History+of+modern+US+involvement+in+Afghanistan

Many would argue that the story of how 9/11 came about goes back, at least, to 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, with which it shares a border. Afghanistan had experienced several coups since 1973, when the Afghan monarchy was overthrown by Daud Khan, who was sympathetic to Soviet overtures. Subsequent coups reflected struggles within Afghanistan among factions with different ideas about how Afghanistan should be governed and whether it should be communist, and with degrees warmth toward the Soviet Union. The Soviets intervened following the overthrow of a pro-communist leader. In late December 1979, after several months of evident military preparation, they invaded Afganistan. At that time, the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in the Cold War, a global competition for the fealty of other nations. The United States was, thus, deeply interested in whether the Soviet Union would succeed in establishing a communist government loyal to Moscow in Afghanistan. In order to forestall that possibility, the United States began funding insurgent forces to oppose the Soviets. The U.S.-funded Afghan insurgents were called __[|////mujahideen,////]__ an Arabic word that means "strugglers" or "strivers." The word has its orgins in Islam, and is related to the word jihad, but in the context of the Afghan war, it may be best understood as referring to "resistance." The mujahideen were organized into different political parties, and armed and supported by different countries, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as well as the United States, and they gained significantly in power and money during the course of the Afghan-Soviet war. The legendary fierceness of the mujahideen fighters, their stringent, extreme version of Islam and their cause—expelling the Soviet foreigners—drew interest and support from Arab Muslims seeking an opportunity to experience, and experiment with, waging __[|jihad.]__ __Among those drawn to Afghanistan were a wealthy, ambitious, and pious young Saudi named__[|Osama bin Laden] __and the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization,__ [|__Ayman Al Zawahiri.__] [| he idea that the 9/11 attacks have their roots in the Soviet-Afghan war comes from bin Laden's role in it. During much of the war he, and Ayman Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian head of Islamic Jihad, an Egyptian group, lived in neighboring Pakistan. There, they cultivated Arab recruits to fight with the Afghan mujahideen. This, loosely, was the beginning of the network of roving jihadists that would become Al Qaeda later.] [| It was also in this period that bin Laden's ideology, goals and the role of jihad within them developed.]

__ By 1989, the mujahideen had driven the Soviets from Afghanistan, and three years later, in 1992, they managed to wrest control of the government in Kabul from the Marxist president, Muhammad Najibullah. Severe infighting among the mujahideen factions continued, however, under the presidency of mujahid leader Burhanuddin Rabbani. Their war against each other devastated Kabul: tens of thousands of civilians lost their lives, and infrastructure was destroyed by rocket fire. __ __ [[http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm| __This chaos, and the exhaustion of the Afghans, permitted the Taliban to gain power. Cultivated by Pakistan, the Taliban emerged first in Kandahar, gained control of Kabul in 1996 and controlled most of the entire country by 1998. Their extremely severe laws based on retrograde interpretations of the Quran, and absolute disregard for human rights, were repugnant to the world community.__

]] __ ____[[http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm|On October 7, 2001, military strikes against Afghanistan were launched by the United States and an international coalition that included Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany and France. The attack was military retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks by ]]__[|Al Qaeda]on American targets. It was called Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan. The attack followed several weeks of diplomatic effort to have al Qaeda leader, [|Osama bin Laden,] handed over by the Taliban government.__ __At 1pm on the afternoon of the 7th, President Bush addressed the United States, and the world:__

__Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime 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 Taliban were toppled shortly thereafter, and a government headed by Hamid Karzai installed. There were initial claims that the brief war had been successful. But the insurgent Taliban emerged in 2006 in force, and begun using suicide tactics copied from jihadist groups elsewhere in the region.__

 From 2002 onward, the Taliban focused on survival and on rebuilding its forces. From 2005 to the present (winter 2007), the Taliban has increased its attacks and is using suicide bombers and other tactics from the [| Iraq War.] On February 27, 2007, while on a diplomatic trip to Afghanistan, an apparent assassination attempt was made by Taliban insurgents, who claimed that Cheney was a target in the attack. A suicide bomber blew up a checkpoint at Bagram Air Base outside of Kabul, killing 20, including an American soldier. Cheney was unhurt in the attack. In the spring and summer of 2008, the violence in Afghanistan claimed more coalition (foreign) troops than died in the concurrent Iraq War. The Taliban, enjoying strong bases in Pakistan, enjoyed a resurgence and showed that it could launch large, coordinated, and effective attacks on coalition and Afghan forces. One of the deadliest attacks came on French troops in mid-August, with a force of about 100 Taliban ambushing French forces near Kabul. Ten French troops were killed, and 21 wounded. The same day also saw an attack by a squad of suicide bombers on an American base near the Pakistani border. The incoming Obama Administration has called for significantly increasing the size of the American military presence in Afghanistan, and allies in Europe are expecting President Obama to pressure them to provide more troops as well.

