Afghan War

For the Soviet invasion and war, 1979-89, see Soviet-Afghan War. For politics and society, see Afghanistan.

Afghan War
Overview
Part of	War on Terror
Date	October 7, 2001- August 15, 2021
Location	Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak)
Combatants
United States United Kingdom ISAF	al-Qaeda Taliban Supported by: Pakistan
Commanders
Joe Biden George W. Bush Barack Hussein Obama Donald Trump Tony Blair Gordon Brown David Cameron Theresa May Boris Johnson Burhanuddin Rabbani Hamid Karzai Ashraf Ghani	Mohammed Omar Akhtar Mansour Hibatullah Akhundzada Osama bin Laden Ayman al-Zawahiri,
Strength
129.895 soldiers (ISAF)
Casualties

The Afghan War was America's longest war beginning in October 2001. Its purported objective was to destroy the Taliban and prevent the emergence of a base for radical Islamic attacks on American interests. In a disgraceful exit under American Democrat socialist leader Joe Biden, the Taliban emerged stronger than ever after 19 years, 10 months and 25 days of fighting.

President Barack Obama considered the central front in the war on terrorism and ordered a buildup of American troops to fight an insurgency led by the Taliban. NATO supported the effort through the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, under U.S. command. During the course of the war, U.S. officials claimed that the war was winnable and that they were making progress when they knew this was not actually the case.

Overview

"Operation Enduring Freedom" easily defeated the Taliban in late 2001 and it seemed the war was over quickly. But the Taliban regrouped, especially in the southern provinces, with sanctuaries inside neighboring Pakistan in remote areas where the government of Pakistan had little authority. By 2003 the insurgency in the south was in operation, funded by opium production. Important factors for the return of insurgency include the initial mistakes made in 2001; radical Islamic support from Pakistan; weaknesses of the Hamid Karzai government, especially its feeble and corrupt national army and police; the question of legitimacy and offenses to traditional tribal and Islamic values and beliefs; and, finally, the extent to which NATO forces became part of the problem by angering the tribes. The insurgency controlled numerous areas and engaged in terror attacks on civilians and guerrilla warfare against American and NATO forces. Al-Qaeda terrorists—the only Arabs in Afghanistan—had been welcomed by the Taliban in 1999 and built their bases there. They have been largely destroyed or fled to Pakistan, according to the U.S. Army, having fewer than 100 people left in Afghanistan.

In Aug. 2009, General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said the Afghan government was riddled with corruption and NATO was being undermined by tactics that alienate civilians. He called the Taliban insurgency "a muscular and sophisticated enemy" that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations. McChrystal alerted Washington that he urgently needs more forces within the next year; without them, he warned, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure." American policy was increasing set by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, originally appointed by President Bush in 2006 and reappointed by President Obama in 2009. Gates fired the commander, General David McKiernan, in May 2009, replacing him with McChrystal. Gates insisted on dropping the old strategy of hunting down insurgents and instead adopting a counterinsurgency strategy that focused on protecting local civilians and training Afghan soldiers and police to take over the job. Gates convinced Obama, who ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in Dec. 2009, with a deadline of 18 months, at which time a transition to Afghan responsibility would begin. The ruling Democratic party in the United States was split three ways: a small number of hawks who agreed with Obama's decision to escalate the troop level; a large number of doves who opposed it; and a sizable group that was uneasy with the Obama troop surge but willing to loyally support his decision.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration in its 2002 National Security Strategy promulgated a new preventive war doctrine, and initiated a program of targeted killings using weaponized Unarmed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), drones, and other means. President Obama greatly expanded the employment of drones to kill people. CIA Director John Brennan was put in charge of selecting targets.

Sanctuary

From the mid-1990s the Taliban controlled Afghanistan and provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden with his Al-Qaida band of Arab terrorists. Bin Laden provided both financial and political support to the Taliban. Bin Laden and his Al-Qaida group were charged with the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, and in August 1998 the United States launched a cruise missile attack against bin Laden's terrorist camp in southeastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks attacks against the United States.

Following the Taliban's repeated refusal to expel bin Laden and his group and end its support for international terrorism, NATO, under U.S. command began a military campaign on October 7, 2001, targeting terrorist facilities and various Taliban military and political assets within Afghanistan.

