Search

The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan refers to President Joe Biden’s 2021 decision to bring home all US service members stationed in the war-torn country. The decision was made after a formal agreement was made between former President Donald Trump’s administration and the Taliban, a fundamentalist religious group known for using violent tactics such as executions and suicide bombings. The existing Afghan government was not privy to the agreement, which promised the withdrawal of all US troops by May 1, 2021, putting an end to a twenty-year war. Removing US troops from Afghanistan was controversial because the United States had spent billions of dollars training the Afghan military and restoring the country, which had been ravaged by decades of warfare. Some US officials feared that without the presence of American troops, the Taliban would eventually overthrow the Afghan government, and restore the Islamist government that had previously run the country until it was toppled during the US-led invasion in 2001.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States led to the war in Afghanistan, also known as Operation Enduring Freedom. While the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was meant to target and destroy al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the 9/11 attacks, it became a war against the Afghanistan's ruling regime, the Taliban, as well. Though the United States initially succeeded in some of its goals, such as replacing the Taliban with a new government and disrupting al-Qaeda operations, the war devolved into a complex conflict that demanded significant resources and ongoing involvement. When US forces finally withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban quickly regained control of the country, leaving widespread agreement that the war had been a failure.

Summary: A collection of more than 92,000 US government documents classified as secret was made public in July 2010 by the organization WikiLeaks. At the same time, reports on the documents were published by the New York Times, the Guardian of London, and Der Spiegel of Germany; the three organizations had been given access to the documents several weeks before their release on the Internet. While the documents covered a broad range of subjects, they appeared to paint a more pessimistic picture of the war in Afghanistan than official public reports and to implicate US troops in previously undisclosed incidents of killing civilians. The documents also suggested that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, ISI, was instrumental in advising the Afghan Taliban in its battle against the United States and its NATO allies, even while Pakistan was receiving foreign aid from the United States. Although officials insisted there was nothing "new" in the documents, their release did focus renewed public attention on the Afghan war and its conduct.

The US-led military campaign in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime and dismantle the al-Qaeda terrorist network operating in that country. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States were perpetrated by the international terrorist network al-Qaeda. The ruling regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban, gave safe haven to al-Qaeda, enabling it to conduct its operations. Shortly after the attacks, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies launched a campaign designed to destroy al-Qaeda and topple the regime that protected it. This initial campaign continued until 2014, costing the lives of thousands of American soldiers and civilian contractors as they engaged not only the Taliban and al-Qaeda but also other regional insurgents and warlords while attempting to rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure and stabilize the nation. Despite efforts to withdraw, the United States remained engaged in Afghanistan for years, with many experts predicting a full resurgence of the Taliban and a proliferation of other extremist groups if Western support of the Afghan government were to be removed. A full withdrawal finally took place in 2021, and the Taliban quickly returned to power, leading most observers to consider the war ultimately a failure.