War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

For almost twenty years, from October 2001 to August 2021, a coalition led by the United States fought in Afghanistan, first to overthrow the Taliban government that had sheltered al-Qaeda, and then against a Taliban insurgency that never went away. The war, the longest in American history, ended when the Taliban retook the country and Kabul fell on 15 August 2021. Estimates of the dead range from about 176,000 to over 212,000, including more than 46,000 Afghan civilians.

The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamist movement, seized Kabul in 1996 and by 2001 held as much as 90 per cent of Afghanistan, confining the opposition Northern Alliance to the north-east. Under their rule al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, ran training camps in the country. After the September 11 attacks of 2001, carried out by al-Qaeda, President George W. Bush called on the Taliban to surrender bin Laden and shut the camps. The Taliban refused, asking for evidence of his guilt and offering at most to send him to a neutral country, and the United States rejected those terms.

The invasion formally began on 7 October 2001, under the name Operation Enduring Freedom, with support from the United Kingdom and later many other countries. CIA officers and small special forces teams worked with the Northern Alliance, and with the help of American air power the Taliban lost control of most of the country by November. Bin Laden escaped from the mountain caves of Tora Bora into Pakistan in December. At a conference in Bonn, Hamid Karzai was chosen to lead an interim administration, and the UN authorised an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), at first only for Kabul. Fewer than twelve American soldiers died in the first months, but most Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters escaped, many to safe havens in Pakistan.

By 2003 the Taliban had regrouped and begun a guerrilla campaign of ambushes, roadside bombs and suicide attacks. The journalist Steve Coll and others argue that the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which became the Iraq War, drew American attention away. NATO took over command of ISAF, and after a major Taliban offensive in 2006 the insurgents controlled large parts of the country by 2007. In December 2009 President Barack Obama announced 30,000 more American troops, and by 2011 about 140,000 foreign soldiers were serving under ISAF. On 2 May 2011 American special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

After 2011 the coalition prepared to leave. ISAF's combat mission ended in December 2014, and a smaller NATO mission, Resolute Support, took over training and advising, while Afghan forces did most of the fighting. The insurgency grew, civilian deaths reached record levels in 2015 and 2016, and an Islamic State affiliate also emerged. Unable to defeat the Taliban militarily, the United States turned to negotiation. On 29 February 2020, in Doha, it signed an agreement with the Taliban providing for the withdrawal of all American troops within fourteen months. President Ashraf Ghani's government was not a signatory.

In April 2021 President Joe Biden announced that the last 2,500 American troops would leave by September. The Taliban launched a nationwide offensive on 1 May, captured their first provincial capital on 6 August and swept through the rest within ten days. On 15 August Ghani fled and the Taliban entered Kabul unopposed, declaring the war over. A huge airlift from Kabul airport followed, and the last American aircraft left on 30 August.

Besides the civilian toll, more than 80,000 Taliban fighters are estimated to have died. At the time of Kabul's fall about 2.6 million Afghans were refugees abroad and some 4 million were displaced inside the country, although more than 5.7 million earlier refugees had returned after 2001. The restored Taliban emirate faced a severe economic and humanitarian crisis, and debate continues over why two decades of effort ended as they did.

Our 2000 map shows Afghanistan under Taliban rule on the eve of the war, and our 2010 map shows the country during the years of the international military presence, its borders unchanged.