Bonn Agreeement

Afghan factions opposed to the Taliban met at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany in December 2001 and agreed to restore stability and governance to Afghanistan—creating an interim government and establishing a process to move toward a permanent government. Under the "Bonn Agreement," an Afghan Interim Authority was formed and took office in Kabul on December 22, 2001, with Hamid Karzai as Chairman. The Interim Authority held power for approximately 6 months while preparing for a nationwide "Loya Jirga" (Grand Council) in mid-June 2002 that decided on the structure of a Transitional Authority. The Transitional Authority, headed by President Hamid Karzai, renamed the government as the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA). One of the TISA's primary achievements was the drafting of a constitution that was ratified by a Constitutional Loya Jirga on January 4, 2004

U.S. involvement

The militaries of the United States and its NATO allies, in concert with a coalition of northern Afghan tribes known as the Northern Alliance, quickly overthrew the Taliban government controlling the country from its historic capital of Kandahar. While the Taliban government was quick to fold, large amounts of fighters remained with the local population and subsequently engaged in a prolonged guerilla campaign against Coalition Forces. However, high-profile operations in the country's eastern White Mountains (Battle of Tora Bora) and Shahikhot Valley (Operation Anaconda) to capture or kill bin Laden and other high-value al Qaida targets were a failure.

In 2001, the CIA's Special Activities Division units were the first U.S. forces to enter Afghanistan. Their efforts organized the Afghan Northern Alliance for the subsequent arrival of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) (United States Special Operations Command) forces. The plan for the invasion of Afghanistan was developed by the CIA, the first time in United States history that such a large-scale military operation was planned by the CIA. SAD, U.S. Army Special Forces and the Northern Alliance combined to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan with minimal loss of U.S. lives. They did this without the need for U.S. military conventional ground forces.

In late 2003, the Joint Chiefs designated Lt. Gen. David W. Barno as the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, He adopted a counterinsurgency strategy, requiring coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a "small footprint" in Afghanistan and because Iraq was a higher priority conflict, Barno was given only 20,000 troops. As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. Coalition forces were thinly spread across the mountainous land, leaving much of Afghanistan vulnerable to enemy force increasingly willing to reassert their power. On the positive side, the pairing of small Special Operations Forces teams with Afghan militias, which, backed by laser-guided weapons, drove the Taliban from power.

The Washington Post stated in an editorial by John Lehman in 2006:

"What made the Afghan campaign a landmark in the U.S. Military's history is that it was prosecuted by Special Operations forces from all the services, along with Navy and Air Force tactical power, operations by the Afghan Northern Alliance and the CIA were equally important and fully integrated. No large Army or Marine force was employed".

Seven years after the overthrow of the Taliban, America and NATO forces wre still fighting Taliban forces in parts of the country, especially in the south. There is no sign that Western troops will be withdrawing from Afghanistan in the foreseeable future. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of the United States coalition forces stated his commitment to accomplishing the mission, saying,

“

The United States will not leave Afghanistan until the Afghan people tell us the job is done. The war on terrorism began here in Afghanistan and it continues today. We must never forget that.

”

In a 2008 New York Times book review of Horse Soldiers, a book by Doug Stanton about the invasion of Afghanistan, Bruce Barcott wrote:

"The valor exhibited by Afghan and American soldiers, fighting to free Afghanistan from a horribly cruel regime, will inspire even the most jaded reader. The stunning victory of the horse soldiers—350 Special Forces soldiers, 100 C.I.A. officers and 15,000 Northern Alliance fighters routing a Taliban army 50,000 strong—deserves a hallowed place in American military history".

Nation building

Three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, on October 3, 2001, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware proposed on the Senate floor a billion dollars in aid to a yet-to-be-formed Afghan interim government. The amount was almost twice as much as U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan proposed, and more than triple what the Bush administration asked for. Sen. Biden, who spoke for the Democrats in Congress, wanted more than just removal of the Taliban and degrading al Qaeda. Biden wanted nation building.

Sen. Joe Biden advocating for boots on the ground and nation building at the Council on Foreign Relations, October 22, 2001.

On October 22, 2001, Sen. Biden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations insisting that U.S. goals—rooting out al-Qaeda and helping establish a friendly successor government to the Taliban—would require U.S. boots on the ground far beyond the small number of Special Forces that the Pentagon had recommended. Biden said, "There is no way that you can, in fact, go after and root out al Qaeda and or Bin Ladin without folks on the ground, in caves, risking and losing their lives. And I believe that the tolerance for that in the Islamic world is significant, exponentially higher, than it is for us bombing." Under pressure from U.S. military and anti-Taliban forces however, the Taliban disintegrated rapidly, and Kabul fell on November 13, 2001.

