. For commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, however, it was apparent that the Taliban intended to escalate its campaign, launching more frequent attacks and intensifying its fund-raising from wealthy individuals and groups in the Persian Gulf. Corrections? The CIA covertly armed Afghanistan’s mujahideen (or “strugglers”) during that war, meaning that the Soviets were fighting a country that was being greatly helped by another empire. The amount of waste has been obscene. The US is still conducting air strikes against the Taliban, instigated by the third president to oversee the war, Donald Trump. The 2004 constitution provided Afghanistan with a powerful central government and weak regional and local authorities—a structure that was in opposition to the country’s long-standing traditions. There are many reasons for this. … 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. The joint U.S. and British invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 was preceded by over two decades of war in Afghanistan (see Afghan War). The United States has been fighting a war in Afghanistan for over 18 years. In late 2009, US President Barack Obama announced a troop "surge" that saw the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan top 100,000. More than 20 other countries also lost troops during the war, though many—such as Germany and Italy—chose to focus their forces in the north and the west, where the insurgency was less potent. Why are we still in Afghanistan, considering that it is not our responsibility to turn the nation into a modern state, and the United States has neither the right nor the means to do so. But they include a combination of fierce Taliban resistance, the limitations of Afghan forces and governance, and other countries' reluctance to keep their troops for longer in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been in a state of almost constant war for 20 years even before the US invaded. The third phase, a turn to classic counterinsurgency doctrine, began in 2008 and accelerated with U.S. Pres. As the Taliban carried out more and more suicide attacks, international forces working with Afghan troops struggled to counter the threat the re-energised group posed. The aid program was also bedeviled by waste and by confusion over whether civilian or military authorities had responsibility for leading education, health, agriculture, and other development projects. Training camps for al-Qaeda, the terror group run by 9/11 plotter Osama Bin Laden, were also hit. George W. Bush with sailors aboard the USS. Foreign countries, including Pakistan and Iran, have denied funding them, but private citizens from the region are thought to have done so. Despite military commitments from dozens of U.S. allies, the United States initially argued against allowing the other foreign forces—operating as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—to deploy beyond the Kabul area. Saddam Hussein. 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. However, the economic costs have been steep. More than 2,300 U.S. military personnel have lost their lives there; more than 20,000 others have been wounded. 1.There is growing suspicion, which is officially unspeakable, that the Afghanistan War is "a set-up", including September 11 itself. The BBC World Service's Dawood Azami says there are five main reasons the war is still going on now. 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. By spring 2010 more than 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Afghanistan, while the British troops suffered some 300 deaths and the Canadians some 150. The hijacking and crashing of four U.S. jetliners on September 11, 2001, brought instant attention to Afghanistan. The Taliban banned television, music and cinema and disapproved of girls' education. But 18 years on, it's hard to argue the US mission has been fulfilled - the Taliban may play a part in ruling Afghanistan again if peace talks do eventually succeed. Nearly 3,500 members of the international coalition forces have died since the 2001 invasion, more than 2,300 of them American. 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. In 2018, the BBC found the Taliban was openly active across 70% of Afghanistan. It fought a resistance movement – known as the mujahideen – that was supported by the US, China and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. George W. Bush coalesced around a strategy of first ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan and dismantling al-Qaeda, though others contemplated actions in Iraq, including long-standing plans for toppling Pres. There was no draft and no tax imposed directly to pay for the war. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. But the Soviet presence touched off a nationwide rebellion by fighters—known as the mujahideen—who drew upon Islam as a uniting source of inspiration. 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. Despite vast powers under the constitution, Karzai was widely regarded as a weak leader who grew increasingly isolated as the war progressed. U.S. special operations forces conducting a mounted combat patrol in search of Taliban fighters in Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 2007. © 2021 BBC. Another source of money was Afghanistan’s resurgent opium industry. The first democratic Afghan elections since the fall of the Taliban were held on October 9, 2004, with approximately 80 percent of registered voters turning out to give Karzai a full five-year term as president. 