Afghanistan War (2001-2021)

Template:TOC-right After the 9-11 attacks, the United States learned that the al-Qaeda senior leadership, who took responsibility for the attacks, were based in Afghanistan. The ruling Taliban refused to surrender that leadership and shut down their facilities, and the U.S., also invoking the NATO treaty of collective defense, issued a conditional ultimatum that if the demands were not met, a new Afghanistan War would begin in 2001.

NATO participation was the first invocation of Article 5, the collective defense agreement at the heart of the NATO Charter. The operation was also authorized by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373.

Initial concept and its development

GEN Tommy Franks, commanding CENTCOM, set out a four-phase plan that was briefed to the President on September 21, 2001:

• Phase I: Set conditions and build forces to provide the National Command Authority credible military options: build alliances and prepare the battlefield
• Phase II: Conduct initial combat operations and continue to set conditions for follow-on operations; begin initial humanitarian operations
• Phase III: Conduct decisive combat operations in Afghanistan, continue to build coalition, and conduct operations
• Phase IV: Establish capability of coalition partners to prevent the re-emergence of terrorism and establish support for humanitarian operation: expected to be a 3-5 year effort

It is a maxim of warfare that no plan survives contact with the enemy; it is a reality of modern warfare that no plan survives contact with higher headquarters. This particular set of plans also was quite different than others the U.S. had fought, in several aspects. It was to be a coalition from the start, both with the Afghan Northern Alliance against the Taliban government, with formal NATO cooperation and with both direct combat and assistive roles from other countries. Within the U.S. military, it was conceived as truly joint, not Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine; Special Operations forces were also to have a major role.

On the 20th, Franks had a tense meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), whom he felt each argued for a plan featuring their service. He asked for and received confirmation from the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), Donald Rumsfeld, that he had full command authority to develop a service-independent approach.

The actual briefing to the President and Vice President was made by Franks, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) GEN Hugh Shelton, Vice CJCS GEN Dick Myers (who succeeded the retiring Shelton), and JSOC commander MG Dell Dailey; Dailey indicated the importance of special operations to the plan.

Phase I

Afghanistan is landlocked. Before any operations could proceed, basing rights needed to be established. Kyrgyzstan, which had had Special Forces trainers since 1999, allowed the initial basing at Dushanbe, which subsequently moved to a major facility at Manas.

Airstrikes and special operations force insertions needed to be done on relatively moonless night, to avoid making them visible to air defenses. October 6 and 7 were optimal from the standpoint of lunar light.

Before United States Army Special Forces teams could be attached to the various Northern Alliance forces, Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division officers needed to link with their leaders. At first, only one CIA unit, code named JAWBREAKER, was present, with the forces of Mohammed Fahim Khan, who had taken command of the Tajiks after al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9.

The Special Forces teams, under COL John Mulholland, waited at the K-2 base in Uzbekistan; for political reasons, Uzbekistan announced that it was assisting in humanitarian assistance and combat search and rescue. Air operations were controlled from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. AC-130 gunships and other fixed-wing support aircraft flew from Qatar.

Phase II

Large-scale overt air attacks started on October 7, 2001. The public name was , Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.

It took approximately 2 weeks before the first Special Forces team, Operational Detachment A (ODA) 595 joined General Dostum of the Northern Alliance. Just afterwards, two direct action operations took place. The first was a paratroop attack, by the 75th Ranger Regiment, to seize an airstrip coded Rhino. A second force, by a JSOC Special Mission Unit (SMU), was to attack the Kandahar headquarters of Mullah Omar. Rhino was to receive the first conventional ground combat unit, of U.S. Marines.

Phase III

On October 30, GEN Franks met with Mohammed Fahim Khan and Gary Berntsen of the CIA. Franks set out his priorities: have the Northern Alliance forces of Dostum take the major Northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, use it as a staging area to make a joint attack with Uzbek forces, now under Berryelah Khan, to make a joint attack on Taloquan. Taking those cities would open an overland supply route to Uzbekistan. According to Bertsen, Franks wanted Fahim's forces, farther south on the Shomali Plains, to move west and cut off the escape of the Taliban in the north. Fahim argued that he wanted to move to take Kabul first. Bertsen saw Fahim's argument as poliitical; Franks restated his plan of Mazar-e-Sharif, Taloquan, and the Shomali Plains.