Hamid Karzai formed an interim government on 22 December 2001 until elections could be held after the removal of Taliban rule by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces. On January 10, 2002 Biden arrived in Afghanistan on a four-day fact-finding visit at Bagram Airforce Base. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility had been prepared to receive jihadis. Bagram was a major collection point for preliminary interrogation. Sen. Biden said, "These are some real hard, hard, hard cases. But unless we gather the list of leaders which we -- I have in my pocket here...the possibility of them being able to do guerrilla kind of attacks on military here are real."

In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write a new constitution, the U.S. government gave “nice packages” to delegates who supported Washington’s preferred stance. “The perception that was started in that period: If you were going to vote for a position that Washington favored, you’d be stupid to not get a package for doing it,” according to a U.S. official interviewed by the Washington Post who served in Kabul at the time.

According to The New York Times, beginning in December 2002 throughout Karzai's terms of office, Karzai's office was funded with "tens of millions of dollars" of black cash from the CIA in order to buy influence within the Afghan government. TheNYT stated that "the cash that does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions." An unnamed American official was quoted by The New York Times as stating that "The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States."

Once it became the narrative that the U.S. was there to improve life for Afghans the venture became subject to withering critiques. In an investigative report by the Washington Post, a forensic accountant analyzed "3,000 Defense Department contracts worth $106 billion dollars concluded about 40% of the money ended up in the pockets of insurgents, criminal syndicates, or corrupt Afghan officials." The Spectator noted, "On Ivy League campuses, students are taught to decry colonialism, but Ivy League diplomats who sought to remake Afghanistan and Harvard's image were among the most ambitious practitioners of colonialism in world history. Alongside the billions for bombs went hundreds of millions for gender studies in Afghanistan. According to a USAID observer, the gender ideology included in American aid routinely caused rebellions out in the provinces directly causing the instability America was supposedly fighting."

Obama escalation

See also: Obama war crimes

Despite campaigning against "dumb wars," Barack Obama made escalating the troop level a high priority. In September 2009, the Pentagon pushed back against liberal Democrats who oppose sending additional combat troops to Afghanistan, telling Congress that success would probably require more fighting forces, and certainly much more time. Washington is debating the new report by Gen. McChrystal, the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who believes a properly resourced counterinsurgency war means more forces, more time and more commitment to the development of a strong Afghan government capable of defending its own country. Some 4,000 more American trainers will arrive by November, bringing the American troop level to 68,000.

The ruling Democratic party in the United States was split three ways: a small number of hawks who agreed with Obama's decision to escalate the troop level; a large number of doves who opposed it; and a sizable group that was uneasy with the Obama troop surge but willing to loyally support his decision. Each one thousand American soldiers in Afghanistan cost a billion dollars a year; Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that the continued operations would be financed by borrowing.

In the first half of 2010, 250 contractors reportedly died in Iraq and Afghanistan - more than the 235 military personnel who fell during the same period.

Insurgencies

By 2009, there were three entirely separate insurgencies operating independently.

The insurgent strongholds are in red; illegal sales of opium accounts for half the cash income of Afghanistan; it produced both by insurgents and by local tribal leaders

• The strongest was the "Quetta Shura Taliban" (QST) headed by Mullah Omar. They fled Afghanistan after 2001, and operate from a sanctuary in the Pakistani city of Quetta. It has created an elaborate shadow government known as the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan," which capitalizes on the Afghan government's weaknesses. They install 'shari'a' [Islamic law] courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment. The QST has been working with considerable success to control Kandahar and its approaches.

• Second was the "Haqqani network" (HQN), active in southeastern Afghanistan. It draws money and manpower from Pakistan, Gulf Arab networks, and from its close association with al Qaeda and other Pakistan-based insurgent groups. Al Qaeda's links with HQN have grown, raising fears that expanded HQN control could allow extremist movements to re-establish safe-havens inside Afghanistan.

• Third was the "Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin" insurgency, which maintains bases in three Afghan provinces and in Pakistan. Led by the former Mujahideen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, it aims to negotiate a major role for itself in a future Taliban government, and meanwhile controls smuggling routes in the east.

The rebels in the southern provinces come from the Pashtuns tribes, which form 44% of the population. Only a minority of Pashtuns support the rebels. The Taliban have a significant presence in many Pashtun villages, as well as a sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan. The number of armed insurgents has grown from 3,000 in 2006 to 15,000- 20,000 in 2009. They are locals who know the hiding places in the extremely difficult terrain, and receive protection support from some Pashtun tribes.