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. Floyd death should be 'undetermined', expert says, 'No say over my body' Video'No say over my body', The student loan bubble 'is going to burst', ‘A Covid tsunami we had never seen before’ Video‘A Covid tsunami we had never seen before’. In February 2007, there were only twenty-six thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan. In 1979, a year after a coup, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan to support its communist government. More than half the money went to training and equipping Afghan security forces, and the remainder represented a fraction of the amount that experts said would be required to develop a country that had consistently ranked near the bottom of global human development indices. On September 9 of that year, al-Qaeda hit men carried out the assassination of famed mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Masoud, who at the time was leading the Northern Alliance (a loose coalition of mujahideen 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. In order to fight the occupying Soviet forces and stop the spread of communism, the United States armed militia groups, which ultimately gave rise to the Al Qaeda and Taliban. See Article History Afghanistan War, international conflict in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 that was triggered by the September 11 attacks and consisted of three phases. International pressure had forced the Taliban to curb poppy cultivation during their final year in power, but after their removal in 2001 the opium industry made a comeback, with revenues in some areas of the country benefiting the insurgency. Critics later questioned why the U.S. military had allowed Afghan forces to lead the assault on the cave complex at Tora Bora rather than doing it themselves. They enforced their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, and introduced brutal punishments. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. “There is no military solution to be had that doesn’t involve defeating Pakistan.” Trouble is a dust up with Pakistan might incur American casualties. It fought a resistance movement - known as the mujahideen - that was supported by the US, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. It had been besieged by a force led by Karzai that moved in from the north and one commanded by Gul Agha Sherzai that advanced from the south; both operated with heavy assistance from the United States. In 1989, Soviet troops withdrew but the civil war continued. Osama Bin Laden, the head of Islamist terror group al-Qaeda, was quickly identified as the man responsible. With behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the United States, Karzai was selected to lead the country on an interim basis. They followed a radical form of Islam and enforced punishments like public executions. The United States has spent about $2 … Researcher Ryan Edwards estimates that the U.S. incurred an extra $453 billion in interest on the debt to pay for the wars in the Middle East. With Americans at home wondering why Americans were dying abroad, President Barack Obama, his Nobel Peace Prize secure on his bookcase, doubled and tripled down, twice upping the number of combat troops. But bin Laden was thought to have managed to have slipped into Pakistan with the help of Afghan and Pakistani forces that were supposedly helping the Americans. Why Afghanistan is more dangerous than ever, Uncovering Pakistan's secret human rights abuses, Officer charged over killing of black motorist. On the same day, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” At that time, there were 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. In late October, Northern Alliance forces began to overtake a series of towns formerly held by the Taliban. The Taliban emerged and in 1996 seized Kabul. The War in Afghanistan is an ongoing war following the United States invasion of Afghanistan that began when the United States of America and its allies successfully drove the Taliban from power in order to deny Al-Qaeda a safe base of operations in Afghanistan. And because the Taliban gave shelter to militants from the al-Qaeda group, it made them an immediate target for an attack by US, Afghan and international forces in the wake of 9/11. When international forces withdrew from fighting, Afghan forces left to lead the charge were easily overwhelmed. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, The September 11 attacks and the U.S.-British invasion, https://www.britannica.com/event/Afghanistan-War, Council on Foreign Relations - U.S. War in Afghanistan, The Canadian Encyclopedia - War in Afghanistan, Afghanistan: U.S. Special Forces and Northern Alliance, Kandahar, Afghanistan: Stephen Harper visiting troops, Orūzgān province, Afghanistan: eradication sweep of opium poppies. Some of this is through drugs - Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer, and most opium poppies - used for heroin - are grown in Taliban-held areas. In 1979 , a year after a coup, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan to support its communist government. Afghanistan had been in a state of almost constant war for 20 years even before the US invaded. Since the initial objectives were completed, a coalition of over 40 countries (including all NATO members) formed a security mission in the country called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF, succeeded by the Resolute Support Mission(RS) in 2014), … 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. ‘A Covid tsunami we had never seen before’ Video, ‘A Covid tsunami we had never seen before’, Senegal: The HIV success story that’s failing gay men. In early 2007, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund—the Taliban’s number three leader—was captured in Pakistan, and months later Mullah Dadullah—the Taliban’s top military commander—was killed in fighting with U.S. forces. Parliamentary elections were staged a year later, with dozens of women claiming seats set aside for them to ensure gender diversity. The force, overseen by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the organization’s first mission outside Europe, was also hamstrung by a lack of troops as international commitments to Afghanistan flagged. The raids were in response to the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Bush’s "War on Terror" would go on to cost more than $840 billion in Afghanistan alone, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Updates? President Joe Biden's promise to remove US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 is his effort -- each of the last four presidents has had one -- to end America's longest war. The United States, meanwhile, had had only limited success in killing or capturing Taliban commanders. Both Britain and Canada stationed their troops in Afghanistan’s south, where fighting had been most intense. There are several reasons behind the US’s failure to win the war in Afghanistan. The same institute says conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan have cost the US $5.9 trillion since 2001. 