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August 31, 2021

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THIS DAY IN HISTORY

October 07

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Year2001 Month DayOctober 07


U.S.-LED ATTACK ON AFGHANISTAN BEGINS

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On October 7, 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces.
Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany,
Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in
the United States “war on terror” and a response to the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.



Dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom” in U.S. military parlance, the invasion of
Afghanistan was intended to target terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s
al-Qaida organization, which was based in the country, as well as the extreme
fundamentalist Taliban government that had ruled most of the country since 1996
and supported and protected al-Qaida. The Taliban, which had imposed its
extremist version of Islam on the entire country, also perpetrated countless
human rights abuses against its people, especially women, girls and ethnic
Hazaras. During their rule, large numbers of Afghans lived in utter poverty, and
as many as 4 million Afghans are thought to have suffered from starvation.



In the weeks prior to the invasion, both the United States and the U.N. Security
Council had demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden for prosecution.
After deeming the Taliban’s counteroffers unsatisfactory—among them to try bin
Laden in an Islamic court—the invasion began with an aerial bombardment of
Taliban and al-Qaida installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and
Mazar-e-Sharif. Other coalition planes flew in airdrops of humanitarian supplies
for Afghan civilians. The Taliban called the actions “an attack on Islam.” In a
taped statement released to the Arabic al-Jazeera television network, Osama bin
Laden called for a war against the entire non-Muslim world.






After the air campaign softened Taliban defenses, the coalition began a ground
invasion, with Northern Alliance forces providing most of the troops and the
U.S. and other nations giving air and ground support. On November 12, a little
over a month after the military action began, Taliban officials and their forces
retreated from the capital of Kabul. By early December, Kandahar, the last
Taliban stronghold, had fallen and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar went into
hiding rather than surrender. Al-Qaida fighters continued to hide out in
Afghanistan’s mountainous Tora Bora region, where they were engaged by
anti-Taliban Afghan forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces troops. Al-Qaida soon
initiated a truce, which is now believed to have been a ploy to allow Osama bin
Laden and other key al-Qaida members time to escape into neighboring Pakistan.
By mid-December, the bunker and cave complex used by al-Qaida at Tora Bora had
been captured, but there was no sign of bin Laden.

After Tora Bora, a grand council of Afghan tribal leaders and former exiles was
convened under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, who first served as interim
leader before becoming the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan
on December 7, 2004. Even as Afghanistan began to take the first steps toward
democracy, however, with more than 10,000 U.S. troops in country, al-Qaida and
Taliban forces began to regroup in the mountainous border region between
Afghanistan and Pakistan. They continue to engage U.S. and Afghan troops in
guerilla-style warfare and have also been responsible for the deaths of elected
government officials and aid workers and the kidnapping of foreigners. Hundreds
of American and coalition soldiers and thousands of Afghans have been killed and
wounded in the fighting.






Afghans continue to make up among the largest refugee populations in the world,
though nearly 3 million have returned to Afghanistan since the fall of the
Taliban. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALS. 





CITATION INFORMATION


ARTICLE TITLE

U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan begins


AUTHOR

HISTORY.COM EDITORS


WEBSITE NAME

HISTORY


URL

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-led-attack-on-afghanistan-begins


ACCESS DATE

August 31, 2021


PUBLISHER

A&E Television Networks


LAST UPDATED

October 6, 2020


ORIGINAL PUBLISHED DATE

July 20, 2010

Tagsterms:Afghanistan
By
History.com Editors
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