Coalition forces

Obama plan to add 30,000 troops in early 2010

More than 108,000 NATO troops were serving in Afghanistan in September 2009: 64,500 from the United States, 9,000 from Britain and 34,500 from other nations. In all, 1,386 troops have been killed. NATO deaths include 830 Americans, 214 British, and 130 Canadians; 22 other countries that have sent forces to Afghanistan have suffered deaths among their troops.

Debates are underway in many countries regarding how long the troops should stay. The Dutch, with 1,770 solders there, have yet to decide whether they will pull out in 2010 or redeploy from the country's perilous south. A debate is also under way in France, which has 3,160 troops engaged. Germany has 4,000 troops based in the Kunduz region. Poland, which has 2,000 troops deployed, seems determined to keep them there despite the sour mood back home. Spain has announced it will send 220 more troops, for a total of 1,000.

Wikileaks

See also: WikiLeaks

On July 25, 2010, WikiLeaks published 76,000 previously classified documents about the Afghan war. Instead of investigating allegations of war crimes, an arrest warrant based on false allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was issued. Assange spent eight years holed up in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, and eventually transferred to a UK jail in ill health.

In 2011m Assange said, "The goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan. The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war."

The Wikileaks data described a secret hit list called the “Joint Prioritized Effects List” (JPEL) with as many as 2,058 names considered “capture/kill” targets in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks gave the information to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The Guardian described the project as a “Unique collaboration between the Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel magazine in Germany to sift the huge trove of data for material of public interest and to distribute globally this secret record of the world’s most powerful nation at war.” Assange said in a written affidavit given in 2013 that the material documented “detailed records about the deaths of nearly 20,000 people.”

Afghan National Army

Conditions turned much worse in late summer 2009, as the much-heralded national election was marked by widespread fraud and pessimism is spreading. Increasingly the main justification for the war, now 8 years old, is to prop up the shaky regime in neighboring Pakistan. NATO commander Stanley McChrystal requested 30,000-40,000 additional troops. Obama, unused to such responsibility, dithered for three months before approving the urgent request. By early 2010 the US had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, triple the number when Obama took office.

MI-35 helicopters Afghan Army Air Corps.

The pro-Karzai Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara Shiites and Uzbeks that formed the ruling coalition were not united, and the government they dominated was extremely weak and poverty-stricken. The Afghan government controled only 30% of the country. The country is resource-poor—there is no oil—and the only rich resource is opium poppies. There is no educated base to staff a 21st century Western-style bureaucracy, and the so-called Afghan National Army was a collection of tribal militias. 90% of the soldiers were illiterate, making them hard to train to American standards.

Democrats in Congress, led by Michigan Senator Carl Levin demanded accelerated efforts to train and equip Afghan security forces before there was any more deployment of American troops. Levin demanded new goals to be established for Afghan security forces in terms far exceeding the capabilities of the Afghans. The army, he said, should grow to 250,000 troops by the end of 2012, and the police to 160,000 officers by that date. In 2011, over-optimistic targets were 134,000 army troops and 96,000 police officers by the end of the next year. The lukewarm Congressional Democrats were countered by Republicans, led by Senator John McCain, who strongly supported the Obama position. McCain insisted that more troops are "vitally needed" and that any delay in ordering more combat forces to the fight would put American lives at risk.

In an interview with NPR, Gen. James Mattis said he had been given “two contradictory objectives” in 2011 when he was leading Central Command and overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis said, “The forces under my command at CENTCOM were to degrade the Taliban while building up the Afghan Army. They were also to withdraw on a strict timetable, independent of circumstances on the ground. We could do one or the other, but not both. What you have got to do is figure out what it is you intend to do at the outset [of a war] and then hold firm to that and don’t half-step it. I think that we have had serious policy challenges in figuring out exactly what it is we intend to do and then holding firm to that vision.”

Abbottabad raid

See also: Abbottabad raid

Killing bin Laden was never an objective or priority of the Bush administration. Knowing full well Islam is a doctrine of vengeance - not love or forgiveness - the War on Terror was stipulated from the beginning to be about prevention, not retribution. Bin Laden had been living for a number of years under house arrest by the Pakistani military who (1) could not put him on trial, (2) could not execute him, and (3) could not extradite him to the United States - all for fear how the Pakistani public might react. Keeping bin Laden in a box, cut off from command of his global jihadi network, served Bush administration policy of limiting jihadi recruiting, and making bin Laden appear as a coward in hiding who sent others to die.