Franks also described the northern cities as priorities, after which the The Northern Alliance would then move to take Bagram Air Base, and then go from the Panshjir Valley to the Shomali Plains north of Kabul. He did not state Fahim's argument for Kabul as strongly as did Bertnsen. Fahim agreed not to enter Kabul without Franks' permission; Franks and the CIA supported Hamid Karzai, a Durrani Pashtun as the interim national leader, and did not want tribal conflict between Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance tribes. A day or two later, Berntsen and a Special Forces team talked to Fahim's forces on the Shomali Plains, and told them they could not have more airstrikes that were needed in the north.

Northern regional campaign

The attack on Mazir-e-Sharif began on November 5; it was captured on November 10. The battle was a series of probes, by Northern Alliance horse cavalry until Taliban resistance was met, and then the Special Forces team called in air strikes. Cavalry charges immediately following airstrikes, if a mix of the centuries, were effective.

Taloqan soon followed, as did Herat and Shindand in the east.

The Northern Alliance told the U.S. team, on the 10th, that Taliban were retreating into Konduz, taking human shields. As Berntsen put it, "when an Afghan who has been in combat half his life and has witnessed scores of atrocities tells you something is going to be bad, you listen." Cutting off the linkup became a high priority. Taliban leaders in Mazir-e-Sharif had negotiated a surrender of Konduz, with amnesty for Afghan Taliban but not for foreign fighters.

Kabul

President George W. Bush, on November 7, said "We will encourage our friends to head south across the Shomali Plains, but not into the city of Kabul itself." On November 8, Special Forces and CIA personnel were on the Shomali Plains, waiting for air support so that the Northern Alliance could advance against an estimated 10,000 Taliban.

British Special Boat Service personnel joined U.S. special operators to seize Bagram Air Base outside Kabul on November 11.

According to Berntsen, on the 12th, "Kabul is reported to be in a state of confusion. The Taliban are withdrawing. We need to move quickly in order to receive maximum benefit from our enemy's retreat." Bismullah Khan's force, accompanied by Special Forces ODA 555, advanced rapidly. ODA 555 was aware of the agreeent between Mohammed Fahim Khan and GEN Franks, but, as a team member put it,

General Sharifi [a subcommander of Bismullah Khan who was the main ODA 555 contact] was like, "Sure we'll stop," and he goes, "But you know, some of the local commanders have family down there," and he kind of let it known that they weren't going to stop. Politically, yes, you know we were going to stop. [But] if a guy is trying to get back to his old home in Kabul, then who's going to stop them? They're not going to stop them, and that's what ended up [happening]. [Some people were asking], "[Were] there gangs running around Kabul?" Someone had to go in there and secure it to make it safe for the people. So that's why they went in.

The Northern Alliance violated an agreement not to take Kabul until an international peacekeeping force was ready. They took control of Kabul on November 13. Pakistan's leader had called for it to be a "demilitarized city", and referred to the previous bloody takings of Kabul by the Northern Alliance in 1992 and by the Taliban in 1996.

Heavy fighting, however, continued. Konduz continued to resist, as did Kandahar.

Kandahar

A preparatory step before taking Kandahar was taking Tarin Kowt. In the latter engagement, Hamid Karzai was among the fighters; the Taliban sent a strong force to stop him. Special Forces ODA 574 joined him to provide air support..

When the Taliban evacuated Kabul, they called for guerilla resistance, but still put on a static defense at Kandahar. The anti-Taliban force was led by Gut Sharzai, the former governor of Kandahar, assisted, from November 13, by Special Forces ODA 583. . In late November, air attacks forced the Taliban out of Takrit-e Pol, which was then taken by Sharzai's force. Taking the town gave them control of the Spin Boldak-Kandahar highway. From there, they set up an observation post near Kandahar Airfield, from which airstrikes were directed for a week.

On December 6, Northern Alliance leaders, including Karzai, met with Taliban leaders and negotiated a surrender of the city. Some Taliban put down their weapons, while others moved into guerilla warfare.

Sharzai had been moving to attack the airfield on the 7th, but learned of the surrender terms negotiated by Karzai, and moved to take the town without fighting. Karzai reconfirmed him as governor.

Those Taliban who did not surrender moved south to Tora Bora and north to the Kunduz area.

Kunduz

Afghan Taliban fighters surrendered at Kunduz, but foreign fighters, including Juma Namangami, a leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, fought on. Namangami led the al-Qaeda force at Kunduz, and was killed in a U.S. airstrike; the overall Taliban commander was Mohammed Fazal.

