From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: HOW IT STARTED AND HOW IT IS ENDING   
    April 23, 2021     
   BY DAVID ZUCCHINO   
   The New York Times   
      
   April 23, 2021   
   Even with violence escalating in the country, President Biden is bringing   
   American troops home after nearly 20 years of war.   
      
   Members of the 101st Airborne Division in Paktia Province in April 2013.   
      
   Members of the 101st Airborne Division in Paktia Province in April   
   2013.Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times   
   President Biden, declaring that the United States had long ago accomplished   
   its mission of denying terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan, announced on   
   April 14 that all American troops would leave the country by Sept. 11.   
      
   A combat mission that has dogged four presidents — who reckoned with   
   American casualties, a ruthless enemy and an often corrupt and confounding   
   Afghan government partner — will at last come to an end.   
      
   Mr. Biden conceded that after nearly 20 years of war, America’s longest on   
   foreign soil, it was clear that the U.S. military could not transform   
   Afghanistan into a modern, stable democracy.   
      
   “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational    
   ndertaking,” Mr. Biden said in an address from the White House Treaty Room.   
      
   Mr. Biden said the roughly 2,500 to 3,500 remaining American troops would be   
   back home by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, the seismic   
   event that precipitated the initial military invasion.   
      
   Now, as the president pledges to continue support for Afghanistan and as peace   
   talks remain deadlocked, the enduring objective of the two-decade war remains   
   unchanged: ensuring that Afghanistan is never again used to plan and launch   
   terrorist attacks.   
      
   WHY DID THE UNITED STATES INVADE AFGHANISTAN?   
      
   Weeks after Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, President George   
   W. Bush announced that American forces had launched attacks against the   
   terrorist group and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.   
      
   “These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of   
   Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military   
   capability of the Taliban regime,” the president said.   
      
   Mr. Bush said the Taliban, which then governed most of Afghanistan, had   
   rejected his demand to turn over Al Qaeda leaders who had planned the attacks   
   from bases inside Afghanistan. He said he intended to bring Al Qaeda leaders   
   to justice, adding, “And    
   now the Taliban will pay a price.”   
      
   Even then, the president warned that Operation Enduring Freedom would entail   
   “a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.”   
      
   By December 2001, the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other top commanders   
   had fled to safety in Pakistan, a nominal U.S. ally. American forces did not   
   pursue them, and Pakistan ultimately evolved into a safe haven for Taliban   
   commanders and fighters,    
   who in subsequent years crossed the border to attack American and Afghan   
   forces.   
      
   Inside Afghanistan, American troops quickly toppled the Taliban government and   
   crushed its fighting forces as 2001 drew to a close. In May 2003, Defense   
   Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced an end to major combat operations in the   
   country.   
      
   Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, after his   
   inauguration in Kabul in December 2001.   
   Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan’s interim government, after his   
   inauguration in Kabul in December 2001.Credit…James Hill for The New York   
   Times   
      
   HOW DID THE MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN EVOLVE?   
      
   After routing the Taliban, the United States and NATO pivoted to rebuilding a   
   failed state and establishing a Western-style democracy, spending billions   
   trying to reconstruct a desperately poor country already ravaged by two   
   decades of war, first during    
   the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and then during the proceeding civil war.   
      
   There were early successes. A pro-Western government was installed. New   
   schools, hospitals and public facilities were built. Thousands of girls,   
   barred from education under Taliban rule, attended school. Women, largely   
   confined to their homes by the    
   Taliban, went to college, joined the work force and served in Parliament and   
   government.   
      
   But corruption was rampant, with hundreds of millions of dollars in   
   reconstruction and investment money stolen or misappropriated. The government   
   proved unable to meet the most basic needs of its citizens. Often, its writ   
   barely extended beyond the    
   capital, Kabul, and other major cities.   
      
   In 2003, with 8,000 American troops in Afghanistan, the United States began   
   shifting combat resources to the war in Iraq, launched in March of that year.   
      
   Afghan soldiers rushing a wounded police officer to an American helicopter in   
   Kunar Province in March 2010.   
   Afghan soldiers rushing a wounded police officer to an American helicopter in   
   Kunar Province in March 2010.Credit…Moises Saman for The New York Times   
      
   WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BATTLEFIELD?   
      
   The Taliban rebuilt their fighting capabilities, despite a steady influx of   
   American and NATO troops, who secured territory previously controlled by the   
   Taliban and sought to win over Afghans with promises of new schools,   
   government centers, roads and    
   bridges.   
      
   With the Taliban posing an enhanced military threat, President Barack Obama   
   deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan as part of a “surge,”   
   reaching nearly 100,000 by mid-2010. But the Taliban only grew stronger,   
   inflicting heavy casualties on    
   Afghan security forces despite American combat power and airstrikes.   
      
   In May 2011, a U.S. Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in   
   Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he had been living for years near a Pakistan   
   military training academy. In June, Mr. Obama announced that he would start   
   bringing American forces home    
   and hand over responsibility for security to the Afghans by 2014.   
      
   By then, the Pentagon had concluded that the war could not be won militarily   
   and that only a negotiated settlement could end the conflict — the third in   
   three centuries involving a world power. Afghan fighters defeated the British   
   army in the 19th    
   century and the Russian military in the 20th century.   
      
   With the war at a stalemate, Mr. Obama ended major combat operations on Dec.   
   31, 2014, and transitioned to training and assisting Afghan security forces.   
      
   Nearly three years later, President Donald J. Trump said that although his   
   first instinct had been to withdraw all troops, he would nonetheless continue   
   to prosecute the war. He stressed that any troop withdrawal would be based on   
   combat conditions, not    
   predetermined timelines.   
      
      
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