On March 18, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton certified to the United States Congress that Pakistan was demonstrating a “Sustained commitment to and is making significant efforts toward combating terrorist groups.” The certification, as required by law to receive funding, atested that Pakistan was making progress in “preventing al-Qaeda... from operating in [jt's territory].” An NBC investigation revealed Obama was informed of bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan one full year before he used it as an election-year gimmick. With the revelation six weeks later that bin Laden was living in plain sight in a compound one-half mile from the country’s premier military academy, the certification was met "with deep skepticism and appears to many observers to be driven primarily by political considerations rather than ground realities," according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

On May 1, 2011, Obama misled the public when he announced that Osama bin Laden was "killed in a firefight" after Seal Team 6 infiltrated a compound in Abottobad, Pakistan. Attacks, murders, and kidnappings of Americans increased as reprisals for bin Laden's death. Al Qaeda, once broken and on the run, began to operate openly as the jihad became global. Relations with Pakistan, a longtime ally throughout the Cold War and War on Terror, became strained. The government of Pakistan denied White House claims it allowed Americans to kill Muslims on its territory. For all his duplicity and criticism of the War on Terror, Obama experienced only a temporary blip in approval ratings.

Obama's order to assassinate bin Laden stood the War on Terror on its head - turning it from a preventative war into a war of retribution. And when the retribution was accomplished, the war continued. A War of Retribution was a complete rejection of America's foundational Christian ethic, which leftists reveled in, without thinking.

The number of jihadis worldwide grew by a factor of 4 or 5 at least since Obama took the reins of power as Commander-in-Chief. Breaking with the Bush administration's policy of isolating al Qaeda leadership under house arrest in Pakistan, Obama transformed the War on Terror from a preventative war to a war of retribution. The assassination of Osama bin Laden raised bin Laden from a coward in hiding to the status of hero-martyr in the cause of jihad, and became the impetus for increased recruiting as the West went into retreat from the battlefield. Remarkably, even the New York Times was critical of Obama's incessant boasting about the killing of bin Laden as a buzz phrase for his re-election. With the complete disengagement of American troops from Iraq, the Islamic State arose and global Caliphate declared.

Seal Team 6 crash

American Chinook helicopters from 101st Aviation Regiment depart from Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar

The families of Navy Seal Team 6 blame Vice President Joe Biden for revealing the identity of the Navy Seal Team that killed Osama bin Laden. Seal Team 6 is a covert action force, and all its members are sworn to secrecy to never reveal the actions they participate in. The government likewise is bound to protect their identities against reprisals. In boasting of the killing, Biden named Seal Team 6 by name as the unit that found bin Laden.

On August 6, 2011, the Taliban ambushed a Chinook helicopter carrying 30 U.S. service members — including 15 SEAL Team 6 members — in Afghanistan. Everyone on board was killed. In a show of multiculturalism, the Obama administration insisted a Muslim cleric be present when the bodies were recovered.

Families of the slain SEAL members held a news conference at the National Press Club demanding an investigation into why their sons had been identified, despite specific assurances by the Obama administration their identities would be protected. To add insult, the families complained about the Muslim cleric that the Obama administration required to preside in a ceremony over their remains, damned their souls to hell as infidels in an Islamic prayer proclaiming victory.

Escalating deaths

American deaths in Afghanistan more than doubled in Obama's first few years compared with the preceding eight years of George Bush as he increased troop strength for no discernible purpose and to "win" unstated objectives.

Location of US and NATO combat brigades

Obama needlessly escalated troop strength and defense costs in Afghanistan from $43.5 billion in George Bush's last year to $113.7 billion for 2011. Adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, David Kilcullen wrote, "One of the big strategic shifts is the use of language now which talks about Pakistan and Afghanistan as the same theater. Now we talked about Af-Pak long before the Obama administration came about, but the public use of that term, and the description of it as the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign, sends a new message to people about how the administration is going to think about Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Obama tripled down in Afghanistan, widened the war into Pakistan, multiplied by drone attacks, bombed Yemen and Somalia, and started an undeclared NATO war in Libya. From the Boston Globe:

'The New America Foundation, which tracks the strikes, has listed 23 raids since the beginning of April 2011, all but one in Pakistan’s tribal regions of North and South Waziristan. A June 20 attack was reported in Kurram, an area north of North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border.'

