War

Throughout history, Afghanistan’s many invaders have generally struggled to maintain control and usually had little impact on the land and its culture. The country forms a natural corridor between the Central Asian steppes and India, but few conquerors in history have made much headway there, especially among the peaks and valleys of the Hindu Kush range in the east—not Alexander the Great, not Britain in the 1800s, not the Russians in the 1980s, and not the US during its post-9/11 occupation of the country. The country is rugged, dominated by mountains and high-desert plains; the people are fiercely loyal to their local tribal affiliations and don’t take kindly to outside troublemakers.

Since the 1970s, Afghanistan has suffered through numerous civil wars and occupations. The Soviet Union’s attempt to pacify the country in the 1980s proved futile, and that costly defeat contributed to the collapse of the SU a few years later. Meanwhile, as many as 2 million Afghans lost their lives. The US quietly supported fighters who resisted the Soviets; some of these insurgents, in turn, founded the Taliban and Al Qaeda organizations that launched the 9/11 attacks on US soil.

Shortly after 9/11, the US and its allies began an invasion of Afghanistan in an operation approved by the United Nations. The purpose was to depose the Taliban regime, which had helped Al Qaeda attack the US, and capture Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden. The invading forces quickly removed the Taliban from power; nine years later, bin Laden was located in Pakistan and killed by US special operations forces. The coalition then tried to perform “nation-building”—they installed a democratic government, campaigned for greater civil liberties, and built infrastructure, including schools, roads, electric power, and water systems.

Taliban insurgents continued to harass US forces, which never were able completely to extirpate that group. Though American troops took pains never to injure or kill innocent civilians, such events inevitably did occur, which angered Afghan citizens. The impact on civilians—along with considerable popular sympathy for the Taliban, general resentment toward outsiders invading their country, and the extreme ruggedness of eastern Afghanistan’s mountainous communities, including in the Korengal Valley, where War takes place—made the American task almost impossibly difficult.

Twenty years of this effort proved futile, and, in a manner reminiscent of the withdrawal from Vietnam, US forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, their mission incomplete. Within weeks, the Taliban overthrew the US-installed government and retook the country.