Afghanistan War History

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: Defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off-course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives.

The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan. With the publication of Ghost Wars, Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.

The American war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, is now the longest armed conflict in the nation's history. It is currently winding down, and American troops are likely to leave soon - but only after a stay of nearly two decades.

On September 11, 2001, the United States faced the most devastating terrorist attack in world history when members of al-Qaeda, an Islamist fundamentalist movement, hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed them into buildings in New York and Washington, DC. Nearly 3,000 people died in these attacks, and one month later, US President George W. Bush announced the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, a military operation intended to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and ensure that terrorists from al-Qaeda had no safe haven in that country.

Dead Men Risen, winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for books, is the epic story of a beleaguered British battle group fighting desperately to prevent the Taliban from seizing Afghanistan's Helmand province just as the US Marines arrive to take over. Best-selling author Toby Harnden describes how men from the coal mining valleys and slate quarry villages of Wales found themselves in the most intense combat faced by British troops for a generation.

War-organized violence against an enemy of the state-seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington's call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years.