'The drone program has become increasingly controversial as the Obama administration has expanded its use beyond the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Lethal missiles have been launched from unmanned aircraft in at least five countries in addition to Pakistan: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and, most recently, Somalia. The military’s Joint Special Operations Command used a drone last June to attack what officials said were two senior members of the Al Shabab militant group on the Somali coast.'

By Obama's third year as Commander-in-Chief, over 1200 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan - significantly more than the number who died during President George W. Bush's term of office. And growing numbers of civilian contractors also rose.

Targeted drone killings

According to the New York Times, John Brennan has been the "principal coordinator" of U.S. kill lists. Former Obama administration counterterrorism official Daniel Benjamin stated that Brennan "probably had more power and influence than anyone in a comparable position in the last 20 years." The criteria and decisions determining who may be targeted for killing were developed in large part by John Brennan, who "wields enormous power in shaping decisions on 'kill' lists and the allocation of armed drones". Barack Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, joked about his approvals of names submitted off Brennan's list: "I'm really good at killing people."

Obama's kill list was criticized internationally as "targeted executions" and "extrajudicial murders." "[I]n essence, this means that based on intelligence evidence, the administration assumes the right to judge and execute anyone without bothering about such minor things as proper court hearings, or the right of the accused person for proper legal defense...the fact that such operations clearly violate the principles propagated by the U.S. itself, like the right of everyone for legal defense, does not seem to bother the administration." Speaking at Harvard Law School on 25 October 2012, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter terrorism, Ben Emmerson, stated that he would launch an investigation unit within the United Nations Human Rights Council. Emmerson and Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, have described some Obama administration targeted killings as war crimes.

Glenn Greenwald has written that "the central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed [is] rather odious... the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation..." Greenwald concludes that the Kill list has established "simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be "disposed" of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency". Former counterterrorism specialist and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi has criticized the disposition matrix's "everyday" killing of targets with what he calls "little or no evidence", leaving the White House "completely unaccountable".

Obama at the UN, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

Arms transfers

President Barack Obama signed a Presidential Finding in early 2012 authorizing transfer of captured weapons from Libya to groups that became the Islamic State.

In mid 2014 DNI James Clapper fired Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Michael T. Flynn. Flynn opposed Obama's support for the Islamic State. A US Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan with a new generation of US Stinger missile procured by the Taliban from Qatar. A serial number from the missile casing was recovered, tracing the Stinger's origin to a lot disbursed to the CIA which the CIA delivered to Qatar, intended for Libya and Syria during the Libyan war. Hillary Clinton's State Dept. and John Brennan's CIA jointly ran a covert weapons supply program (Operation Zero Footprint). Flynn was outraged at the findings of the DIA investigation, that US weapons supplied by Obama/Hillary/Brennan's covert assistance to jihadis were used to kill Americans.

Bowe Bergdahl swap

When Barack Obama released five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for American deserter Bowe Bergdahl in 2014, he assured Americans that the enemy combatants would not be allowed to return to Afghanistan. 6 American soldiers lives were lost searching for the American deserter. Upon Bergdahl's return, Obama celebrated Bergdahl as a heroic “POW,” a designation the Pentagon never gave him. Khairullah Khairkhwa, one of the five released from Guantanamo, sat across the table from Joe Biden’s personal representative in Moscow in the spring of 2021, where Mullah Khairkhwa was part of the Taliban delegation that negotiated the terms of the US withdrawal. Mullah Khairkhwa is the mastermind of the Taliban takeover, even though the Pentagon classified Khairkhwa as too dangerous to release.

Khairkhwa assured the Biden junta that the Taliban would not retaliate against Afghans who worked with the US military or the US-backed government in Kabul. However, reports out of Kandahar and Kabul soon after the fall of Afghanistan indicate the Taliban was going door to door with a kill list to wipe out their enemies. Mullah Khairkhwa previously served as the Taliban’s interior minister prior to 2002, where he oversaw Islamist punishments, including beheadings and stonings.

