Every president since 2001 has faced an evolving mission in Afghanistan, a mission that has claimed tens of thousands of American and Afghan victims, desperately futile attempts to improve the country’s political leadership, and a Taliban that stubbornly refused to accept it. defeat.
Biden explained his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops as a necessary choice for a war whose purpose had become unclear, adding that it was sparked by a deal with the Taliban struck by President Donald Trump. The chaos that ensued in the evacuation of Americans and Afghans who took part in the war effort was a predictable and mostly inevitable outcome, he said last week.
Yet the scenes of hasty departures from Kabul and the Taliban’s takeover of the country have proved deeply humbling for a global superpower that has spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives in its efforts.
How America spent 20 years in Afghanistan, for the Taliban to regain control as its troops retreat, will be a topic historians will reflect on for decades. And who ultimately bears the blame is a complicated debate.
Here’s how each president approached what has become America’s longest war:
George W. Bush
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which were plotted by al-Qaeda from bases in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush vowed to eradicate global terrorism. He called on the Taliban – who controlled most of Afghanistan – to hand over Al Qaeda leaders hidden in the country, including Osama bin Laden.
When the Taliban rejected this call, it took action. Congress authorized US forces to prosecute those responsible for 9/11 – although lawmakers never explicitly voted to declare war on Afghanistan. Bush, in remarks to a joint session of Congress two days later, acknowledged that the coming conflict would amount to “a long campaign like no other we have ever seen.”
Yet even Bush could not have predicted how long the war would last.
On October 7, 2001, the US military officially launched Operation Enduring Freedom, with support from the UK. The first phase of the war mainly involved airstrikes on Al Qaeda and Taliban targets. But by November, 1,300 American troops were in the country.
That number steadily increased over the coming months as US and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government and hunted down bin Laden, who was hiding in the Tora Bora cave complex southeast of Kabul. Bin Laden eventually crossed the Pakistani border.
The months and years to come would see Bush send thousands more American troops to Afghanistan to attack the Taliban insurgents. In May 2003, the Pentagon declared that the major combat in Afghanistan was over. The United States and its international partners have focused on rebuilding the country and installing a democratic Western-style political system.
Many of the restrictions imposed by the Taliban have been lifted and thousands of girls and women have been allowed to attend school and work. But the still corrupt Afghan government has frustrated US officials. And the Taliban has started a resurgence.
At the same time, attention shifted in Washington to another war, this time in Iraq, which was undermining military resources and diverting attention away from Afghanistan. By the time Bush was re-elected in 2004, the number of troops in Afghanistan had reached about 20,000, even as surveillance and attention was directed more directly to what was happening in Iraq.
The following years would see a steady increase in US forces deployed in Afghanistan as the Taliban regained ground in rural areas to the south. When Bush left office in 2009, there were more than 30,000 American troops stationed there – and the Taliban was leading a veritable insurgency.
Barack obama
Entering the White House in 2009, President Barack Obama was faced with a decision on a war inherited from Bush. Leading generals recommended an “increase” in troops to weaken the Taliban, which was carrying out attacks at an increased rate.
After a grueling internal debate, in which then-Vice President Biden made his opposition to the wave known, Obama finally began deploying tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. At the same time, he committed to a withdrawal schedule that would begin withdrawing troops by 2011 and insisted on standards to measure progress in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Obama said in a televised address that the additional US troops would “help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.” But later aides said Obama felt cornered by military commanders pushing for a counterinsurgency strategy.
In August 2010, US forces in Afghanistan reached 100,000. But it was in another country, Pakistan, that US intelligence services finally tracked down Bin Laden, who was killed in a Navy raid. SEAL in May 2011. Shortly thereafter, Obama announced that he would begin bringing back US troops with the goal of handing over security responsibilities to the Afghans by 2014.
Over the following years, troop levels steadily declined as the United States engaged in heavy diplomacy with the Afghan leadership. At the start of his second term, Obama had adopted a view of the country summed up by his team members as “pretty much Afghan” – a recognition that attempts to cultivate Western-style democracy were mostly hopeless, and that Eliminating terrorists and controlling the Taliban were the limits of the US role.
Obama announced the end of major combat operations on December 31, 2014, with the United States moving to a mission to train and assist Afghan security forces. Further troop cuts put the United States on track for a full withdrawal as Obama stepped down.
But a year later, as his term drew to a close, Obama determined that the fragile security situation in the country meant that the full withdrawal he hoped for was not possible. He left office with just under 10,000 troops in the country and said it would be up to his successor to decide what to do next.
Donald trump
As a candidate, Trump vowed to bring US troops back from Afghanistan. But keeping his promise proved difficult as the Taliban continued to rise and an Islamic State affiliate emerged.
In his first major move in Afghanistan, Trump outsourced troop-level authority to the Pentagon. His team was divided along ideological lines, between his military advisers who advocated a continued presence and more staunch nationalists who opposed foreign intervention.
Ultimately, Trump admitted in an August 2017 speech that while his instinct was to withdraw all U.S. troops, conditions made it impossible. He left the future of the US presence there open, rejecting a withdrawal schedule and insisting instead that “conditions on the ground” would dictate any decision-making.
A year later, Trump commissioned Zalmay Khalilzad, a veteran Afghan American diplomat, to lead negotiations with the Taliban aimed at ending the war. The talks have mostly ruled out the Afghan government, creating a wedge between the United States and President Ashraf Ghani.
Meanwhile, the Taliban continued to carry out a series of terrorist attacks, notably in Kabul, which killed dozens of civilians. Even after Trump invited and then canceled peace talks with the group to be held at Camp David in 2019, talks continued with Khalilzad.
A deal was reached in February 2020 that paved the way for a full US withdrawal in return for guarantees from the Taliban that it would reduce violence and cut ties with terrorist groups. But there was no action to uphold those promises, which the Pentagon said were broken.
Even when the American troops started to leave, the Taliban grew in strength. And the May 2021 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops has finally been passed on to Trump’s successor.
Joe biden
Even before taking office in January, Biden had started thinking about what to do in Afghanistan, where he had long been disillusioned with the war efforts. After seeing his advice to withdraw US troops rejected by Obama, Biden was finally able to end what he saw as a aimless war.
During the first months of his presidency, Biden received advice from his national security team, including “lucid” warnings that the withdrawal of all American troops could lead to the eventual collapse of the Afghan government and a takeover. control by the Taliban.
Conversely, staying in the country past the May deadline set in Trump’s deal with the Taliban would expose US troops to attack.
Ultimately, Biden announced that the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan would return home by September 11, 2021 – 20 years after the terrorist attacks that started the war in the first place. It was clear, Biden said, that the United States’ goals had been achieved – and that his country could do nothing more to make Afghanistan a stable democracy.
The timeline eventually accelerated as the Pentagon struggled to withdraw its forces more quickly. On July 2, the United States handed over Bagram Airfield – a symbol of American military might – to Afghan forces. The Taliban, meanwhile, took control of provincial capitals, often without any resistance from the Afghan army.
On August 15, the Taliban returned to power in Kabul after Ghani fled the country – a collapse that U.S. officials say frankly happened much faster than expected.
The United States and its allies began a rushed mission to evacuate Afghan citizens and allies who had helped during the war effort and feared reprisals from the militants.
Biden sent 6,000 US troops back to the country to secure Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport and facilitate the airlift. But a new deadline – August 31 – is still valid for the departure of these troops.
The Taliban called it a red line. And now Biden is faced with another decision to extend or leave – a version of his original choice made in April.
