In late 2001, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and its close allies invaded
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and toppled the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
government. The invasion's aims were to dismantle
al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...
, which had executed the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban government from power. The
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
was a key ally of the United States, offering support for military action from the start of invasion preparations. The invasion came after the
Afghan Civil War's 1996–2001 phase between the Taliban and the
Northern Alliance
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( prs, جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان ''Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt ...
groups, resulting in the Taliban controlling 80% of the country by 2001. The invasion became the first phase of the 20-year-long
War in Afghanistan and marked the beginning of the American-led
War on Terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...
.
After the September 11 attacks, US President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
demanded that the Taliban hand over
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
and expel al-Qaeda; bin Laden had already been wanted by the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
since 1998. The Taliban declined to
extradite him and ignored demands to shut down terrorist bases or extradite other suspected terrorists. The US launched
Operation Enduring Freedom
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) was the official name used synonymously by the U.S. government for both the War in Afghanistan (2001–2014) and the larger-scale Global War on Terrorism. On 7 October 2001, in response to the September 11 at ...
on October 7, 2001, with the United Kingdom. The two were later joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance. The US and its allies rapidly drove the Taliban from power by December 17, 2001, and built military bases near major cities across the country. Most al-Qaeda and Taliban members were not captured, but escaped to neighboring
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
or retreated to rural or remote mountainous regions during the
Battle of Tora Bora.
In December 2001, the
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
established the
International Security Assistance Force
' ps, کمک او همکاري '
, allies = Afghanistan
, opponents = Taliban Al-Qaeda
, commander1 =
, commander1_label = Commander
, commander2 =
, commander2_label =
, commander3 =
, comman ...
(ISAF) to oversee military operations in the country and train the
Afghan National Security Forces
The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), also known as the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were the military and internal security forces of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Structure
The Afghan National Security Forc ...
. At the
Bonn Conference
After Operation Enduring Freedom in which the Taliban government was toppled in Afghanistan, in December 2001, the German city of Bonn hosted a conference – widely known as the Bonn Conference – of Afghan leaders at Hotel Petersberg, to choo ...
in December 2001,
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...
was selected to head the
Afghan Interim Administration. Taliban leader
Mullah Omar
Mullah Muhammad Omar (; –April 2013) was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001), 1996 to 2001.
Born into a religious family of ...
reorganized the movement, and in 2002 it launched
an insurgency against the government and ISAF. In 2021, while international forces were withdrawing from the country after nearly 20 years of conflict, the Taliban succeeded in
overthrowing the Afghan government and re-establishing their rule across much of Afghanistan.
Background
In 2001, Afghanistan had been at war for over 20 years. The communist
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), ''Hezb-e dimūkrātĩk-e khalq-e Afghānistān'' was a Marxist–Leninist political party in Afghanistan established on 1 January 1965. Four members of the party won seats in the 1965 Afgha ...
(PDPA)
seized power in 1978, and its policies sparked a popular uprising. The
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, sensing PDPA weakness,
intervened in 1979 to support the regime. The entry of the Soviet Union into Afghanistan prompted its
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
rivals, especially the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
, to support rebels fighting against the Soviet-backed PDPA. While the secular and socialist government controlled the cities, religiously motivated ''
mujahideen
''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...
'' held sway in much of the countryside. The most important ''mujahideen'' commander was
Ahmad Shah Massoud
)
, branch = Jamiat-e Islami / Shura-e Nazar Afghan Armed Forces United Islamic Front
, serviceyears = 1975–2001
, rank = General
, unit =
, commands = Mujahideen commander during the Soviet–Afghan Wa ...
, who led the well-organized
Tajik
Tajik, Tadjik, Tadzhik or Tajikistani may refer to:
* Someone or something related to Tajikistan
* Tajiks, an ethnic group in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan
* Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan
* Tajik (surname)
* Tajik cu ...
forces. The American
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA) worked closely with
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
's
Inter-Service Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) to funnel foreign support for the ''mujahideen''. The war also attracted Arab volunteers, known as "
Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs (also known as Arab-Afghans) are Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet–Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans.
Estimates of the volunte ...
", including
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
.
![RIAN archive 24609 Troop withdrawal from Afghanistan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/RIAN_archive_24609_Troop_withdrawal_from_Afghanistan.jpg)
After the
withdrawal of the Soviet military from Afghanistan in February 1989, the PDPA regime collapsed in 1992. In the resulting power vacuum, the ''mujahideen'' leaders vied for dominance in
a civil war from 1992 to 1996. By then, bin Laden had left the country. The United States' interest in Afghanistan also diminished. In 1994, a
Pashtun
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...
''mujahid'' named
Mullah Omar
Mullah Muhammad Omar (; –April 2013) was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001), 1996 to 2001.
Born into a religious family of ...
founded the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
movement in
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...
. His followers were religious students and sought to end warlord rule through strict adherence to Islamic law. By the end of 1994, the Taliban had captured all of Kandahar Province.
Taliban Emirate vs. Northern Alliance (1996–2001)
![Afghanistan War 2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Afghanistan_War_2000.png)
In 1996, with military support from Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia, the Taliban seized Kabul and founded the
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
. They imposed their
fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in areas under their control, issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home or attend school and requiring them to abide by harsh rules on
veiling and seclusion.
After the Taliban takeover of Kabul, Massoud retreated north to his native
Panjshir Valley and formed a resistance movement against the Taliban, called the United Front or the
Northern Alliance
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( prs, جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان ''Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt ...
. In addition to Massoud's Tajik force, the United Front included
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks ( uz, , , , ) are a Turkic ethnic group native to the wider Central Asian region, being among the largest Turkic ethnic group in the area. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, next to Kazakh and Karakalpak mino ...
under the former PDPA general
Abdul Rashid Dostum and
Hazara factions. The Northern Alliance received varying degrees of support from Russia, Iran, and India. Like the Taliban, Massoud also raised money by trafficking drugs. By 2001, the Taliban controlled 80% of the country, with the Northern Alliance confined to the country's northeast corner.
Al-Qaeda
After nearly five years of shelter, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996 and arrived in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He had founded al-Qaeda in the late 1980s to continue jihad after the end of the Soviet–Afghan War. He moved al-Qaeda's operations to eastern Afghanistan and developed a close relationship with the Taliban. In 2000, however, Mullah Omar visited bin Laden and forbade him from attacking the United States while he was a guest of the Taliban. During the 1990s the CIA and
Delta Force planned several operations to kill or capture bin Laden, but President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
never ordered them to proceed.
Change in US policy toward Afghanistan
During the early years of the
Clinton administration
Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over Re ...
, the US had no clear policy toward Afghanistan. The
1998 US embassy bombings
The 1998 United States embassy bombings were attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998. More than 200 people were killed in nearly simultaneous truck bomb explosions in two East African cities, one at the United States Embassy in Dar es Salaam ...
, however, masterminded by al-Qaeda, provoked President Clinton to order
missile strikes on militant training camps in Afghanistan; bin Laden was
indicted for his involvement in the bombings. In 1999 both the US and the United Nations enacted sanctions against the Taliban in
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267
United Nations Security Council resolution 1267 was adopted unanimously on 15 October 1999. After recalling resolutions 1189 (1998), 1193 (1998) and 1214 (1998) on the situation in Afghanistan, the Council designated Osama bin Laden and associa ...
, which demanded the Taliban surrender bin Laden for trial in the US and close all terrorist bases in Afghanistan. At the time, the only collaboration between Massoud and the US was an effort with the CIA to trace bin Laden. The US provided no support for Massoud's fight against the Taliban.
A change in US policy was effected in early September 2001. The Bush administration agreed on a plan to start supporting Massoud. A September 10 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 US would provide covert military aid to anti-Taliban groups to attempt to overthrow the Taliban.
Military situation on the eve of 9/11
On September 9, 2001, two al-Qaeda members posing as journalists killed Massoud by detonating a bomb hidden in their video camera during an interview. The assassination was a gift from bin Laden to the Taliban and left them poised to achieve total control over Afghanistan.
Mohammed Fahim became the new leader of the Northern Alliance. The Alliance had 15,000–20,000 fighters distributed across five locations. On the Kabul front, Taliban and Northern Alliance forces faced each other from trenches across the
Shomali Plain The Shomali Plain, also called the Shomali Valley, is a plateau just north of Kabul, Afghanistan. It is approximately 30 km wide and 80 km long. Once, it was a fertile area, rich with water, where fruits and vegetables were cultivated, and ...
. The
Takhar
Takhar or Taahkarr (in Serer and Cangin) is a demi-god in the Serer religion worshipped by many Serers (an ethnic group found in Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania). "Folk-Lore In The old Testament. Studies In Comparative Religion Legend and L ...
front extended from the Tajikistan border in the north to
Parwan in the south, near Kabul. Dostum's forces were located south of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Hazaras under
Muhammad Mohaqiq
Haji Muhammad Mohaqiq ( prs, حاجی محمد محقق; born 26 July 1955 in Balkh) is a politician in Afghanistan, who served as a member of the Afghanistan Parliament. He is also the founder and chairman of the People's Islamic Unity Party of ...
were in the central
Hazarajat region, and
Ismail Khan was near
Herat
Herāt (; Persian: ) is an oasis city and the third-largest city of Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safēd ...
