Definition: The US-led military campaign in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime and dismantle the al-Qaeda network operating in that country

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were perpetrated by the international terrorist network al-Qaeda. This network was believed to have trained the terrorists who carried out the attack, as well as planned and implemented the attack itself, in a remote region in Afghanistan. The ruling regime in that country, the Taliban, gave safe haven to al-Qaeda, enabling it to conduct its operations. Shortly after the attacks, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies launched a campaign designed to destroy al-Qaeda and topple the regime that protected it. This campaign continued throughout the 2000s, costing the lives of thousands of American soldiers as they engaged not only the Taliban and al-Qaeda but other regional insurgents and warlords while attempting to rebuild Afghanistan’s infrastructure and stabilize the nation.

When the terrorist network known as al-Qaeda launched its multifarious attacks against US targets on September 11, 2001, it did so from a secure location in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his leadership team were believed to be operating in a remote region of that country, where they plotted the attack, trained the perpetrators, and organized the transfer of funds to enable their operatives to carry out the plot. Al-Qaeda was able to do so because it was operating without interference, thanks to the support of the Taliban, a radical Islamic militant regime that had seized power in Afghanistan only a short time before.

In order to truly impact al-Qaeda, therefore, the United States needed to engage the Taliban as well. The Taliban would need to be removed from power for the United States to launch a full-scale attack on the regions in which al-Qaeda was operating. Furthermore, Afghanistan itself would then need to be stabilized, with the Taliban’s government replaced by a balanced infrastructure that would not support al-Qaeda. These objectives proved extremely daunting, requiring a significant investment of US military technology, money, and lives.

Toppling the Taliban

The Taliban was born from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, emerging from the US-supported resistance organizations that fought against the Russians. When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan during the 1990s, various parties within the Afghan population began fighting with one another in the resulting power vacuum. The Taliban took advantage of the infighting and seized power in 1996, installing an ultraconservative Islamic form of government in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

In order to move on al-Qaeda, the US-led forces needed safe passage, unimpeded by the ruling government. Unfortunately, the Taliban was unwilling to allow the United States to operate in Afghanistan. Not long after they took power, a senior member of the Taliban’s leadership, Mullah Mohammed Omar, formed a relationship with Saudi Arabian–born terrorist Osama bin Laden after the latter moved his base of operations from Sudan to Kandahar, Afghanistan. After the September 11 attacks, the United States demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden for his actions; Omar and his regime declined the ultimatum, instead offering to try bin Laden in an Afghan court. The United States thus launched a major bombing campaign, followed by a full-scale invasion by American and British forces that routed the Taliban in Kabul and Kandahar, driving them away but not defeating them. The Taliban regrouped in the Afghan wilderness, gaining support as an insurgency group and coordinating with al-Qaeda to launch suicide bombings, car-bomb attacks, and other operations against the international coalition, including the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Compounding the issue was the fact that the Taliban had close, albeit undefined and unofficial, relations with the government of Pakistan, a partner of the United States in the war on terrorism. Although the Pakistani government was known to engage and capture al-Qaeda members on and within its borders, it did not launch a full offensive against the Taliban insurgency, making the US effort in remote Afghanistan more difficult. In fact, many experts believe that Omar himself moved to Pakistan, along with other members of the Taliban’s leadership, and was safeguarded there after the Taliban ouster. Although al-Qaeda was the main goal of the US-and-NATO-led campaign, the flexibility and continued strength of the Taliban outside of the cities made both attacking al-Qaeda and establishing order in post-Taliban Afghanistan highly difficult.

Engaging al-Qaeda

As US leadership had anticipated, the main target of the war in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, proved an elusive foe. To be sure, al-Qaeda was frequently a collaborator in suicide bombings and other terrorist-style attacks against US and international forces. However, Osama bin Laden and his central leadership team were largely unseen during the 2000s. Most experts believed them to be in the mountain stronghold of Tora Bora, in a rugged region in the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, near the city of Jalalabad. Tora Bora was a perfect hiding place, a network of caves and tunnels carved deep into the mountains. The mujahideen, Afghan freedom fighters who had united against the Soviets during the 1980s, had used this network to evade Soviet bombings during the war. Osama bin Laden arrived in this region in 1996 after being forced out of Sudan, and he and al-Qaeda used the stronghold to plot their attacks, conduct training exercises, and perform other operations without satellite detection.

As American and allied forces battled al-Qaeda forces in the area and relentlessly bombed the mountain stronghold, a campaign dubbed the battle of Tora Bora, they continued to find themselves at least a step behind bin Laden and his closest leaders. Rumors abounded that once the United States began to target Tora Bora, bin Laden fled the area to Jalalabad, into nearby Pakistan, or even back to the Middle East or Africa. Despite a substantial reward for information leading to bin Laden’s capture, information about his whereabouts always seemed to arrive a day too late, as forces would arrive at a suspected hiding spot only to find that he had already moved on.

