🔴The new millennium was only a year old when USA was attacked.
It followed a moment celebrated as the “end of history” after a century in which democracy prevailed against totalitarianism.
Far from closing the book, history began a new chapter
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telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
🇺🇸When America, along with its allies, launched ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ less than a month after the 9/11, few could have guessed it would be stepping into its longest war telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
❌“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” President Bush told the world after 9/11
Pitching good against evil in a way that could never encompass the subtleties of contemporary geopolitics
America triggered Nato’s “one for all and all for one” Article 5.
Its allies responded.
🇫🇷France was in 2001 an emblem of togetherness, coining the phrase “We are all Americans”
🔴THE INVASION
The Taliban were swept away by an onslaught of air strikes and US-friendly Afghan militiamen.
Osama bin Laden’s ability to give America the slip appeared to be the only blemish in an otherwise complete victory
It was not to last.
🇺🇸🇬🇧While politicians in London and Washington were basking in the victory - profound mistakes were being made that would later come back to haunt the international military coalition
The world’s attention switched to George W Bush’s campaign to oust Saddam Hussain.
🇦🇫Afghanistan appeared fixed compared with Iraq and the country was no longer a priority.
Attention and resources waned
🔺Then in 2005, Nato agreed to send more troops into southern Afghanistan to strengthen local forces.
Britain plumped for the south western province of Helmand.
Few had ever heard of this opium-growing backwater.
It would quickly become notorious
🔴BRITAIN'S BLOODIEST DAY
July 10, 2009: Two loud explosions in quick succession about 500m away from base were heard.
“We all had a gut feeling it was a bad one,” recalls Rifleman Peter Sherlock.
The carnage was, in fact, even worse than they feared
❌Five members of the 30-man patrol were killed and a dozen or so severely injured.
It was the worst casualty toll for a British foot patrol during the war.
Over the 24-hour period a further three deaths were announced making it the deadliest day in the entire conflict
🔺The first death heard confirmed over the radio was Danny Simpson, who had an eight-month-old son at home.
🔺Another of the dead, 18-year-old William Aldridge, was the youngest soldier killed in Afghanistan telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
As the casualties mounted he recalls their orders being changed to become far more aggressive.
“We went from knocking on doors to forcing our way in,” Sherlock recalls.
“It became a very different war… we became hunters”
🔴THE WAR IN NUMBERS
January 4 2002: Sergeant First Class Nathan Chapman was shot dead in Khost province.
The first death of an invading soldier on Afghan soil.
In total, almost 3,580 further coalition forces would die serving in the conflict
The war in Afghanistan would prove less bloody than its sister war in Iraq - where at least 4,900 soldiers died.
But for British troops alone Afghanistan would prove more deadly telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
USA and UK represented three-quarters of all troops in Afghanistan and saw 80% of all casualties.
United coalition casualties:
🇨🇦157 Canadian
🇫🇷85 French
🇩🇪53 German
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
In Afghanistan, around 40 per cent of all deaths can be attributed to IEDs; a similar proportion to Iraq telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
As power gaps began emerging with the phased retreat, violence against civilians increased.
2018 saw the bloodiest year of the conflict when 3,803 deaths were recorded telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
🔴WHY THE MISSION FAILED
Britain’s war in Helmand sputtered to a close in 2014 after multiple losses and few gains.
The army had become bogged down, and the disconnect between politicians and soldiers was growing
🔴HOW WARFARE CHANGED
The British Army in 2006 in Afghanistan had similar kit to that used when the first Gulf War was fought in 1991.
The experiences in Afghanistan led to a sharp but necessary correction
By the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, a soldier carrying the equipment then issued to troops as standard would have seemed to their 2006 cousin as alien as a warrior of science-fiction fantasy telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
On the offensive side, the data available from drones meant troops in contact had a better idea of what was going on than at any time in the past.
Everything shifted better to support soldiers on the ground telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
🔴WHO WON?
Afghanistan is unlikely to be the graveyard of the American empire.
But after 20 years, more than 3,500 lives, and countless billions of dollars, there is no way of hiding the embarrassment of defeat telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/0…
🔴WHAT'S NEXT?
The biggest casualty may be an idea: to fight a “good war”, for the betterment of man.
Afghanistan was not the first war sold as such - but it was the longest since 1945.
It will be a long time before public support for such projects recovers
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