.
The Taliban's military commander in the north was
Mohammad Fazl. The Taliban military comprised approximately 45,000 Afghans and 2,700 foreign fighters, which included al-Qaeda's
055 Brigade
The 055 Brigade (or 55th Arab Brigade) was a guerrilla organization sponsored and trained by Al Qaeda that was integrated into the Taliban army between 1995 and 2001.
Composition and role
The unit consisted mostly of foreign guerrilla fighters ( ...
. According to military analyst
Ali Jalali
Ali Ahmad Jalali (Pashto/ prs, علی احمد جلالی) is an Afghan politician, diplomat, and academic. Jalali served as the Minister of Interior from January 2003 to September 2005. He has also been a distinguished professor at the Near East ...
, the 055 Brigade was only 400–600 strong, but its ties to bin Laden made it politically important. The foreign fighters included Arabs as well as
Kashmir
Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...
is,
Chechens, Uzbeks, and
Uyghurs
The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...
. Several hundred officers from Pakistan's ISI were stationed in Afghanistan advising the Taliban. By mid-October, approximately 10,000 Pakistani volunteers crossed the border to augment the Taliban's forces. The volunteers were mostly ''
madrasa
Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated '' ...
'' students, some as young as 14.
Both sides primarily used Russian military equipment. The Northern Alliance had 14.5mm heavy machine guns, Russian artillery, T-72 tanks, and
BMP-1 armored vehicles retrofitted with rocket pods from Soviet combat helicopters. Dostum's Uzbeks used horses for transportation. The Northern Alliance had 18 helicopters and three fixed-wing planes, used mostly for logistical purposes. The Taliban's equipment was similar to that of the Northern Alliance, and they also had
Stinger missiles donated by the United States to the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. They relied on pickup trucks for mobility and operated as a "motorized light force." They had about 40 combat aircraft, operated by ex-PDPA pilots.
Both sides had a history of human rights abuses: Uzbeks and Hazaras had "massacred hundreds of Taliban prisoners and killed Pashtun villagers in the north and around Kabul", and the Taliban killed 5,000–8,000 civilians after they
captured Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. Afghanistan also faced a serious humanitarian crisis in 2001 due to drought; according to the United Nations, 5 million Afghans were in need of humanitarian aid that year and 3.8 million could not survive without UN food aid.
Prelude to the invasion
On the morning of September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda
carried out four coordinated attacks on the United States, employing four hijacked jet airliners. The attacks killed almost 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others. By the early afternoon of September 11, the CIA had confirmed that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack. The Taliban condemned the attacks, but Mullah Omar issued a statement denying bin Laden's involvement. Although bin Laden eventually
took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks in 2004, he initially denied having any involvement. One of bin Laden's strategic goals was to draw the US into a costly war in Afghanistan, so it could be defeated just as the Soviet Union had been.
Diplomatic and political activity
![President George W](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/President_George_W._Bush_address_to_the_nation_and_joint_session_of_Congress_Sept._20.jpg)
On the evening of September 11, President Bush stated the US would respond to the attacks and would "make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." On September 14, 2001, Congress passed legislation titled
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and its supporters. President Bush addressed Congress on September 20 and demanded the Taliban deliver bin Laden and al-Qaeda or face war.
![Osama bin Laden portrait](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Osama_bin_Laden_portrait.jpg)
On the same day, a
grand council of 300 or 700
Muslim clerics across Afghanistan, who had convened to decide bin Laden's fate, issued a ''
fatwa
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
'' recommending that the Islamic Emirate ask bin Laden to leave their country. The ''fatwa'' went on to warn that should the United States invade Afghanistan, jihad would become obligatory until the invaders were expelled. On September 21, Mullah Omar rejected both Bush's demands and the advice of the council, again denying that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
Simultaneously, Mullah Omar authorized his deputy
Akhtar Mohammad Osmani
Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani or Usmani (died 19 December 2006) was a senior leader of the Taliban, treasurer for the organization, and close associate of Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Omar. He was involved in the demolition of the Buddhas of Bam ...
to negotiate with
Robert Grenier, the CIA's chief of station in Pakistan, to discuss giving up bin Laden. The two met in
Quetta
Quetta (; ur, ; ; ps, کوټه) is the tenth List of cities in Pakistan by population, most populous city in Pakistan with a population of over 1.1 million. It is situated in Geography of Pakistan, south-west of the country close to the ...
on September 15 and October 2 but failed to reach an agreement. On October 4 the British government released a document summarizing the evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks. That same day, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invoked
Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty for the first time in its history; Article V states that an attack on one member of the alliance is to be considered an attack on all members. On October 7, as the US aerial bombing campaign began, President Bush stated, "Full warning has been given, and time is running out."
Planning
![Rumsfeld1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Rumsfeld1.jpg)
In 2001, the Defense Department did not have a pre-existing plan for an invasion of Afghanistan. Therefore, the plan approved by Bush was devised by the CIA, reusing elements of the agency's previous contingency plans for collaboration with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Bush met with his cabinet at
Camp David
Camp David is the country retreat for the president of the United States of America. It is located in the wooded hills of Catoctin Mountain Park, in Frederick County, Maryland, near the towns of Thurmont and Emmitsburg, about north-northwe ...
on September 15 for a war planning session. The military presented three options for military action in Afghanistan: The first was a cruise missile strike, the second was a combined cruise missile and bombing campaign lasting 3–10 days, and the third called for cruise missile and bomber strikes as well as ground forces operating inside Afghanistan. The CIA also presented its war plan, which involved inserting paramilitary teams to work with the Northern Alliance and, eventually, American Special Forces units. The planners wanted to minimize the use of American ground forces, to avoid provoking the Afghan population as the British and Russians had done. On September 17 Bush approved the CIA's plan and directed the military to develop a detailed war plan based on the third option from Camp David. Planning efforts were hindered because the Taliban had little physical infrastructure for the military to target. Early plans by the
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) included poisoning the Afghan food supply and raiding a fertilizer factory that JSOC believed could be used to make chemical weapons.
The military completed its war plan by September 21 and called it Operation Infinite Justice. This name was deemed culturally insensitive because Islamic theology only deems God's justice to be infinite, so Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Presi ...
changed the name to Operation Enduring Freedom.
The US aimed to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime from power, but also sought to prevent the Northern Alliance from taking control of Afghanistan, believing the Alliance's rule would alienate the country's Pashtun majority. CIA director
George Tenet
George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the P ...
argued that the US should target al-Qaeda but "hold off on the Taliban," since the Taliban were popular in Pakistan and attacking them could jeopardize
relations with Pakistan.
Humanitarian situation in Afghanistan
At the time of the invasion, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was dire, and the attacks in the United States caused thousands of
Afghans
Afghans ( ps, افغانان, translit=afghanan; Persian/ prs, افغان ها, translit=afghānhā; Persian: افغانستانی, romanized: ''Afghanistani'') or Afghan people are nationals or citizens of Afghanistan, or people with ancestry f ...
attempting to flee fearing potential U.S. military action - this on top of millions that were already refugees in regional countries due to the continuous conflict already in place for 22 years. Food stock was running critically low and almost all aid workers had left the country after the attacks.
Barry Bearak
Barry Leon Bearak (born August 31, 1949, in Chicago) is an American journalist and educator who has worked as a reporter and correspondent for ''The Miami Herald'', the ''Los Angeles Times'', and ''The New York Times''. He taught journalism as a ...
in a ''New York Times'' article described Afghanistan as a "post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people." Seventy percent of the population was undernourished in 2001, and the life expectancy was ranked two places from bottom in the world.
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
suggested on September 27 that "millions" of Afghans would possibly starve, amid the paralyzed relief network, closed border crossings, and the cold winter approaching. The U.N. refugee agency feared that the scale of the crisis could reach the peaks of that in
Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and He ...
and
Rwanda
Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
.
Overthrow of the Taliban
Command structure
![US soldiers on horseback 2001 Afghanistan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/US_soldiers_on_horseback_2001_Afghanistan.jpg)
The invasion consisted of American, British, Canadian, and Australian forces, with other countries providing logistical support. General
Tommy Franks of US
Central Command (CENTCOM) was the overall commander for Operation Enduring Freedom. He led four task forces: the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF), Combined Joint Task Force Mountain (CJTF-Mountain), the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counterterrorism (JIATF-CT), and the Coalition Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force (CJCMOTF).
CJSOTF consisted of three subordinate task forces: Joint Special Operations Task Force-North (JSOTF-North or Task Force Dagger), Joint Special Operations Task Force-South (JSOTF-South or
Task Force K-Bar
Task Force K-Bar, originally the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-South (CJSOTF-South), was led by the United States and composed of special operations forces from seven nations. It undertook the first major ground deployment in the Wa ...