All five of the terrorists in the Bowe Bergdahl swap assumed prominent positions in the Taliban interim government announced on September 11, 2021:

• Acting Minister of Information and Culture: Mullah Khairullah Khairkhah
• Defense Deputy Minister: Mullah Mohammad Fazil
• Acting Director of Intelligence: Abdul Haq Wasiq
• Border and Tribal Affairs Minister: Mullah Norullah Nori
• Acting Governor of Khost Province: Muhammad Nabi Omari

Bacha bazi

See also: Sexual abuse in Afghanistan

In 2015, The New York Times reported that U.S. soldiers were instructed by their commanders to ignore child sexual abuse being carried out by the Afghan National Security Forces. American soldiers were instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. But the U.S. soldiers were troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the U.S. military was arming them against the Taliban and placing them as the police commanders of villages—and doing little when they began abusing children.

According to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the DOD had received 5,753 vetting requests of Afghan security forces, some of which related to sexual abuse. The DOD was investigating 75 reports of gross human rights violations, including 7 involving child sexual assault. According to The New York Times, discussing that report, American law required military aid to be cut off to the offending unit, but that never happened. U.S. Special Operations Forces officer, Capt. Dan Quinn, was relieved of his command in Afghanistan after fighting an Afghan militia commander who had been responsible for keeping a boy as a sex slave.

2021 collapse

See also: Fall of Kabul

With the August 2021 Taliban take over of major cities, it was clear that it was Amerian Democrat socialist leader Joe Biden who failed the Afghan war. With Billions spent by US in Afghanistan on the Afghan army, at the end, rather benefited the Taliban.

On July 8, 2021, Biden said from the White House, "I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war," "There's going to be no circumstance where you're going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan." The same month the Defense Department said it was providing the Afghan Air Force 35 Black Hawk helicopters and three A-29 Super Tucanos. The United States spent $83 billion equipping and training the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), including $10 billion in aircraft and vehicles. Less than a month later several Black Hawks helicopters and other aircraft were seized by the Taliban. Many of the aircraft and helicopters are armed. These A-29 Super Tucanos can fire laser-guided and other types of bombs. The Afghan government also had 50 American-made MD-530 attack helicopters, which are armed with machine guns and rockets. The Afghan Air Force had UH-60 Black Hawks and Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters, as well as C-130 and Cessna transports, and a small fleet of armed Cessnas. Young men were beaten in the streets for wearing T-shirts and blue jeans.

Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Kandahar. It was a repetition of what the Taliban had done in all the other provinces to the forces that fought alongside Americans. Taliban atrocities included executions, even killing kids in front of their parents. Afghans became fearful of the brutal regime's return. CNN reported that on July 12, 2021 the Taliban knocked on the door of a mother of four in a small village in northern Afghanistan. They were demanding food. The mother told them, "I am poor, how can I cook for you?" The Taliban beat her to death. In Takhar province, the Taliban shot and killed a woman when she went out in public without a burqa.

Once inside the city, the Taliban had all the records with names of everyone who served in the Ktah Khas (KKA) or Afghan Special Forces, and began a house-to-house search for them. The KKA counter-terrorism experts who were trained by and fought alongside Americans suffered the same fate others did in the provinces, and were summarily executed.

Taliban commanders, after capturing some of the provincial capitals, ordered local Imams to bring the lists of unmarried women aged from 12 to 45 for their soldiers to marry as they view them as ‘qhanimat’ or ‘spoils of war’. The Taliban intends to “distribute ” these kids and women among themselves as Jihadists consider them as a ‘prize’.

Not surprisingly, The Qatari pro-terror network Al Jazeera was given exclusive access to the presidential palace by Taliban.

As in 9/11 atrocity, it was Arab-Islamic Palestinians who cheered on. This time Hamas officials.

Botched evacuation

Up to 40,000 Americans remained stranded in Afghanistan. At least 24 students from San Diego school district and 16 parents had tickets to fly out but were not able to get to the airport. The woke Pentagon and the State Department publicly stated that they did not know how many Americans were in the country, let alone where they were. People requesting the embassy's help first received a message telling them to go to Kabul airport, followed by a warning not to go to the airport. Unaware of the State Department warning, the woke Pentagon sent out a message telling people it was all clear to travel to the airport. No one in the Biden socialist regime was fired for the bungling, incompetence, degradation of respect for America among allies and on a global scale, and pointless loss of life among innocents and people who served with the United States against Taliban inhumanity.

People who had worked for the Afghan government went into hiding, "awaiting their death sentence."

The Biden regime gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, Afghan allies, green card holders, they wanted to evacuate.

“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean,” according to Politico.