= = =  **T[|aliban Terrorism Marks 5th Anniversary of U.S. Bombing of Afghanistan]**  =

__Saturday October 7, 2006 Five years ago today, the United States opened a bombing campaign against Afghanistan intended to eliminate it as an Al Qaeda safe haven, and brought down the Taliban government with astonishing speed. Afghanistan has since served as the war on terror's poster child, a good example of what decisive military action, coupled with a firm takeover by local rulers, could accomplish. A parliamentary government headed by Hamid Karzai was installed, a new Afghan army outfitted, and reforms of the Taliban's despotic ruling edicts put into effect. Recent announcements of the Taliban's resurgence across Afghanistan, including several lethal[|suicide bombings] in the last month, may therefore come as not only disheartening but also puzzling news. It shouldn't. The current upsurge in Taliban violence is far from spontaneous and actually reflects the fact that the Taliban never left. The U.S. military knew from the outset that truly ousting the Taliban would be difficult work. Seven months after the first American bombs were dropped, [|U.S. General John M. Keane,] Vice Chief of the staff of the U.S. Army warned that: "It is going to be tough. This is a tough environment and these guys are not going to give up easy." A year later, in May 2003, the [|Christian Science Monitor reported] even more ominous signs:

Across the southern portions of Afghanistan, where the Taliban found strong support among the rural conservative Pashtun populations, there are definite signs that the Taliban are making a comeback. Some Taliban leaders, such as Salam and Taliban commander Mullah Muhammad Hasan Rehmani, are giving interviews once again. Others are dropping leaflets, calling for a jihad against US forces and against the new Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. Still others are increasingly willing to discuss the secret hierarchy that is directing this jihad and the sources of funding that keep it running. It's this confidence that undercuts recent assertions by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are over, and that the focus will now be on reconstruction. "The general idea that was being put forward by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld last week, is that the Afghan military, backed by US forces, is engaged in mopping up some remnants of the past - that is not true," says Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University. "They [the Taliban] are now organizing for a new offensive, and they are still getting some support from Pakistan. Even if Pakistan is not cooperating directly, it is not cooperating in efforts to end the support that is coming from Pakistani territory."

Statements by President Karzai and U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that the Taliban threat had been pacified in the winter of 2003-2004 were punctuated by several Taliban suicide bombings that killed Afghan aid workers and U.S. military personnel. In their wake, foreign policy analyst [|Mark Sedra observed] that: "Far from marking the defeat of the Taliban, recent events have signaled a new phase in the antigovernment insurgency .... There is no established history of martyrdom operations in Afghanistan, but just as counter-terrorism tactics and strategies have assumed a transnational character, shared by states around the globe, so, too, have those of terrorist and insurgent groups. Further suicide attacks, which are unpredictable and virtually impossible to prevent, could deliver a severe blow to the state-building process."__ __ [[http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm| The severity of the blow remains to be seen, but it is now indubitable that it has been struck.

]] [[http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm|rom 2002 onward, the Taliban focused on survival and on rebuilding its forces. From 2005 to the present (winter 2007), the Taliban has increased its attacks and is using suicide bombers and other tactics from the]][| Iraq War.] On February 27, 2007, while on a diplomatic trip to Afghanistan, an apparent assassination attempt was made by Taliban insurgents, who claimed that Cheney was a target in the attack. A suicide bomber blew up a checkpoint at Bagram Air Base outside of Kabul, killing 20, including an American soldier. Cheney was unhurt in the attack. In the spring and summer of 2008, the violence in Afghanistan claimed more coalition (foreign) troops than died in the concurrent Iraq War. The Taliban, enjoying strong bases in Pakistan, enjoyed a resurgence and showed that it could launch large, coordinated, and effective attacks on coalition and Afghan forces. One of the deadliest attacks came on French troops in mid-August, with a force of about 100 Taliban ambushing French forces near Kabul. Ten French troops were killed, and 21 wounded. The same day also saw an attack by a squad of suicide bombers on an American base near the Pakistani border. The incoming Obama Administration has called for significantly increasing the size of the American military presence in Afghanistan, and allies in Europe are expecting President Obama to pressure them to provide more troops as well. [[http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Zawahiri.htm| **Coalition Military Fatalities By Country:** Coalition deaths in Afghanistan by country
 * As of 10.02.09**

Total Coalition Casualties (Non-Afghan): 1,182 US: 774 (includes U.S. Military deaths in Pakistan and Uzbekistan) UK: 185 Canada: 125 Germany: 38 Spain: 25

(In addition to the 25 killed in Afghanistan, an additional 62 Spanish soldiers returning from Afghanistan were killed in Turkey on May 26, 2003 when their plane crashed) France: 28 Denmark: 26 Netherlands: 19 Italy: 15 Poland: 9 Romania: 11 Australia: 10 Czech Republic: 3 Estonia: 4 Norway: 4 Hungary: 2 Portugal: 2 Sweden: 2 South Korea: 2 Finland: 1 Latvia: 3 Lithuania: 1 Turkey: 2

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