) and Task Force Sword (later renamed
Task Force 11
Task Force 11 (TF 11 or alternately Commander Task Force 11, CTF 11) is a designation that has been used by the United States armed forces for two separate units.
World War II
During World War II, Task Force 11 was a United States Navy aircraft ...
). Task Force Dagger was led by Colonel James Mulholland and was formed around his
5th Special Forces Group
The 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) (5th SFG (A)) is one of the most decorated active duty United States Army Special Forces groups in the U.S. armed forces. The 5th SFG (A) saw extensive action in the Vietnam War and played a pivotal role i ...
with helicopter support from the
160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment
The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), abbreviated as 160th SOAR (A), is a special operations force of the United States Army that provides helicopter aviation support for special operations forces. Its missions have include ...
(160th SOAR). Dagger was assigned to the north of Afghanistan and Task Force K-Bar was assigned to southern Afghanistan. K-Bar was led by Navy SEAL Captain Robert Harward and formed around SEAL Teams 2, 3 and 8 and Green Berets from 1st Battalion,
3rd Special Forces Group
The 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) – abbreviated 3rd SFG(A) and often simply called 3rd Group – is an active duty United States Army Special Forces (SF) group which was active in the Vietnam Era (1963–69), deactivated, and then react ...
. The task force principally conducted
special reconnaissance
Special reconnaissance (SR) or Recon Team is conducted by small units of highly trained military personnel, usually from special forces units or military intelligence organizations, who operate behind enemy lines, avoiding direct combat and detect ...
and
sensitive site exploitation missions. Most coalition contributions were arrayed under K-Bar, including New Zealand's
Special Air Service
The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...
, Canada's
Joint Task Force 2, and Germany's
''Kommando Spezialkräfte''. Task Force Sword was the
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) component of the mission. Task Force Sword's primary objective was capturing or killing senior leadership within al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Sword was structured around a two-squadron component of operators from Delta Force and
SEAL Team Six
The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), abbreviated as DEVGRU ("Development Group") and commonly known as SEAL Team Six, is the United States Navy component of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The unit is often referre ...
was supported by a Ranger force protection team, an
Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) signals intercept and surveillance team, and the 160th SOAR. The British
Special Boat Service was integrated directly into Sword's structure.
Alongside the SOF task forces operated the largely conventional CJTF-Mountain. Mountain initially comprised three subordinate commands, but only one was a special operations force – Task Force 64, a special forces task group built around a
sabre squadron
A sabre squadron, or (in US English) saber squadron, is a unit of sub-battalion size, in some military ground forces.
The term originated in the British Army, and is derived from the sabre traditionally used by soldiers mounted on horses, includ ...
from the
Australian SAS
The Special Air Service Regiment, officially abbreviated SASR though commonly known as the SAS, is a special forces unit of the Australian Army. Formed in 1957, it was modelled on the Special Air Service, British SAS sharing the motto, "Who ...
. The US Marines contributed
Task Force 58, consisting of the
15th Marine Expeditionary Unit
The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (15th MEU) is one of seven such units currently in existence in the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is a Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) with a strength of about 2,200 per ...
. The JIATF-CT (also known as Task Force Bowie), led by Brigadier General
Gary Harrell
Gary Lamar Harrell, affectionately known as "The Flea," (born January 23, 1972) is an American college football coach and former professional gridiron football player. He is currently the assistant head coach and running backs coach at the Univer ...
, was an intelligence integration and fusion activity composed of personnel from all participating units. Bowie numbered 36 military personnel and 57 from agencies such as the FBI, NSA, and CIA, as well as liaison officers from coalition SOF. Administratively embedded within Bowie was
Advanced Force Operations
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is a joint component command of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and is charged with studying special operations requirements and techniques to ensure interoperability and equip ...
(AFO). AFO was a 45-man reconnaissance unit made up of Delta Force reconnaissance specialists augmented by selected SEALs and supported by ISA's technical experts. AFO had been raised to support TF Sword and was tasked with intelligence preparation of the battlefield, working closely with the CIA and reporting directly to TF Sword. AFO conducted covert reconnaissance along the border with Pakistan. The AFO operators deployed observation posts to watch and report enemy movements and numbers and conduct environmental reconnaissance. The final task force supporting the invasion was CJCMOTF, which would manage civil affairs and humanitarian efforts.
First move
On September 26, fifteen days after 9/11, the US covertly inserted (via CIA-piloted
Mi-17 helicopter) 10 members of the CIA into the Panjshir Valley, Massoud's stronghold. The CIA mission was led by
Gary Schroen
Gary Charles Schroen (November 6, 1941 – August 1, 2022) was an American intelligence officer who spent 52 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, most notably as a field officer in charge of the initial CIA incursion into Afghanistan in S ...
and designated the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team, known by the call-sign 'Jawbreaker'. In addition to specialized human assets, the team brought a metal case containing $3 million in $100 bills to buy support. Jawbreaker linked up with General Mohammed Fahim, commander of the Northern Alliance forces in the Panjshir Valley, and prepared the way for introduction of Army Special Forces. The Jawbreaker team brought satellite communications equipment, enabling its intelligence reports to be instantly available to CIA headquarters. The team also assessed potential targets for
Operation Crescent Wind, provided ''in-extremis''
combat search and rescue
Combat search and rescue (CSAR) are search and rescue operations that are carried out during war that are within or near combat zones.
A CSAR mission may be carried out by a task force of helicopters, ground-attack aircraft, aerial refuelin ...
(CSAR), and could provide
bomb damage assessment for the air campaign. To allow fixed-wing aircraft to land in the area, the team refurbished an airstrip at
Gulbahar
Gulbahar or Gul Bahar ( ur, گلبهار ) is one of the neighborhoods of Liaquatabad Town in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.
Gulbahar Colony, which was known as Golimar, is a suburb of Karachi. This area is along the Lyari River and was mainly farm ...
built by the British in 1919.
On September 28, British
Foreign Secretary
The secretary of state for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs, known as the foreign secretary, is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom and head of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Seen as ...
Jack Straw approved the deployment of MI6 officers to Afghanistan, utilizing people involved with the ''mujahideen'' in the 1980s, who had language skills and regional expertise. At month's end, a handful of MI6 officers landed in northeast Afghanistan and met with Fahim. They began working with other contacts in the north and south to build alliances, secure support, and bribe as many Taliban commanders as possible to change sides or leave the fight. Two more CIA teams soon arrived, operating near Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Initial air strikes
![011007-N-1523C-001 First Strike into Afghanistan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/011007-N-1523C-001_First_Strike_into_Afghanistan.jpg)
On October 7, the US began military operations in Afghanistan with air strikes on 31 targets across the country. Most of the Taliban's outdated
SA-2 and
SA-3
The S-125 ''Neva/Pechora'' (russian: С-125 "Нева"/"Печора", NATO reporting name SA-3 ''Goa'') is a Soviet surface-to-air missile system that was designed by Aleksei Isaev to complement the S-25 and S-75. It has a shorter effective ra ...
surface-to-air missiles, small fleet of
MIG-21s and
Su-22s, and radar and command units were destroyed on the first night. On the same night the CIA conducted the first-ever air strike with a
Predator
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...
drone. The Predator was loitering over Mullah Omar's house and followed several men who left the house. CIA analysts believed that Omar was in the group, which drove first to the house of Omar's mother and then to a school west of Kandahar. The men stayed in the school for several hours and the CIA requested that the Air Force strike the school with a conventional bomb, but Franks denied the request, citing the risk of collateral damage and uncertainty over whether Omar was really there. The CIA fired the Predator's
Hellfire missile at a truck outside to draw the men out; the men left the school, and Omar escaped. Predator drones had been in development since the early 1990s, had been used to search for bin Laden since 2000, and had even been proposed as a means of assassinating bin Laden before 9/11. The employment of armed Predators in Afghanistan marked the start of a new era of
drone warfare
Drone warfare is a form of aerial warfare using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France, India, Pakista ...
.
US aircraft bombed Taliban training camps and air defenses over the next several days, employing
Apache
The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...
helicopter gunships
An attack helicopter is an armed helicopter with the primary role of an attack aircraft, with the offensive capability of engaging ground targets such as enemy infantry, military vehicles and fortifications. Due to their heavy armament they ...
from the
101st Combat Aviation Brigade
The Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division is a Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) of the United States Army. It was first organized in July 1968 as an aviation group and stands as the most decorated aviation unit in the United States Army. ...
.
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
cruisers, destroyers and
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
submarines launched several
Tomahawk cruise missiles
The Tomahawk () Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is a long-range, all-weather, jet-powered, subsonic cruise missile that is primarily used by the United States Navy and Royal Navy in ship and submarine-based land-attack operations.
Under contract fr ...
. Within a few days, most Taliban training sites were severely damaged and air defenses destroyed. The campaign focused on
command, control, and communications
Command and control (abbr. C2) is a "set of organizational and technical attributes and processes ... hatemploys human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions" to achieve the goals of an organization o ...
targets. The front facing the Northern Alliance held, and no battlefield successes were achieved there. The United States dropped 1500 munitions in the first week of bombing. They also began airdropping food and medical supplies to civilians in Northern Alliance-controlled territory. By the second week of the campaign most of the preplanned targets had been destroyed.
