Volta
Conflict7 October 2001 – 30 August 2021

War in Afghanistan

Also called: Operation Enduring Freedom, War on Terror

After the September 11 attacks the United States attacked and toppled the Taliban regime that had sheltered al-Qaeda in October 2001. The war lasted twenty years; when US forces left in 2021 the Taliban took the country again.

US special forces on horseback with the Northern Alliance, Afghanistan, November 2001
US special forces on horseback with the Northern Alliance, Afghanistan, November 2001

Master Sgt. Chris Spence, FOB-53/U.S. Army, United States Special Operations Command · Public domain · Source

When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden, the United States and Britain began bombing Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. On the ground, US special forces and CIA officers rode on horseback with the Northern Alliance, which had been fighting the Taliban, and called in air strikes. Kabul fell on 13 November and Kandahar, the Taliban heartland, in early December.

That December bin Laden was cornered in the caves of Tora Bora in the eastern mountains but slipped away into Pakistan. NATO invoked for the first time its clause that an attack on one member is an attack on all and joined the fight; South Korea also sent medical and engineering units.

A new government was formed, but the Taliban regrouped and the conflict became the longest war in American history. When US forces withdrew in August 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul once more.

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States and rulers at the time
United States · invader — President George W. Bush
Afghanistan · invaded

People

  • George W. Bush1946

    key figure · 43rd President of the United States (2001–2009), who faced the September 11 attacks eight months into office, declared a “war on terror” and launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

  • Osama bin Laden1957 – 2011

    related figure · Saudi-born Islamist extremist who founded and led al-Qaeda from 1988 and ordered the September 11 attacks; killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011

1 part of this event

  1. 2011Killing of Osama bin Laden

    Early on 2 May 2011 US Navy SEALs flown in by helicopter from Afghanistan killed Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Before and after

Earlier
2001 September 11 Attacks
Later
2002 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics

Themes that include this event

  • The September 11 Attacks1988 – 2014

    Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the four airliners hijacked on the morning of 11 September 2001 and the fall of the twin towers, the closing of the American sky, twenty years of war in Afghanistan and the death of bin Laden, and the memorial pools in the towers’ footprints