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. Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Many in Washington and elsewhere fear that a full US troop pull-out would leave a vacuum that could be filled by militant groups seeking to plot attacks in the West. U.S. Special Forces working with members of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, November 12, 2001. So, a month after 9/11, the US launched air strikes against Afghanistan. Video, Senegal: The HIV success story that’s failing gay men, 'My mother's fertility doctor is my father' Video, 'My mother's fertility doctor is my father', Royals release new photos of Prince Philip, Bachelor star Colton Underwood comes out as gay, Jake Paul accused of assault by Justine Paradise, Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff dies in prison, Search for survivors from Louisiana capsized ship, Trump cancels secret US meeting with Taliban. They promised to fight corruption and improve security and, at that time, many Afghans were tired of the excesses and infighting of the mujahideen during the civil war. Top insurgent leaders remained at large, many of them in the tribal regions of Pakistan that adjoin Afghanistan. The first targets were military sites belonging to the hardline Taliban group who ruled the country. In April 2002 Bush announced a “Marshall Plan” for Afghanistan in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute, promising substantial financial assistance. But why is the US fighting a war in Afghanistan and why has it lasted so long? Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan and the Taliban’s spiritual home, fell on December 6, marking the end of Taliban power. Pakistani officials in turn denounced the strikes in public but privately approved of them as long as civilian casualties were limited. Omissions? Western-backed campaigns to eliminate poppy cultivation or to encourage farmers to grow other crops had little discernible impact; Afghanistan soon became the supplier of over 90 percent of the world’s opium. But Pakistan has denied helping or protecting them - even as the US demanded it do more to fight militants. By contrast, the war in Afghanistan was still regarded in Washington as a relative success. Unlike earlier wars, most American families did not feel the impact of the Afghanistan War. Karzai’s government was beset by corruption, and efforts to build a national army and a police force were troubled from the start by inadequate international support and ethnic differences between Afghans. A policy expert offered his thoughts on Foreign Policy online: "5 Ways to Win the War in Afghanistan." If there is a road to a happy ending in Afghanistan, much of the path may run underground: in the trillion-dollar reservoir of natural resources — oil, gold, iron ore, copper, lithium and other minerals — that has brought hopes of a more self-sufficient country, if only the wealth can be wrested from blood-soaked soil. On December 24, 1979, Soviet tanks rumbled 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. That choice was directed by the Pentagon, which insisted on a “light footprint” out of concern that Afghanistan would become a drag on U.S. resources as attention shifted to Iraq (see Iraq War). On February 17, 2009, he approved sending an additional 17,000 U.S. troops, on top of the 36,000 U.S. troops and 32,000 NATO service members already there. With the ouster of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the international focus shifted to reconstruction and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Why are so many babies dying of Covid-19 in Brazil? At times over the past 18 years, the Taliban have been on the back foot. U.S. Army soldiers on security duty in Paktīkā province, Afghanistan, 2010. But they didn't just disappear - their influence grew back and they dug in. One of the final major battles of the first phase of the war came in March 2002 with Operation Anaconda in the eastern province of Paktia, which involved U.S. and Afghan forces fighting some 800 al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. Afghan policemen destroying opium poppies during an eradication sweep in Orūzgān province, 2007. In the Soviets’ absence, the mujahideen ousted Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government and established a transitional government. 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. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The CIA team was soon joined by U.S. and British special forces contingents, and together they provided arms, equipment, and advice to the Afghans. Omar and his top Taliban lieutenants settled in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta, in the remote southwestern province of Balochistān. The figures for Afghan civilians are more difficult to quantify. Beginning in 2005, violence climbed as the Taliban reasserted its presence with new tactics modeled on those being used by insurgents in Iraq. These fighters won extensive covert backing from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States and were joined in their fight by foreign volunteers (who soon formed a network, known as al-Qaeda, to coordinate their efforts). The United States repeatedly threatened to expand its drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal areas and into regions such as Balochistān if Pakistan did not demonstrate greater cooperation in battling the Taliban, a group it had long fostered. In 2014, at the end of what was the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since 2001, Nato's international forces - wary of staying in Afghanistan indefinitely - ended their combat mission, leaving it to the Afghan army to fight the Taliban. But in January 2019, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said 45,000 members of the security forces had been killed since 2014. In fact, it is these reasons that compelled it to choose a political solution after 17 years of war. The US and the Taliban have signed an agreement aimed at paving