The effort was further confounded by the fact that the Afghan people living in the eastern region, a collective of clans and tribes known as the Pashtun, refused to give up their foreign-born “guests” to the Americans. It is a Pashtun tradition to provide sanctuary to a guest who asks for it and to protect that guest with passion. Reward or no, the allied forces hunting bin Laden found little help from the local tribes.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda was doing its best to convince the Afghan people that they were of the same heritage. Al-Qaeda operatives were distributing propaganda to the Afghans, appealing to their shared Muslim faith and drawing comparisons between the Americans and the country’s last occupying force, the Soviet Union. In this area, the United States was not just battling al-Qaeda; it was competing with al-Qaeda for the support of the people who could help it capture bin Laden and his cadre.

Restoring Order in Afghanistan

The general goal of the war in Afghanistan was to thoroughly defeat al-Qaeda and subsequently prevent that network from reestablishing itself in the region. While ousting the Taliban and capturing the al-Qaeda leadership in the eastern part of the country were important components of this pursuit, it was critical for the success of the operation that the United States and its allies in the region work to stabilize the country, rebuild government infrastructure, and create an environment in which al-Qaeda and the Taliban could not return and thrive.

This element of the war in Afghanistan proved extremely daunting in light of a wide range of factors. One of these issues was a power struggle that had existed since the Soviets were forced out. The Taliban had previously won such a struggle during the vacuum years following Soviet occupation; in its absence, many other groups emerged as would-be leaders in this diverse and fractured country. The most prominent of these groups were ethnic in nature, such as the Pashtuns (members of which made up the majority of the Taliban), Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Others were regional and tribal, although often distinguished by ethnicity, dominating smaller regions outside of Kabul and Kandahar. The Taliban’s victory disenfranchised these groups, creating even greater divides between them.

During the 2000s, a difficult task for Americans and the international community was to reach out to these groups and attempt to bring them back to the table in a spirit of cooperation. In December 2001, under the terms of the United Nations–sponsored Bonn Agreement, an interim government was established in Kabul in which the Pashtun majority was no longer the dominant group, although the provisional government’s leader, Hamid Karzai, was a Pashtun. In 2002, the interim government was replaced by a transitional government, still led by Karzai, in which Pashtuns made up a greater proportion of the administration, though still not a majority. The new government’s ethnic diversity, a positive attribute in the minds of the international commission that developed it, in many ways worked to the detriment of the government; because the various factions represented had previously operated independent of and in direct competition with one another, the government ministries under their control were frequently incapable of operating effectively.

Outside of Kabul and the cities, the stabilization of post-Taliban Afghanistan was even more difficult for the Americans. The ethnic divisions that existed in Kabul were magnified in rural regions. Compounding the issue was the inherent distrust many of these groups felt for the Americans who had invaded their country. Some of these ethnic groups and tribes were suspicious of any outsiders, a fact al-Qaeda took advantage of as they competed with the Americans for the hearts and minds of the tribes, clans, and even warlords in rural Afghanistan.

Still another destabilizing element in the country was the drug trade. Afghanistan has long been a major producer of opium, but the drug trade during the pre-invasion years was limited somewhat by the Taliban regime, which regarded drugs as counter to the values of Islam. After being driven out of Kabul in 2001, however, the very same Taliban looked on the drug trade as a means by which it could continue its effort against the Americans. Even al-Qaeda was rumored to be involved in opium production, using the money to finance its own operations both in-country and abroad. During the 2000s, opium and heroin production skyrocketed, as without a viable alternative source of industry, Afghans continued to embrace the drug trade, undercutting the American effort to restore order to post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Impact

The United States and its NATO allies launched the war in Afghanistan in order to make a definitive statement to international terrorists that they were serious about eradicating terrorism wherever it could be found. After the events of September 11, the United States decided that a limited series of airstrikes or operations against perceived al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan was would not be enough; al-Qaeda’s home base needed to be destroyed, and Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of al-Qaeda were to be captured or killed. Any parties who stood in the way of the American forces were to be treated as enemies in league with al-Qaeda.

The war in Afghanistan required a significant investment on a number of fronts. First, the regime that gave al-Qaeda safe haven, the Taliban, had to be removed. This goal was reached in relatively quick fashion early in the campaign. However, the Taliban might have been ousted from Kabul, but it was far from eliminated; it became a legitimate threat to the allied forces, engaging them both on the battlefield and in terroristic attacks.

The primary target of the war, al-Qaeda, also proved vexing. Bin Laden and his leadership team continued to move throughout the tunnels and caves of Tora Bora and the rest of the region, seemingly always just ahead of their pursuers. Al-Qaeda took advantage of the protection of their hosts in the region, and in addition to helping the Taliban launch frequent attacks against American and coalition targets in Afghanistan, they reached out to native Afghans for support.

In addition to the military effort, the United States needed to rebuild Afghanistan after driving out the Taliban. In Kabul, the inclusiveness of the new government proved problematic because of persistent divides between ethnic groups. Outside of the cities, the diversity of disparate clans, groups, and tribes made it difficult to unify Afghanistan, especially because the force seeking to do so was a foreign one. Finally, the major growth of the drug trade in post-Taliban Afghanistan helped support the Taliban and al-Qaeda and undermine the efforts of the United States and its allies to rebuild the country as a stable, antiterrorist nation.

Further Reading