Posted on Tuesday, October 7, 2025
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by The Association of Mature American Citizens
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On October 7, 2001, the United States, backed by a coalition of allies, launched Operation Enduring Freedom—a decisive military campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and their al-Qaeda patrons. This marked the opening salvo in America’s post-9/11 War on Terror and the beginning of what would become its longest military engagement.
The campaign was a direct response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., which had been orchestrated by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, then harbored by the Taliban. The mission was twofold: dismantle al-Qaeda’s infrastructure and bring bin Laden to justice, and topple the Taliban government that protected and enabled them.
At dawn, U.S. and British aircraft unleashed waves of bombs on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in major Afghan cities, including Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Kunduz, and Mazar-e-Sharif. Simultaneously, coalition forces dropped humanitarian aid to Afghan civilians amid the crisis. While Western airpower hammered enemy strongholds, Northern Alliance fighters—enemies of the Taliban—took the lead on the ground, bolstered by special operations and U.S. support.
By November 12, just over a month into the operation, Taliban forces retreated from Kabul, and soon after, Kandahar, the movement’s bastion, fell. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar went into hiding. Deploying into the rugged Tora Bora region, al-Qaeda fighters came under pressure from specialized U.S. and Afghan units; though many strongholds were seized, bin Laden eluded capture.
In the years that followed, the conflict evolved from a focused mission of regime change to a protracted state-building and insurgency war. The U.S. and its allies remained engaged in Afghanistan for two decades. Bin Laden was ultimately located and killed in Pakistan in May 2011.
However, despite efforts to construct a democratic Afghan government and strengthen local security forces, Taliban and al-Qaeda elements persisted, regrouping in border regions and mounting guerrilla campaigns. In 2021, the U.S. committed to a full withdrawal, setting September 11, 2021, as the deadline. By mid-August, the Taliban seized Kabul, and President Ashraf Ghani fled. The war was declared over on August 31, 2021, with the last U.S. troops departing.
The human toll was immense: more than 3,500 allied soldiers lost their lives, and thousands more were wounded. Tens of thousands of Afghan security personnel and civilians perished, and the conflict displaced millions.
The assault that began on October 7, 2001, reshaped global geopolitics. It reshuffled relationships among nations, recast debates over counterterrorism doctrine, and left a complex legacy of intervention, statecraft, and moral cost.
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