On October 19,
Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) teams 555 and 595, both 12-man
Green Beret teams from the 5th Special Forces Group, plus
Air Force Combat Controllers
United States Air Force Combat Control Teams, singular Combat Controller (CCT) ( AFSC 1Z2X1), are an elite American special operations force (specifically known as "special tactics operators") who specialize in all aspects of air-ground communi ...
, were airlifted by helicopter from the
Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
more than across the
Hindu Kush mountains in zero-visibility conditions by
MH-47E Chinook helicopters from 2nd Battalion 160th SOAR. ODA 555 went to the Panjshir Valley to link up with the NALT and Fahim, and ODA 595 went to the
Darya Suf Valley, just south of
Mazar-i-Sharif
, official_name =
, settlement_type = City
, image_skyline =
, pushpin_map = Afghanistan#Bactria#West Asia
, pushpin_label = Mazar-i-Sharif
, pushpin ...
, to work with Dostum.
In mid-October, A and G squadron of the
British 22nd SAS Regiment, reinforced by members of the Territorial SAS regiments, deployed to northwest Afghanistan in support of Enduring Freedom. They conducted largely uneventful reconnaissance under the code-name Operation Determine, none of which resulted in enemy contact. They traveled in Land Rover Desert Patrol Vehicles and modified all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). Both squadrons returned to their barracks in the UK after two weeks.
Objective Rhino and Gecko
On the night of October 19, simultaneous with the Special Forces entering the country, 200 Rangers from the
3rd Battalion,
75th Ranger Regiment
The 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as Army Rangers, is the U.S. Army's premier light infantry unit and special operations force within the United States Army Special Operations Command. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgi ...
, parachuted onto
Objective Rhino—a landing strip south of Kandahar. The landing strip had been built as part of an
Emirati hunting camp. Before the Rangers dropped,
B-2 Spirit
The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying ...
stealth bombers and
AC-130 gunships bombed and
strafed the site, meeting the resistance of only one Taliban fighter. The Rangers provided security while a
forward arming and refuelling point (FARP) was established using fuel bladders from
MC-130s, to refuel aircraft flying to the next objective. The mission was filmed by combat cameramen and a
P-3C Orion
The Lockheed P-3 Orion is a four-engined, turboprop Anti-submarine warfare, anti-submarine and maritime patrol aircraft, maritime surveillance aircraft developed for the United States Navy and introduced in the 1960s. Lockheed Corporation, Lockh ...
observation plane flying overhead. No US casualties were suffered in the operation itself (two Rangers received minor injuries in the jump), but two Rangers assigned to a
CSAR element supporting the mission were killed when their
MH-60L helicopter crashed at a temporary staging site in
Dalbandin
Dalbandin (Urdu and bal, ) is a city and the headquarter of District Chagai in the province of Balochistan near the Iran and Afghanistan border. It has a population of 16,319, and the remainder of the entire Dalbandin Tehsil has a population ...
, Pakistan, due to a
brownout.
Simultaneously, a squadron of Delta Force operatives supported by Rangers from Task Force Sword conducted an operation—designated Objective Gecko—outside Kandahar at Mullah Omar's residential compound. Four
MH-47E helicopters took off from the
USS Kitty Hawk (which was serving as a SOF base) in the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
carrying 91 soldiers. The assault teams were drawn from Delta, while teams from the Rangers secured the perimeter and occupied blocking positions. Before the soldiers were inserted, the target area was softened by preparatory fire from AC-130s and MH-60L Direct Action Penetrators. The assaulters met no resistance and there was no sign of the Taliban leader, so they searched the target location for intelligence, while their helicopters refueled at the newly established FARP in Rhino. The next day, the Pentagon showed the video footage from Objective Rhino at a press conference and distributed it to news organizations. Intelligence prior to the missions had indicated that neither objective had any Taliban forces on it. According to former Delta Force officer Peter Blaber, the JSOC commander
Dell Dailey "believed that if we raided empty targets in Afghanistan and filmed the raids for the world to see... we would have some kind of morale-breaking effect on the enemy."
Continued air strikes
The Green Berets of ODA 595 split into two elements, Alpha and Bravo. Alpha rode on horseback with General Dostum to his headquarters to plan an assault on Mazar-i-Sharif. Bravo was tasked with clearing the Darya Suf Valley of Taliban and to travel into the Alma Tak Mountains to conduct reconnaissance. Dostum and General
Mohammad Atta had been fighting the Taliban in the Darya Suf Valley throughout the summer and had gradually lost ground. The valley ran north to south and Dostum had established his headquarters near the village of Dehi—60 miles south of Mazar-i-Sharif—because the rugged terrain prevented Taliban tanks from moving that far into the valley.
On October 21, the Alpha element of ODA 595 guided in the first
Joint Direct Attack Munition
The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs, or "dumb bombs", into all-weather precision-guided munitions. JDAM-equipped bombs are guided by an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global Pos ...
bomb from a
B-52, impressing Dostum. As part of its operations, the Americans beamed in radio broadcasts in both Pashto and Dari calling al-Qaeda and the Taliban criminals and promising US$25 million to anyone who would provide information leading to bin Laden's whereabouts.
On October 23, the anti-Taliban Pashtun leader
Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan with about 20 supporters and tried to raise a revolt against the Taliban in
Nangarhar. Haq was among the most famous commanders of the anti-Soviet jihad, during which he had been wounded sixteen times and lost a foot. The Taliban captured and executed him.
On October 25, ODA 585 infiltrated an area near
Kunduz to work alongside warlord Burillah Khan. The same night, three Delta Force operators flew into the Panjshir and began working with the CIA Jawbreaker team to plan an important hostage rescue mission. In early August 2001 the Taliban had imprisoned eight employees of a Christian aid organization named
Shelter Now
Shelter Now (also known as ''Shelter Now International'' and ''SNI'') is an international Christianity, Christian humanitarian aid organization based in Germany and with operations focused in Afghanistan. ''Shelter Now'' began its work in the lat ...
, on charges of
proselytizing. Held in Kabul, the prisoners included two Americans,
Heather Mercer
Heather Marie Mercer (born 1976) is an American who was one of 24 aid workers arrested in August 2001 by the Taliban in Afghanistan in connection with their work with the Germany-based Christian aid organization Shelter Now International. She, alo ...
and
Dayna Curry
Dayna Curry (born November 4, 1971) is an American citizen, who was held a prisoner by Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2001. She befriended fellow aid worker Heather Mercer while attending Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas. In 2001 the ...
. They faced the death penalty if convicted. Since their arrival in Afghanistan, the CIA team had been using Northern Alliance intermediaries to contact Taliban officials and attempted to bribe them to release the prisoners, without success. Delta Force specialized in hostage rescue and began planning to infiltrate Kabul with 50–60 operators, disguised as an al-Qaeda convoy, to extract the prisoners. Planning and rehearsal for the mission, which also included an element from
Seal Team Six
The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), abbreviated as DEVGRU ("Development Group") and commonly known as SEAL Team Six, is the United States Navy component of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The unit is often referre ...
, continued for the next three weeks, but execution was delayed because the Taliban frequently moved the Shelter Now employees between two prisons in Kabul.
At the beginning of November, US aircraft shifted from attacking strategic targets to striking the Taliban front lines. On November 2, ODA 553 inserted into
Bamyan and linked up with General
Karim Khalili
Karim Khalili ( fa, کریم خلیلی) is an Afghan politician serving as leader of the Hezb-e Wahdat Islami Afghanistan party. Most recently he was Chief of the Afghan High Peace Council from 2017 until its dissolvement in 2019. He was selec ...
's forces; ODA 534 was also inserted into the
Balkh River Valley after being delayed by weather for several nights, near Dostum and ODA 595. Its role was to support General Atta in a drive on Mazar-i-Sharif, coordinated with Dostum. Bravo team of ODA 595 conducted airstrikes in the Darya Suf Valley, cutting off and destroying Taliban reinforcements and frustrating Taliban attempts to relieve their embattled forces in the north. Cumulatively, the near constant airstrikes had begun to have a decisive effect and the Taliban began to withdraw toward Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum's forces and Alpha team of ODA 595 followed, working their way north through the valley. On November 5, Dostum and Atta began a coordinated assault on the village of Baluch. Dostum prepared his men to follow a bombing run from a B-52 with a cavalry charge, but one of Dostum's lieutenants misunderstood an order and sent 400 Uzbek horsemen charging toward the Taliban lines as the bomber made its final approach. The bomb landed just in time on the Taliban positions and the cavalry charge succeeded in breaking the Taliban defenses. Dostum and Atta then entered the Balkh Valley and continued towards Mazar-i-Sharif.