Red State reported:

"This is insane, since the Taliban is looking to kill anyone who worked with the U.S., and has beheaded and killed Afghan allies in the past. Why would you give them what amounts to a “kill list” or hostage list? They are our enemies. Now, even if they don’t nab those allies at the airport, they will have their name and can hunt them down. It’s already been reported that the Taliban has been going house to house to hunt people down to kill them and their families and you give them a list?"

Kabul airport

Kabul airport suicide bombing, August 26, 2021. 170 dead.

Panic ensued as the Kabul airport was flooded with people fleeing the Taliban terror. Some people were stampeded to death. Tens of thousands of Afghans lined up outside the airport in the hopes of finding a way out. People died after being crushed or succumbing to sweltering temperatures in the crowds outside the airport gate as individuals and families sought refuge from the Taliban. Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay saw people crushed to death, medics check their vital signs and then cover the bodies in white sheets. A heartbroken mother found her 2-year-old daughter trampled to death.

A sniper killed an Afghan army soldier alongside coalition forces at the airport.

Three young men clung to the tires of an airplane, only to fall on top of people's houses once the plane was airborne. Remains of a fourth body were found crushed inside the wheel well upon landing.

On August 25, 2021 the U.S. State Department and U.K. officials issued a warning to American and British citizens to leave the vicinity of the Kabul airport immediately.

On August 26, 2021, two suicide bombs went off outside the Kabul airport, killing 170 people including 13 American soldiers. It was the deadliest day in 10 years for Americans. One was a car bomb about 200 yards away, outside the Baron hotel, which was a staging area for evacuees from the airport. ISIS-K allegedly claimed responsibility. An Italian C-130 also came under fire as it departed the airport. A translator for the U.S. Marine Corps spoke with Fox News and gave a first-hand account of what he witnessed after the suicide attack.His 5-year-old girl died in his hands.

Several members of Congress called upon Biden to resign.

Captured equipment

The ultimate winner of two decades of war in Afghanistan is China. The captured aircraft and armored vehicles left behind will give the Taliban's newfound friends in China a broad window into how the U.S. military builds and uses some of its most important tools of war. Georgianna Shea, who spent years helping the Pentagon research and test new technologies, said “It’s not just a Humvee. It’s not just a vehicle that gets you from point A to point B. It’s a Humvee that’s full of radios, technologies, crypto systems, things we don’t want our adversaries getting a hold of.” Gear that has been “rendered inoperable,” as U.S. officials described the planes and vehicles left behind, can still reveal secrets. “In some cases, this equipment was fielded with the assumption we would have gates and guards to protect it. When it was developed, no one thought the Chinese would have it in their cyber lab, dissecting it, pulling it apart," Shea said. Once an attacker has physical control of a device, little can stop them from discovering its vulnerabilities—and there are always vulnerabilities, Shea said.

Of particular concern are the electronic countermeasures gear, or ECMs, used to detect improvised explosive devices. “Imagine the research and development effort that went into develop those ECM devices that were designed to counter IEDs,” said Peter Christensen, a former director of the U.S. Army’s National Cyber Range. “Now, our adversaries have them. They’re going to have the software and the hardware that goes with that system. But also develop capabilities to defeat or mitigate the effectiveness of those ECM devices.”

War profiteers

See also: Military-industrial complex

The Intercept‘s Jon Schwarz examined returns on stocks of the five biggest defense contractors: Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Schwarz found that a $10,000 investment in stock evenly split across those five companies on the day in 2001 that then-President Georg W. Bush signed the authorization preceding the US invasion would be worth $97,295 this week, not adjusted for inflation, taxes, or fees. According to The Intercept:

"This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613. That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58% during the Afghanistan War."

Further reading

• Franks, Tommy. American Soldier (2004), memoir of US commander in 2001-2
• Jockel, Joseph T. and Joel J. Sokolsky. "Canada and the War in Afghanistan: NATO's Odd Man Out Steps Forward." Journal Of Transatlantic Studies 2008 6(1): 100-115 online in EBSCO
• Jones, Seth. In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2009) excerpt and text search
• Rashid, Ahmed. Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2009), blames Bush for a weak response to the need for force. excerpt and text search
• Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army. The United States Army in Afghanistan: Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (October 2001-March 2003) online, 44pp; brief official history
• United States Special Operations Command. History: 1987-2007 (2007) online, pp 87–112 on Afghanistan.

See also

• Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
• Muslim agenda of the Obama administration

External links

• "COMISAF Initial Assessment" (McChrystal Report) Aug. 30, 2009
• articles on Canadian forces
• news articles from New York Times