the way towards peace in Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict. After the Taliban government refused to hand over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the wake of al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The theme of the obligation of the war in Afghanistan was seen in speeches by both Bush and Obama. there are five main reasons the war is still going on now, The group could be making as much as $1.5bn (£1.2bn) a year, 45,000 members of the security forces had been killed since 2014, The Taliban now control much more territory than they did when international troops left Afghanistan in 2014. But from the start, development efforts in Afghanistan were inadequately funded, as attention had turned among U.S. officials to the looming confrontation in Iraq. The forces worked with U.S. assistance, but they defied U.S. wishes when, on November 13, they marched into Kabul as the Taliban retreated without a fight. With any such hypothesis, one looks not only for the evidence confirming it, but more conscientiously, for the evidence disconfirming it. Afghanistan War - Afghanistan War - The Obama surge: U.S. Pres. Afghanistan’s neighbors Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia were deeply involved in its affairs, especially after the Saur revolutionin 1978. The invasion also marked the start of the United States's War on Terror. An intensive manhunt for Omar, bin Laden, and al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was undertaken. Prior to the killing of bin Laden by U.S. forces in 2011 (see below), the Americans were believed to have come closest to bin Laden in the December 2001 battle of Tora Bora (bin Laden’s mountain stronghold). With al-Qaeda’s help, the Taliban won control of over 90 percent of Afghan territory by the summer of 2001. As a result, the Taliban were able to regroup. In 38 years, Afghanistan has gone from being the downfall of the Soviet Union to the longest war in US history. Initially, the war appeared to have been won with relative ease. "We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfil it," US President George W Bush said when he announced the first air strikes against Afghanistan on 7 October, 2001. During the time that the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they allowed an organisation called al-Qaeda to have training camps there. The surge helped drive the Taliban out of parts of southern Afghanistan, but it was never destined to last for years. But he is keen to reduce troop numbers before he faces another election in November 2020. Under the deal, the US and its Nato allies will withdraw all their troops from the country in 14 months if the hardline Islamist movement upholds its commitments to stop attacks. Throughout Afghanistan, while troops such as those at Michigan and Blessing were fighting a daytime war, special-operations forces including Army Rangers and Navy SEALs were fighting a … What could peace in Afghanistan look like? This reality prompted the United States to begin targeting insurgent leaders who lived in Pakistan with missiles fired from remotely piloted drones. He survived several assassination attempts—including a September 2004 rocket attack that nearly struck a helicopter he was riding in—and security concerns kept him largely confined to the presidential palace in Kabul. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. The guerrilla war against the Soviet forces led to their departure in 1989. 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. At least half a million Afghans—government forces, Taliban fighters, and civilians—have been killed or … This occurred in the 1970s. The Americans also teamed with anti-Taliban Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan, including a little-known tribal leader named Hamid Karzai. Read about our approach to external linking. (Indeed, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry made this criticism repeatedly during the 2004 general election campaign.) Read about our approach to external linking. The United States consistently represented the largest foreign force in Afghanistan, and it bore the heaviest losses. Senegal: The HIV success story that’s failing gay men. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing Canadian soldiers at their base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, March 2006. This shift reflected the greater need for U.S. troops and resources in Iraq, where sectarian warfare was reaching alarming levels. Barack Obama’s 2009 decision to temporarily increase the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. A UN report in February 2019 said more than 32,000 civilians had died. In the aftermath of the attacks, the administration of U.S. Pres. The US-made mess in Afghanistan has much to do with its failed policies and shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude. They also helped coordinate targeting for the air campaign, which began on October 7, 2001, with U.S. and British war planes pounding Taliban targets, thus marking the public start of Operation Enduring Freedom. Al-Qaeda subsequently reestablished its base of operations in the tribal areas that form Pakistan’s northwest border with Afghanistan. Within two months of the US and its international and Afghan allies launching their attacks, the Taliban regime collapsed and its fighters melted away into Pakistan. In the chaos that followed, the Taliban (which means "students" in the Pashto language) sprang up. The Watson Institute at Brown University says 42,000 opposition fighters have died. A Soviet armoured vehicle rolling past a group of civilians during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, December 1979. As the Taliban leadership retreated into Afghanistan’s rural areas and across the border to Pakistan, anti-Taliban figures convened at a United Nations (UN)-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany. 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 Taliban, radical Islamists who ran Afghanistan and protected Bin Laden, refused to hand him over. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Pres. 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. 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