![SF Sgt Mario Vigil with SF and NA forces west of Konduz in November 2001](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/SF_Sgt_Mario_Vigil_with_SF_and_NA_forces_west_of_Konduz_in_November_2001.jpg)
On the Shomali Plain, ODA 555 and the CIA Jawbreaker team attached to Fahim Khan's forces began calling airstrikes on entrenched Taliban positions at the southeastern end of the former Soviet air base at
Bagram Airfield. The Green Berets set up an observation post in a disused air traffic control tower and guided in two
BLU-82
The BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, known under program "Commando Vault" and nicknamed " Daisy Cutter" in Vietnam for its ability to flatten a section of forest into a helicopter landing zone, is an American conventional bomb, delivered from eith ...
Daisy Cutter bombs, which caused heavy Taliban casualties. On November 8, ODAs 586 and 594 infiltrated into Afghanistan in
MH-47s and picked up on the
Afghan–Tajik border by CIA-flown
MI-17s. ODA 586 deployed to Kunduz with the forces of General Daoud Khan and ODA 594 deployed into the Panjshir to assist the men of ODA 555.
Fall of Mazar-i-Sharif
![Special Forces at the Fall of Mazar i Sharif](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Special_Forces_at_the_Fall_of_Mazar_i_Sharif.PNG)
Mazar-i-Sharif was important as the home of the sacred Muslim site of the
Shrine of Ali
The Hazrat Ali Mazar ( ar, حضرت علی مزار), located in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, is a mosque which Sunni Muslims believe contains the tomb of Ali ibn Abi Talib. Sunnis regard Ali as their Fourth Rightly Guided Caliph and they pay tr ...
, and as a transportation hub, with two major airports and a bridge into Uzbekistan. Taking the city would enable humanitarian aid to alleviate a looming food crisis, which threatened more than six million people with starvation. Many of those in most urgent need lived in rural areas to the south and west of Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum and Atta fought their way up the Balkh Valley and on November 8 reached the Tanghi Pass, the gateway between the valley and Mazar-i-Sharif. The pass was heavily defended, but the Northern Alliance seized it on November 9, triggering a Taliban retreat from Mazar-i-Sharif. The Northern Alliance entered the city on November 10.
The fall of the city was a "major shock"; the US Central Command originally believed it would remain in Taliban hands well into the following year. US Army Civil Affairs Teams from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, and Tactical Psychological Operations Teams from the
4th Psychological Operations Group
The 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) (or 4th POG)(A) is one of the United States Army's active military information support operations units along with the 8th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), which was activated 26 Augus ...
, were immediately deployed to begin reconstruction in Mazar-i-Sharif.
On November 10, operators from C squadron Special Boat Service, inserted via two C-130s into the recently captured Bagram Airfield, caused a political quandary with the Northern Alliance leadership, who claimed the British had failed to consult them on the deployment. The Northern Alliance foreign minister
Abdullah Abdullah considered the uninvited arrival to be a violation of sovereignty, and complained to the head of the CIA field office, threatening to resign if the British did not withdraw. The British government had alerted the deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan that they were deploying troops to Bagram, albeit on short notice. Arriving on the first flight,
Brigadier
Brigadier is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In ...
Graeme Lamb—the
Director Special Forces
Director Special Forces (DSF) is the senior British Armed Forces officer responsible for Special Forces. The post is a senior role within the Ministry of Defence (MoD). As Director, the incumbent is responsible for the provision of United Kingdom S ...
at that time—simply ignored Abdullah and drove to the Panjshir Valley, where he paid his respects to Ahmad Shah Massoud's grave and held talks with Northern Alliance leaders. The British Foreign Secretary tried to reassure the Northern Alliance that the deployment was not a vanguard of a British peacekeeping army, but Northern Alliance leaders did not believe them; with the threat of the Northern Alliance opening fire on incoming troop transports, the deployment was put on hold.
On November 11, in the central north of Afghanistan, ODA 586 was advising General Daoud Khan outside the city of
Taloqan
Taloqan (Persian, also transcribed Taleqan or Taluqan) is the capital of Takhar Province, in northeastern Afghanistan. It is located in the Taluqan District. The population was estimated as 196,400 in 2006.
In 2021, the Taliban gained control ...
and coordinating a batch of preparatory airstrikes, when the General surprised the Americans by launching an impromptu mass infantry assault on the Taliban holding the city. The city fell before the first bomb could be dropped.
Fall of Kabul
On November 12, the US tracked and killed al-Qaeda's number three,
Mohammed Atef
Mohammed Atef ( ar, محمد عاطف, ; born Sobhi Mohammed Abu Sitta Al-Gohary, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri) was the military chief of al-Qaeda, and was considered one of Osama bin Laden's two deputies, the other being Ayman Al Zawahiri, ...
, with an air strike in Kabul. That day the Taliban abandoned Kabul and decided to regroup in Jalalabad and Kandahar. Taliban forces evacuated by the end of November 13, and Northern Alliance forces (supported by ODA 555) arrived took control of the city the following afternoon. During their retreat, the Taliban took the Shelter Now prisoners with them, but abandoned them in a prison in
Ghazni
Ghazni ( prs, غزنی, ps, غزني), historically known as Ghaznain () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana ( gr, Αλεξάνδρεια Ωπιανή), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan ...
on November 13. Anti-Taliban Afghans freed the prisoners, who had found a satellite phone and used it to call the American embassy in Pakistan. SEAL Team Six used Chinook helicopters to extract the prisoners from Ghazni on the night of November 14 and take them to Pakistan.
The fall of Kabul started a cascading collapse of Taliban positions. Within 24 hours, all Afghan provinces along the Iranian border had fallen,
including Herat. Local Pashtun commanders and
warlord
A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of h ...
s had took over throughout northeastern Afghanistan, including Jalalabad; Taliban holdouts in the north fell back to the city of Kunduz, while others retreated to their heartland in southeastern Afghanistan, around Kandahar.
In the midst of the retreat, Delta Force conducted a
high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) jump northeast of Kandahar to call in airstrikes on targets retreating from Kabul, the first combat HALO jump conducted at night by the United States since the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. By November 13, al-Qaeda and Taliban forces—possibly including bin Laden—were concentrating in
Tora Bora, southwest of Jalalabad. Nearly 2,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters fortified themselves within bunkers and caves. On November 16 the US began bombing the mountain redoubt. Around the same time, CIA and Special Forces operatives worked in the area, enlisting local warlords and planning an attack.
Objectives Wolverine, Raptor and Operation Relentless Strike
On November 13, the 75th Ranger Regiment carried out its second combat parachute drop into Afghanistan. A platoon-sized Ranger security element, including a team from the Ranger Reconnaissance Detachment and accompanied by eight Air Force
Special Tactical operators, parachuted into a dry lake bed southwest of Kandahar and secured the area. A pair of MC-130 cargo planes then landed in the lake bed and deposited four
AH-6J Little Bird helicopters from the 160th SOAR. The Little Birds flew to a Taliban compound near Kandahar codenamed Objective Wolverine and destroyed it. They returned to the lake bed to rearm and refuel, then launched another strike against a second site called Objective Raptor. After the second strike they went back to the lake bed, loaded onto the MC-130s and flew back to Oman. Several nights later, beginning on November 16, a series of missions codenamed Operation Relentless Strike took place. On the first night, the Rangers drove modified
HMMWV
The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV; colloquial: Humvee) is a family of light, four-wheel drive, military trucks and utility vehicles produced by AM General. It has largely supplanted the roles previously performed by the ori ...
s and Land Rovers to secure a remote desert airstrip. The Little Birds then flew in on MC-130s and conducted a
search and destroy mission along
Highway 1
The following highways are numbered 1.
For roads numbered A1, see list of A1 roads.
For roads numbered B1, see list of B1 roads.
For roads numbered M1, see List of M1 roads.
For roads numbered N1, see list of N1 roads.
For roads numbered ...
. The Little Birds conducted similar search and destroy missions over the next several nights.
Battle of Tarinkot
![Hamid Karzai and US Special Forces](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Hamid_Karzai_and_US_Special_Forces.jpg)
On November 14,
ODA 574 and
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...
inserted into
Uruzgan Province via 4 MH-60K helicopters with a small force of guerrillas. Karzai was the leader of the Pashtun
Popalzai
Popalzai or Popalzay ( ps, پوپلزی), also known as Popal, are Durrani (formerly called Abdali or Bor Tareen) Pashtuns of Afghanistan. The Popalzai are part of the Zirak confederation of Pashtun tribes. The origin of the Abdali forefathers ...
tribe and had been an enemy of the Taliban since they assassinated his father in 1999. He had entered Afghanistan with three other men on October 9, but was almost killed by the Taliban, and was extracted by the CIA on November 4. Once he returned he began to move towards the town of Tarinkot. Responding to the approach of Karzai's forces, the inhabitants of the town of Tarinkot revolted and expelled their Taliban administrators. Karzai traveled to Tarinkot to meet with the town elders. While he was there, the Taliban marshaled a force of 300–500 men to retake the town. Karzai's small force, plus the American contingent, deployed in the town's front to block the Taliban's advance. Relying heavily on close air support, the American and Afghan force managed to drive the Taliban away from the town.
