The War That Never Ends....

The War in Afghanistan 
"Operation Enduring Freedom"

 The war's goals were to dismantle Al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.

The War in Afghanistan is the second longest war in United States history, behind the Vietnam War.

President George W. Bush blamed the U.S. 2001 September 11 on Osama bin Laden who was hiding in Afghanistan.

President Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin  Laden, who had already been wanted by the U.S. since 1998, and expel Al-Qaeda.

 The Taliban declined to extradite him unless they provided evidence of his involvement in the September 11 attacks.

They also declined demands to extradite others on the same grounds. 

The U.S. dismissed the request for evidence.

On September 26, 2001, the U.S. covertly inserted members of the CIA's Special Activities Division as part of team Jawbreaker into Afghanistan, forming the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team.

They linked up with the Northern Alliance as part of Task Force Dagger.

 Within a few weeks the Northern Alliance, with assistance from the U.S. ground and air forces, captured several cities from the Taliban.

On October 7, 2001 launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom. 

Later they were joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance which had been fighting the Taliban in the ongoing civil war since 1996.

 In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Its purpose was to assist the Afghan interim authorities with securing Kabul. 

 Hamid Karzai was selected to head the Afghan Interim Administration.

In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

After the  defeat in the initial invasion, the Taliban was reorganized by its leader Mullah Omar.

It launched an insurgency against the government and ISAF in 2003.

Insurgents from the Taliban, Haqqani Network, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and other groups waged warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets and turncoat killings against coalition forces. 

ISAF continued to battle the Taliban insurgency, fighting crossed into neighboring North-West Pakistan.

 On May 1, 2011, United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

In May 2012, NATO leaders endorsed an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces. 

UN-backed peace talks have taken place between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

 In May 2014, the United States announced that its major combat operations would end in December 2014. 

It would leave a residual force in the country.

In October 2014, British forces handed over the last bases in Helmand to the Afghan military.

December 28, 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan.

As of May 2017, over 13,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan without any formal plans to withdraw.

Over 4,000 ISAF soldiers and civilian contractors were killed as well as, over 15,000 Afghan national security forces and over 31,000 civilians.

The 9/11 Commission found that Al-Qaeda was able to use Afghanistan as a place to train and indoctrinate fighters, import weapons, coordinate with other jihadists, and plot terrorist actions.

 An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 men passed through these facilities before 9/11.

BEFORE

After the August 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings were linked to bin Laden, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on militant training camps in Afghanistan. 

 In 1999, the international community imposed sanctions on the Taliban, calling for bin Laden to be surrendered. 

The Taliban repeatedly refused.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Special Activities Division paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama bin Laden. 

These teams planned several operations, but did not receive the order to proceed from President Clinton. 

Their efforts built relationships with Afghan leaders that proved essential in the 2001 invasion.

A change in U.S. policy was effected in August 2001.

 The Bush administration agreed on a plan to start supporting Massoud.

 A meeting of top national security officials agreed that the Taliban would be presented with an ultimatum to hand over bin Laden and other al-Qaeda operatives. 

If the Taliban refused, the U.S. would provide covert military aid to anti-Taliban groups. 

If both those options failed, the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action.

Ahmad Shah Massoud was the only leader of the United Front in Afghanistan. 

Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Declaration.

Many civilians fled to areas under his control.

In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban.

SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a total of 19 Arab men carried out four coordinated attacks in the United States.

 Four commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked.

The hijackers were members of Al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell. They intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

 Everyone on board and more than 2000 people in the buildings were killed.

Both buildings collapsed within two hours from damage related to the crashes.

Nearby buildings  were destroyed and others were damaged.

 The hijackers crashed another airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.. 

The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, in rural Pennsylvania.

Later it was discovered that some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane.

 No one aboard the flights survived.

The death toll among responders including firefighters and police was 836 as of June 2009.

 Total deaths were 2996, including the 19 hijackers.

WIKI LEAKS SECRETS

July 25, 2010, the release of 91,731 classified documents from the WikiLeaks organization was made public. 

The documents cover U.S. military incident and intelligence reports from January 2004 to December 2009.

The documents contain reports of Pakistan collusion with the Taliban. 

Supposedly the documents clearly show that the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan.

Pakistan allowed representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions. 

They organized networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders. 

An alleged incident in which Pakistan's former ISI spy chief Hamid Gul met with Afghan insurgents in January 2009.

It was right after alleged Pakistani Al-Qaeda figure Osama al-Kini's death by a CIA drone attack. 

Evidence that Iran provided assistance to the Taliban was also revealed in the documents.

Iranian involvement in Afghanistan steadily widened from 2004 to today and constituted armaments, money, and physical deployment of anti-NATO militants.

The documents stated that Hezb-e-Islami party leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Amin al-Haq, a financial advisor to Osama Bin Laden, both flew to North Korea on 19 November 2005, and purchased remote-controlled rockets to be used against American and coalition aircraft. 

Hundreds of civilians have been wounded or killed by coalition forces in several instances that were not previously revealed.

The shootings to the often massive loss of life from air strikes led to President Hamid Karzai stating publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". 

There were sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse.

A U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, killing 15 of its passengers.

On 4 March 2007, U.S. Marines opened fire on civilians after witnessing a suicide bombing and supposedly coming under small arms fire. 

The marines escaped down a six-mile stretch of highway, opening fire with automatic weapons, hitting almost anyone in their way. 

Such as teenage girls in the fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. 

Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded.

None of the soldiers involved were charged or disciplined.

March 2007, CIA paramilitaries fired on a civilian man who was running from them. 

The man, Shum Khan, was deaf and mute and did not hear their warnings.

In 2007, U.S. special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a "high-value individual" was hiding.

 They insured that there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area. 

A senior U.S. commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed.

 Locals, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.

The reports included incidents involving civilian casualties like the Kunduz airstrike and Nangar Khel incident.

August 2007, Polish troops mortared the village of Nangar Khel, killing five people.

Two of the victims were a woman and her baby.

It was supposedly a revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED explosion.

The Taliban have killed more than 2,000 civilians to date with their road side bombs.

The documents revealed that contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense had hired local male child prostitutes.

In my opinion, this has been a ridiculous situation.

Do we really still need that many troops over there?