Kunduz fell on November 23-24; 8,000 Taliban surrendered. Amir Jhan, a former Taliban apparently accepted as a negotiator by both sides, said that after the surrender, he counted only 3,015. There are many theories for prisoner deaths, ranging from compounded errors to deliberate killing; there appear to have been miscalculations on all sides. The Northern Alliance was not prepared to handle a large number of prisoners. One of the most basic errors was failing to search all prisoners. Jansaid that the foreign Taliban fighters from Kunduz were not supposed to surrender at Mazar-e-Sharif, but at Erganak, 12 miles west of Kunduz. "Mullah Faizal, the Taliban's commander at Kunduz, had told the foreign fighters to give up their weapons - but failed to tell them that they would then be taken into custody, it emerged from Amir Jan's account: 'The foreigners thought that after surrendering to the Northern Alliance they would be free,' he said. 'They didn't think they would be put in jail.' Dostum, however, planned to take them to "Mazar-i-Sharif's large Soviet-built airfield, but American special forces vetoed the plan, saying that the runway could be needed for military operations," according to Jan. Dostum then decided to take the prisoners to his fortress, the Qala-i-Jhangi in Mazar.

Different factors were involved at Sheberghan and Mazar. At the former, there have been allegations that some prisoners were deliberately killed by being locked into shipping containers, and others may have been roughly interrogated by U.S. forces.

Even before the full revolt at the Qali-i-Jangi fortress, Dostum's soldiers checked only three out of the five trucks full of prisoners for weapons. Before the full revolt a Chechen prisoner exploded a grenade, killing himself, two other prisoners, and Dostum's police chief. Later, large-scale fighting broke out when guards began tying up the prisoners. They had managed to secure 250 of the 400 detainees. The remaining prisoners - suspecting they were about to be executed - then revolted. Guardian (U.K.) correspondent Luke Harding wrote "Their fears were unwarranted: the Americans had taken pains to school General Abdul Rashid Dostam, the castle's owner, and his fellow opposition commanders that the Taliban prisoners should be treated according to international law." Prisoners at Qala-i Jangi prison killed guards by suicide attack with hidden grenades; they were forced into cells in the basement. An American who volunteered for the Taliban, John Walker Lindh, was not yet identified. The prisoners turned on their guards; CIA officer Mike Spann was killed.

British SAS soldiers, with U.S. Special Forces, coordinated the efforts to drive out the last resisters on November 30; Dostum had variously sent burning diesel oil into the cells, but the use of chilled water forced out the last.

CNN reporter Robert Pelton interviewed the hospitalized Lindh on December 2. Lindh explained he belonged to a Taliban auxiliary called Ansar, or "helpers", which was divided by native language of the volunteers. He said bin Laden was in charge of the Arabic-speaking part.

Tora Bora

Tora Bora is an extremely rugged area, south of Jalalabad, as having two valleys running north and south. One U.S. soldier called it a "vertical no man's land, a hellish place of massive, rocky, jagged unforgiving snow-covered ridgelines and high peaks separated by deep ravines and valleys studded with mines.

The U.S. set up Combined Joint Task Force 180 (CJTF-180) in June 2002 as the CENTCOM forward headquarters, under a lieutenant general.

Current situation

See also: Taliban

See also: International Security Assistance Force

There is an Afghan government in place, with military capability of its own, the Afghan National Army (ANA) as well as Police.

The war has taken on an international character, with much spillover into Pakistan, where there is an active Taliban insurgency. There is also sanctuary and spillover in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with complex diplomacy involving basing rights for Western forces versus Russian interests. Iran certainly is affected, both from Afghanistan directly and from insurgents crossing from the Pakistani province of Balochistan.

The major combat capability remains with the NATO International Security Assistance Force, commanded by a U.S. four-star general who is also commander of United States Forces - Afghanistan (USFOR-A).

Afghan security forces

Afghan National Army

The Afghan National Army is comprised of five corps, the 201st Corps based in Kabul; 203rd Corps in Gardez; 205th Corps in Kandahar; 207th Corps in Herat and the 209th Corps in Mazar-e-Sharif. Attached to each corps is an Afghan Regional Security Integration Command (ARSIC). Each ARSIC is comprised of a Regional Police Advisory Command (RPAC) and a Regional Corps Advisory Command (RCAC). The RPAC is responsible for training, coaching and mentoring all organizations of the Afghan National Police. The RCAC has the same function for the ANA corps and below.