The defeat of the Taliban at Tarinkot was an important victory for Karzai, who used it to recruit more men to his fledgling guerrilla band. His force would grow in size to a peak of around 800 men. Soon afterwards, they left Tarinkot and began advancing on
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...
.
Fall of Kunduz
Task Force Dagger's attention focused on the last northern Taliban stronghold, Kunduz. As the bombardment at Tora Bora grew, the
Siege of Kunduz
The siege of Kunduz took place in 2001 during the War in Afghanistan. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on 9 November, the focus of the Northern Alliance advance shifted towards the city of Kunduz, which was the last remaining Taliban stronghold ...
continued. General Daoud and ODA 586 had initiated massive coalition airstrikes to demoralize the Taliban defenders. After 11 days of fighting and bombardment, Taliban fighters surrendered to Northern Alliance forces on November 23. Shortly before the surrender, Pakistani aircraft arrived to evacuate intelligence and military personnel who had been aiding the Taliban's fight against the Northern Alliance, including Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. The details of the airlift are disputed. Investigative reporter
Seymour Hersh alleged that up to five thousand people were evacuated, while Karzai stated that, "even the Americans did not know who got away." The United States government denied that the airlift occurred, with Secretary Rumsfeld saying, "neither Pakistan nor any other country flew any planes into Afghanistan to evacuate anybody."
Operation Trent
The SAS played a small role in the early stages of the war because American SOF commanders guarded targets for their own units. It took political intercession from Prime Minister Tony Blair for the SAS to be given a direct-action task – the destruction of an al-Qaeda-linked opium production facility. The facility was located southwest of Kandahar and defended by between 80–100 foreign fighters, with a defense of trench lines and several makeshift bunkers. The SAS were ordered to assault the facility in full daylight because CENTCOM would not provide air support for a night raid. The timing meant that the squadrons could not carry out a detailed reconnaissance prior to the assault. Despite these factors, the commanding officer of 22 SAS accepted the mission. The target was a low priority for the US and probably would have been destroyed from the air if the British had not argued for a larger role in Afghanistan.
The mission began in November 2001, with an 8-man patrol from G Squadron's Air Troop performing the regiments first wartime
HALO parachute jump. The patrol landed at a desert location in
Registan
The Registan ( Uzbek: Регистон, Registon) was the heart of the ancient city of Samarkand of the Timurid Empire, now in Uzbekistan. The name ''Rēgistan'' () means "sandy place" or "desert" in Persian.
The Registan was a public square, ...
to assess its suitability as an improvised airstrip for the landing of the main assault force in
C-130 Hercules
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 ...
cargo aircraft. The Air Troop advance team confirmed the site was suitable and later that day the C-130s landed and disembarked the SAS in their vehicles. The assault force was composed of operators from A and G Squadrons driving 38 Land Rover Desert Patrol Vehicles, two logistics vehicles, and eight Kawasaki dirt bikes. The assault force drove to a release point and split into two elements. A squadron was the assault force and G Squadron provided fire support.
The assault began with a preparatory airstrike, after which A Squadron dismounted from their vehicles and closed in on the target on foot. G Squadron provided covering fire with heavy weapons, and air support flew sorties until running out of munitions. On a final pass, a
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
F-18 Hornet strafed a bunker with its 20mm cannon, which narrowly missed several members of G Squadron. When the A Squadron assault force reached the objective, they cleared the HQ building and gathered all intelligence materials they could find. The mission lasted four hours and four SAS operators were wounded; the operation was the largest British SAS operation in history.
Battle of Qala-i-Jangi
On November 25, as Taliban prisoners were moved into
Qala-i-Jangi
Qala-i-Jangi (Dari/Pashto: ) is a 19th-century fortress located near Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. It is known for being the site of a bloody 2001 Taliban uprising named the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, in which at least 470 people were kill ...
fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, a few Taliban attacked their Northern Alliance guards. This incident triggered
a revolt by 600 prisoners, who soon seized the southern half of the fortress, including an armory stocked with AK-47s, RPGs and
crew-served weapons.
Johnny Micheal Spann
Johnny Micheal "Mike" Spann (March 1, 1969 – November 25, 2001) was an American paramilitary officer in the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. Spann was the first American killed in action, killed in combat during th ...
, one of two CIA SAD operatives at the fortress who had been interrogating prisoners, was killed, marking America's first combat death.
The other CIA operator, Dave Olson, managed to make contact with CENTCOM, which relayed his request for assistance to SOF troops at a TF Dagger safe house in Mazar-i-Sharif. The safe house housed members of Delta Force, some Green Berets and a small team from M squadron SBS. A quick reaction force was immediately formed from whoever was in the safe house at the time: a headquarters element from 3rd Battalion, 5th SFG, a pair of USAF liaison officers, a handful of CIA SAD operators and the SBS team. The 8-man SBS team arrived in Land Rovers and the Green Berets and CIA operatives arrived in minivans and began engaging the prisoners, fighting a pitched battle to suppress the uprising, letting Olson escape. The operators then turned their attention to recovering Spann's body. Over the course of four days the battle continued, with Green Berets calling in multiple airstrikes on the Taliban prisoners. During one CAS mission a Joint Direct Attack Munition was misdirected and hit the ground close to the Coalition and Northern Alliance positions, wounding five Green Berets and four SBS operators.
AC-130 gunships kept up aerial bombardments throughout the night. The following day (November 27) the siege was broken when Northern Alliance T-55 tanks were brought into the central courtyard to fire shells into several block houses containing Taliban fighters. Fighting continued sporadically throughout the week, and the Taliban were finished by Dostrum's Northern Alliance forces. The combined Green Beret–SBS team recovered Spann's body on November 26.
The revolt ended on December 1 after seven days of fighting. 86 Taliban survived out of 1,000 that had been in the prison, and around 50 Northern Alliance soldiers were killed.
Consolidation: the taking of Kandahar
ODA 574 and Hamid Karzai began moving on Kandahar, gathering fighters from friendly local Pashtun tribes. At the strategic Sayd-Aum-Kalay Bridge they
fought for two days with the Taliban, eventually seizing it with the help of US airpower, opening the road to Kandahar.
ODA 583 had infiltrated the Shin-Narai Valley southeast of Kandahar to support
Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai (), also known as Mohammad Shafiq, is a politician in Afghanistan. He is the former governor of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.
He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province, in the early 1990s and from 2001 ...
, the former governor of Kandahar. The ODA established covert observation posts by November 24, allowing them to call in fire on Taliban positions. By the end of November, Kandahar was the Taliban's last stronghold, and was coming under increasing pressure. Nearly 3,000 tribal fighters under Karzai and 350 under Sherzai pressured Taliban forces from the east and cut off northern supply lines to Kandahar.
![U](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/U.S._Marines_humping_in_Afghanistan%2C_November_2001.jpg)
Meanwhile, nearly 1,000
US Marines
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...
ferried in by
CH-53E Super Stallion
The Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion is a heavy-lift helicopter operated by the United States military. As the Sikorsky S-80, it was developed from the CH-53 Sea Stallion, mainly by adding a third engine, adding a seventh blade to the main rotor, ...
helicopters and C-130s set up a
Forward Operating Base
A forward operating base (FOB) is any secured forward Operational level of war, operational level military position, commonly a military base, that is used to support strategic goals and tactical objectives. A FOB may or may not contain an airfi ...
known as
Camp Rhino
Forward operating base (FOB) Rhino, also known as Camp Rhino, was a U.S. military base located in the Registan Desert of Afghanistan, southwest of Kandahar. It was the first U.S. land base established in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring F ...
in the desert south of Kandahar on November 25 (Camp Rhino was located at Objective Rhino, the same airstrip seized by the Rangers on October 19). On November 26, 15 Taliban armored vehicles approached the base and were attacked by helicopter gunships, destroying many of them.
On December 5, a GPS-guided bomb landed among the Green Berets from ODA 574, killing 3 members and wounding the rest of the team. Over 20 of Karzai's militia were also killed and Karzai himself was slightly wounded. A Delta Force unit that had been operating nearby on a classified reconnaissance mission arrived in their
Pinzgauers and secured the site, while Delta medics treated the wounded Green Berets.
On December 6, Karzai was informed that he would be the next president of Afghanistan. He also negotiated the successful surrender of both the remaining Taliban forces and the city of Kandahar. Karzai's militia began their final push to clear the city. The US government rejected
amnesty for Omar or any Taliban leaders. On December 7, Sherzai's forces seized
Kandahar airport and moved into the city. Omar departed Kandahar and disappeared; he may have gone to
Zabul,
Helmand
Helmand (Pashto/Dari: ; ), also known as Hillmand, in ancient times, as Hermand and Hethumand, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, in the south of the country. It is the largest province by area, covering area. The province contains 13 ...
