Afghanistan War (2001-2021)

Template:TOC-right After the 9-11 attacks, the United States learned that the al-Qaeda senior leadership, who took responsibility for the attacks, were based in Afghanistan. The ruling Taliban refused to surrender that leadership and shut down their facilities, and the U.S., also invoking the NATO treaty of collective defense, issued a conditional ultimatum that if the demands were not met, a new Afghanistan War would begin in 2001.

NATO participation was the first invocation of Article 5, the collective defense agreement at the heart of the NATO Charter. The operation was also authorized by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373.

Initial concept and its development

GEN Tommy Franks, commanding CENTCOM, set out a four-phase plan that was briefed to the President on September 21, 2001:

• Phase I: Set conditions and build forces to provide the National Command Authority credible military options: build alliances and prepare the battlefield
• Phase II: Conduct initial combat operations and continue to set conditions for follow-on operations; begin initial humanitarian operations
• Phase III: Conduct decisive combat operations in Afghanistan, continue to build coalition, and conduct operations
• Phase IV: Establish capability of coalition partners to prevent the re-emergence of terrorism and establish support for humanitarian operation: expected to be a 3-5 year effort

It is a maxim of warfare that no plan survives contact with the enemy; it is a reality of modern warfare that no plan survives contact with higher headquarters. This particular set of plans also was quite different than others the U.S. had fought, in several aspects. It was to be a coalition from the start, both with the Afghan Northern Alliance against the Taliban government, with formal NATO cooperation and with both direct combat and assistive roles from other countries. Within the U.S. military, it was conceived as truly joint, not Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine; Special Operations forces were also to have a major role.

On the 20th, Franks had a tense meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), whom he felt each argued for a plan featuring their service. He asked for and received confirmation from the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), Donald Rumsfeld, that he had full command authority to develop a service-independent approach.

The actual briefing to the President and Vice President was made by Franks, retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) GEN Hugh Shelton, Vice CJCS GEN Dick Myers (who succeeded the retiring Shelton), and JSOC commander MG Dell Dailey; Dailey indicated the importance of special operations to the plan.

Phase I

Afghanistan is landlocked. Before any operations could proceed, basing rights needed to be established. Kyrgyzstan, which had had Special Forces trainers since 1999, allowed the initial basing at Dushanbe, which subsequently moved to a major facility at Manas.

Airstrikes and special operations force insertions needed to be done on relatively moonless night, to avoid making them visible to air defenses. October 6 and 7 were optimal from the standpoint of lunar light.

Before United States Army Special Forces teams could be attached to the various Northern Alliance forces, Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division officers needed to link with their leaders. At first, only one CIA unit, code named JAWBREAKER, was present, with the forces of Mohammed Fahim Khan, who had taken command of the Tajiks after al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9.

The Special Forces teams, under COL John Mulholland, waited at the K-2 base in Uzbekistan; for political reasons, Uzbekistan announced that it was assisting in humanitarian assistance and combat search and rescue. Air operations were controlled from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. AC-130 gunships and other fixed-wing support aircraft flew from Qatar.

Phase II

Large-scale overt air attacks started on October 7, 2001. The public name was , Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.

It took approximately 2 weeks before the first Special Forces team, Operational Detachment A (ODA) 595 joined General Dostum of the Northern Alliance. Just afterwards, two direct action operations took place. The first was a paratroop attack, by the 75th Ranger Regiment, to seize an airstrip coded Rhino. A second force, by a JSOC Special Mission Unit (SMU), was to attack the Kandahar headquarters of Mullah Omar. Rhino was to receive the first conventional ground combat unit, of U.S. Marines.

On October 30, GEN Franks met with Mohammed Fahim Khan, Gary Berntsen of the CIA. Franks set out his priorities: have the Northern Alliance forces of Dostum take the major Northern city of Mazar-e-Sarif, use it as a staging area to make a joint attack with Uzbek forces, now nder Berryelah Khan, to make a joint attack on Taloquan. Taking those cities would open an overland supply route to Uzbekistan. According to Bertsen, Franks wanted Fahim's forces, farther south on the Shomali Plains, to move west and cut off the escape of the Taliban in the north. Fahim argued that he wanted to move to take Kabul first. Bertsen saw Fahim's argument as poliitical; Franks restated his plan of Mazar-e-Sharif, Taloquan, and the Shomali Plains.

Franks also described the northern cities as priorities, after which the The Northern Alliance would then move to take Bagram Air Base, and then go from the Panshjir Valley to the Shomali Plains north of Kabul. He did not state Fahim's argument for Kabul as strongly as did Bertnsen. Fahim agreed not to enter Kabul without Franks' permission; Franks and the CIA supported Hamid Karzai, a Durrani Pashtun as the interim national leader, and did not want tribal conflict between Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance tribes. A day or two later, Berntsen and a Special Forces team talked to Fahim's forces on the Shomali Plains, and told them they could not have more airstrikes that were needed in the north.

The attack on Mazir-e-Sharif began on November 5; it was captured on November 10. The battle was a series of probes, by Northern Alliance horse cavalry until Taliban resistance was met, and then the Special Forces team called in air strikes. Cavalry charges immediately following airstrikes, if a mix of the centuries, were effective.

The Northern Alliance told the U.S. team, on the 10th, that Taliban were retreating into Konduz, taking human shields. As Berntsen put it, "when an Afghan who has been in combat half his life and has witnessed scores of atrocities tells you something is going to be bad, you listen." Cutting off the linkup became a high priority. Taliban leaders in Mazir-e-Sharif had negotiated a surrender of Konduz, with amnesty for Afghan Taliban but not for foreign fighters.

Phase III

Other ODAs linked up, and the Northern Alliance advanced, taking control of Kabul on November 13. Heavy fighting, however, continued.

Kandahar fell and Taliban moved, variously south to Tora Bora and north to the Kunduz area. On November 27, Rumsfeld asked Fransks for more detail on his Iraq planning.