, or Pakistan. Other Taliban leaders fled to Pakistan through the remote passes of
Paktia
Paktia (Pashto/Dari: – ''Paktyā'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the east of the country. Forming part of the larger Loya Paktia region, Paktia Province is divided into 15 districts and has a population of roughly 6 ...
and
Paktika
Paktika (Pashto/Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. Forming part of the larger Loya Paktia region, Paktika has a population of about 789,000, mostly ethnic Pashtuns. The town of Sharana ...
.
In early December, as the US invasion was almost over, 7,500 Taliban prisoners were transported from Kunduz to
Sheberghan prison
The Sheberghan Prison is a prison in northern Afghanistan.
Following the battle of Qali-Jangi, in Mazari Sharif, General Dostum sent many of the surviving captives to Sheberghan Prison.
He is reported to have sent them in industrial shipping c ...
by
Junbish-i Milli, a group led by Dostum. Hundreds to 3,000 of the Taliban prisoners suffocated in the overcrowded metal shipping containers on trucks or were shot dead in an incident known as the
Dasht-i-Leili massacre
The Dasht-i-Leili massacre occurred in December 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan when 250 to 2,000 Taliban prisoners were shot and/or suffocated to death in metal shipping containers while being transferred by Junbish-i Milli soldi ...
. Some were shot dead when guards shot air holes into the containers. The dead were buried in graves in the
Dasht-i-Leili desert just west of Sheberghan, in the Jowzjan Province.
Physicians for Human Rights discovered the mass grave in 2002, but the Bush administration discouraged attempts to investigate the incident.
Battle of Tora Bora
![Strikes on Tora Bora](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Strikes_on_Tora_Bora.png)
After the fall of Kabul and Kandahar, suspected al-Qaeda members, including bin Laden and other key leaders, withdrew to Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province. From there they moved into the Tora Bora region of the
Spin Ghar
Spin or spinning most often refers to:
* Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning
* Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis
* Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...
(White Mountains), 20 km away from the Pakistan border, which had a network of caves and prepared defenses used by the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. Signal intercepts and interrogation of captured Taliban fighters and al-Qaeda terrorists pointed towards the presence of significant numbers of foreign fighters and possible senior leaders in the area. Instead of committing conventional forces, both the White House and the Pentagon decided to isolate and destroy al-Qaeda elements in the area with the US SOF supporting locally recruited Afghan militias, due to a fear of repeating the Soviet's experience in the area.
ODA 572 and a CIA team were dispatched to Tora Bora to advise eastern anti-Taliban militias under the command of two warlords:
Hazrat Ali and
Mohammed Zaman. Hazrat Ali and Zaman distrusted each other, and during the battle their militias sometimes shot at each other. Using CIA funds, some 1,000 Afghan fighters were recruited for the coming battle. The leader of the CIA team was
Gary Berntsen
Gary Berntsen (born July 23, 1957) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) career officer who served in the Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005. During his time at the CIA, he served as a CIA Station Chief ...
, who in November had replaced Gary Schroen as the senior CIA officer in Afghanistan. On December 2 Berntsen requested a battalion of Rangers be dropped into the mountains to establish blocking positions along potential escape routes out of Tora Bora into Pakistan. In addition to the Rangers, other available forces included 1,000 Marines under Brigadier General
Jim Mattis
James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is a retired United States Marine Corps four-star general who served as the 26th US secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019. During his 44 years in the Marine Corps, he commanded forces in the Persia ...
in Kandahar and soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in Uzbekistan. Franks denied Berntsen's request.
From the outset of the battle, ODA 572 with its attached Combat Controller called in precision airstrikes, whilst the Afghans launched a number of poorly executed attacks on established al-Qaeda positions, with limited success. The militias would typically gain ground in the morning following US airstrikes, but relinquish control of those gains the same day. They would also retreat to their base areas to sleep and break their fast each night, since the battle occurred during
Ramadan
, type = islam
, longtype = Religious
, image = Ramadan montage.jpg
, caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...
, the month when Muslims do not eat or drink during the day. With the Afghan offensive stalled and the CIA and ODA teams overstretched, Franks decided to deploy special operations soldiers from JSOC into the battle on December 9.
Forty operators from A Squadron Delta Force deployed forward to Tora Bora and assumed tactical command of the battle from the CIA. With the Delta squadron were a dozen of so members of the British SBS. The Delta operators were deployed in small teams embedded within the militias and sent their own operators out to search for bin Laden. Eventually, with the assistance of Green Berets and CIA operators, the militias made progress. The Delta squadron commander agreed with the Jawbreaker assessment of the situation and requested blocking forces or the scattering of aerial landmines to deny mountain passes to the enemy. Since the deployment of the Ranger battalion had been denied, he requested that his operators carryout the proposed role but all his requests were denied by General Franks. On December 12, two weeks into the battle, Zaman opened negotiations with the trapped al-Qaeda and Taliban in Tora Bora. Against the wishes of the Americans and British, Zaman called a temporary truce to allow al-Qaeda to surrender. This truce was a ruse to allow as many as several hundred al-Qaeda and members of the 055 Brigade to escape over night toward Pakistan. According to journalist
Peter Bergen, bin Laden left Tora Bora on the night of December 12 and went to
Kunar Province
Kunar (Pashto: ; Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. Its capital is Asadabad. Its population is estimated to be 508,224. Kunar's major political groups include Wahhabis or Ahl-e- Ha ...
.
The following day, a handheld radio recovered from the body of a dead al-Qaeda fighter allowed members of the Delta squadron, SBS, CIA, and MI6 to hear bin Laden's voice – apparently apologizing to his followers for leading them to Tora Bora and giving his blessing for their surrender – thought to be a recording addressed to the terrorists that stayed to fight a rearguard action to allow bin Laden to escape. The leader of the CIA Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora believed that two large al-Qaeda groups escaped: the smaller group of 130 jihadis escaped east into Pakistan, while the second group including bin Laden and 200 Saudi and Yemeni jihadis took the route across the mountains to the town of
Parachinar
Parachinar ( ps, پاړه چنار; ur, ) is a small Pashtun ( Turi and Bangash tribe) town which is the capital of Kurram District in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
Parachinar is situated on a neck of Pakistani territory west ...
, Pakistan. The Delta squadron commander believed that bin Laden crossed the border into Pakistan sometime around December 16. A Delta reconnaissance team, call-sign 'Jackal', spotted a tall man wearing a camouflage jacket with a large number of fighters entering a cave. The team called in multiple airstrikes on the presumption that it was bin Laden, but later DNA analysis from the remains did not match bin Laden's. With the majority of the enemy gone, the battle came to an end on December 17.
On December 20, ODA 561 was inserted into the White Mountains to support ODA 572 in gathering intelligence in the caves and to assist with recovering DNA samples from terrorist bodies. US and UK forces continued searching into January, but no sign of al-Qaeda leadership emerged. An estimated 220 al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the battle and 52 prisoners were taken. No American or British personnel were killed.
In subsequent years, the military was heavily criticized for not deploying ground forces into Tora Bora to capture bin Laden. According to journalist
Sean Naylor
Sean D. Naylor is an American Journalism, journalist. Naylor is the National Security Correspondent for Yahoo News. He previously covered intelligence and counterterrorism for ''Foreign Policy'' and spent over 20 years at ''Army Times'', with stint ...
, Franks opposed the idea because he was "obsessed with not repeating the Soviets' mistake of deploying large conventional formations into Afghanistan," believing it would provoke popular resistance. Another possible explanation is that his attention was elsewhere – Franks spent December 12, the day bin Laden may have escaped, briefing Secretary Rumsfeld on his plan for invading Iraq. There were also logistical obstacles: airlift assets in Afghanistan were limited, so transporting a large ground force to the Spin Ghar and resupplying it was "essentially impossible," according to an official Army history. Mattis, however, developed a plan that he thought logistically feasible – to drop artillery observers on the mountain passes with five days of sustainment to reduce resupply requirements.
Political settlement
In late November 2001 the United Nations hosted the
Bonn Conference
After Operation Enduring Freedom in which the Taliban government was toppled in Afghanistan, in December 2001, the German city of Bonn hosted a conference – widely known as the Bonn Conference – of Afghan leaders at Hotel Petersberg, to choo ...
; the Taliban were excluded, while three Afghan opposition groups participated. Observers included representatives of neighboring and other involved major countries. The resulting
Bonn Agreement created the
Afghan Interim Authority
The Afghan Interim Administration (AIA), also known as the Afghan Interim Authority, was the first administration of Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime and was the highest authority of the country from 22 December 2001 until 13 July ...
and outlined the Bonn Process that would lead towards a new constitution and a new Afghan government. Following the Bonn Conference, tribal leaders and former exiles established an interim government in Kabul under Hamid Karzai.
Casualties and atrocities
The
Costs of War Project at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
estimated that between 1,537 and 2,375 civilians were killed during the invasion. Northern Alliance casualties are unknown. United States casualties were 12 military personnel and one CIA officer (Mike Spann), while the Taliban suffered 8,000 to 12,000 killed. According to
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
, during the invasion the Northern Alliance "carried out systematic attacks on Pashtun villages, raping women, summarily executing civilians, and stealing livestock and land."
Logistics
A landlocked country with forbidding terrain and a harsh climate, Afghanistan presents major difficulties for military operations. Prior to the war, the United States had no military bases in
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
or
South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; ...
. The initial CIA Jawbreaker team entered Afghanistan by helicopter from
Tashkent
Tashkent (, uz, Toshkent, Тошкент/, ) (from russian: Ташкент), or Toshkent (; ), also historically known as Chach is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of ...
, Uzbekistan, stopping to refuel in
Dushanbe
Dushanbe ( tg, Душанбе, ; ; russian: Душанбе) is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. , Dushanbe had a population of 863,400 and that population was largely Tajik. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe (r ...
, Tajikistan. The US established its main base at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base (known as K2) in Uzbekistan. Personnel and equipment were flown from the large American bases in Germany to K2 and then onward to Afghanistan. Pakistan granted the use of
Shahbaz Air Base in
Jacobabad
Jacobabad ( ur, and sd, جيڪب آباد; formerly Khanger or Khangarh) is a city in Sindh, Pakistan, serving as both the capital city of Jacobabad District and the administrative center of Jacobabad Taluka, an administrative subdivision ...
as an auxiliary base, and the CIA flew Predator drones from both Jacobabad and
Shamsi Airfield
Shamsi Airfield, also known as Bhandari Airstrip, is an airfield situated about 200 miles (320 km) southwest of Quetta and about 248 miles (400 km) northwest of Gwadar in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The airfield is located in ...
.
Masirah Island
Masirah Island ( ar, جَزِيْرَة مَصِيْرَة, Jazīrat Maṣīrah), also referred to as Mazeira Island or ''Wilāyat Maṣīrah'' ( ar, وِلَايَة مَصِيْرَة), is an island off the east coast of mainland Oman in the ...
off the coast of
Oman
Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...
served as the headquarters of Joint Special Operations Command, while the aircraft carrier USS ''Kitty Hawk'' in the Indian Ocean was used as a platform for helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment to fly special operations personnel into southern Afghanistan. Some
B-52 bombers flew into Afghanistan from the island of
Diego Garcia, and B-2 bombers flew nonstop from
Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri to Afghanistan.
Analysis
According to historian
Carter Malkasian, the campaign was a "striking military success". The United States achieved its war aims while committing a force of only 110 CIA officers, 350 special operators, and 5,000 Rangers and Marines. The model of special forces working with local fighters and calling in precision air strikes was heavily used by the United States during later operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. One explanation for the rapid victory is that in Afghan culture, fighters tend to defect to the winning side once its victory is seen as inevitable; as anthropologist Thomas Barfield puts it, "Just as the Taliban had come to power by persuading people that they were winners without fighting and buying the defection of wavering commanders with suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills, they lost the war in a reverse process." The pattern recurred during the
2021 Taliban offensive
A military offensive by the Taliban insurgent group and other allied militants led to the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan based in Kabul and marked the end of the nearly 20-year-old War in Afghanistan, that had begun following the ...
, when the US-backed government collapsed and a resurgent Taliban captured a dozen provincial capitals in a week before it entered Kabul unopposed.
Legality
Scholars have disputed the legality of the invasion under international law. The United States and its allies argued that the invasion was an act of self defense, which is legal according to Article 51 of the
Charter of the United Nations
The Charter of the United Nations (UN) is the foundational treaty of the UN, an intergovernmental organization. It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the UN system, including its six principal organs: the ...
. The US sent a letter to the Security Council on October 7 stating that, "Afghanistan was harboring terrorists who attacked the United States, that further attacks might be anticipated, and that military action was needed to deter them." Legal scholar
John Quigley has argued that the invasion was illegal because al-Qaeda, not Afghanistan, was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, and because there was no evidence that further terrorist attacks were imminent.
Sean Murphy Sean Murphy may refer to:
Sports
* Seán Óg Murphy (1897–1956), Irish hurler
* Seán Murphy (hurler) (born 1947), Irish hurler
* Seán Murphy (Gaelic footballer) (born 1932), Irish Gaelic football player
* Sean Murphy (footballer, born 1995), Sc ...
made the opposite case, that Afghanistan was responsible for the actions of al-Qaeda because it allowed al-Qaeda to operate from its territory and refused to extradite al-Qaeda operatives. The debate continued with the 2009 publication of Myra Williamson’s ''Terrorism, War and International Law: The Legality of the Use of Force Against Afghanistan in 2001''. Williamson analyzed the legal questions raised by state responses to terrorism and the implications of the Afghanistan precedent for later conflicts such as the 2003
United States invasion of Iraq and the 2006
Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Reactions and aftermath
![SEAL conducting sensitive site exploitation mission in Jaji Mountains1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/SEAL_conducting_sensitive_site_exploitation_mission_in_Jaji_Mountains1.jpg)
In October 2001 when the invasion began, polls indicated that about 88% of Americans and about 65% of Britons backed military action. An
Ipsos-Reid
Ipsos Reid was the name of a Canada-based research company, still existing under the name Ipsos as the Canadian arm of the global Ipsos Group. Founded in Winnipeg in 1979 as the Angus Reid Group, the company expanded across the country and was pur ...
poll conducted between November and December 2001 showed that majorities in Canada (66%), France (60%), Germany (60%), Italy (58%), and the UK (65%) approved of US airstrikes while majorities in Argentina (77%), China (52%), South Korea (50%), Spain (52%), and Turkey (70%) opposed them. There were a number of
protests against the invasion, including 20,000 people in Washington, D.C. on September 29
and 20,000 people in London on October 7.
In Afghanistan, according to anthropologist Thomas Barfield, there was "a surprising level of popular support...for the US intervention, especially among non-Pashtuns." In November 2001, CNN reported widespread relief amongst Kabul's residents after the Taliban fled the city, with young men shaving off their beards and women taking off their burqas.
On December 20, 2001, the United Nations authorized an
International Security Assistance Force
' ps, کمک او همکاري '
, allies = Afghanistan
, opponents = Taliban Al-Qaeda
, commander1 =
, commander1_label = Commander
, commander2 =
, commander2_label =
, commander3 =
, comman ...
(ISAF), with a mandate to help the Afghans maintain security in Kabul and surrounding areas. For its first years ISAF consisted of 8,000 American and 5,000 coalition soldiers and its mandate did not extend beyond the Kabul area. In February 2002, the US detected a large concentration of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the eastern
Shah-i-Kot Valley
The Shah-i-Kot Valley (also Shahi-Kot, Shah-e-Kot and other variant spellings) is a valley in Afghanistan's Paktia province, southeast of the town of Zormat. The terrain in and around the valley is notoriously rugged, located at a mean altitude o ...
. Coalition forces cleared the valley during
Operation Anaconda in March 2002, which resulted in 8 US soldiers killed and 80 wounded.
US forces established their main base at Bagram airbase just north of Kabul. Kandahar airport also became an important US base, and outposts were established in eastern provinces to hunt for Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives. Following Operation Anaconda, al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters established sanctuaries on the Pakistani border, where they launched cross-border raids beginning in April 2002.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld aimed to carry out operations in Afghanistan rapidly and leave as fast as possible. He thus wished to focus on kinetic counter-terrorism operations and building up a new Afghan Army. Rumsfeld announced in mid-2002 that "The war is over in Afghanistan," to the disbelief of State Department, CIA, and military officials in the country. As a result, Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70,000 troops, far fewer than the 250,000 envisaged by Karzai.
In February 2002, the
National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a na ...
met to decide whether to expand ISAF beyond Kabul. In a dispute between Secretary of State
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...
and Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's view—that the force should not be expanded—prevailed. Historians later wrote that the failure of ISAF to be deployed beyond Kabul drove Karzai to offer positions within the state to potential spoilers whose activities did great harm to the state's reputation. Because the rise of the
Taliban insurgency was linked to grievances over governance, this became a serious problem.
Several events in early 2002, taken together, can be seen as the conclusion of the first phase of the US-led war in Afghanistan. The first was the dispersal of the major groups of the Taliban and al-Qaeda after the end of Anaconda. In February 2002 the United States decided to not expand international security forces beyond Kabul. President Bush made his speech at the
Virginia Military Institute
la, Consilio et Animis (on seal)
, mottoeng = "In peace a glorious asset, In war a tower of strength""By courage and wisdom" (on seal)
, established =
, type = Public senior military college
, accreditation = SACS
, endowment = $696.8 mill ...
on April 17, 2002, invoking General
George Marshall while talking about Afghan reconstruction, resulting in discussion of a '
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...
' for Afghanistan. The decision against a significant expansion of international presence and development assistance was later seen by historians as a major error. The US's growing commitment to
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
, however, was absorbing more and more resources, which in hindsight would have made committing such resources to Afghanistan impossible.
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{{Afghanistan War
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
2001 in Afghanistan
2001 in the United States
Conflicts in 2001
21st-century military history of the United States
Invasions by the United States
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
Military operations involving the United Kingdom
Military operations involving Canada
Military operations involving Australia
Al-Qaeda activities
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan