The Afghan government managed to hold its ground at least to a degree until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the Soviet aid was significantly reduced [Barfield 2010, p 248].

After the PDPA government fell, the Mujahideen entered Kabul and established the Islamic State of Afghanistan, led by Burhanuddin Rabbani [Dorronsoro 2005, p 237]. However, in the distribution of roles in the future state amongst the Mujahideen, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar thought that him being offered the position of Prime Minister was not to his liking, and launched a years long attack on Kabul which claimed between 40 000 [Dorronsoro 2005, p 239] and 50 000 [Wahab, Youngerman 2010, p 209] lives.

The Mujahideen infighting continued while a new force was rising in Afghanistan and the neigbouring Pakistan. Under the rule of Zia ul Haq, Pakistani Deobandi madrasas took in a large number of Afghan refugee boys [Barfield 2010, p 255], offering free education and a place to stay [Wahab, Youngerman 2010, p 211]. Those young men coalesced around the leadership of a Pashtun Mullah called Mohammed Omar, dedicated to the return of Afghanistan to its „pure“ Salafi version, and were financed by Pakistan[Schaffer, 2006, p 267]. They entered Afghanistan from the south, and in a short time swept the country, eventually occupying a large part of it (except the North-East part of the country held by the Northern Alliance led by Rabbani and former defence minister Ahmad Shah Massoud). By September 1996, Afghanistan turned from the Islamic State of Afghanistan into the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, led by the Taliban, which lasted until December 2001.

Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan

Ten days after the terrorist attacks performed on September 11, 2001, by Al Qaeda, US president George W. Bush made a speech in the US Congress in which he addressed the Taliban with a statement in which he demanded the closure of terrorist camps and the non-negotiable surrender of Osama bin Laden.[3]

By late September, the CIA already had operatives in Afghanistan, coordinating with the Northern Alliance [Neville, Boujero, 2008, p 6], and by October 7, the airstrikes against Taliban targets began. The Taliban tried to negotiate the US demands: they ignored the calls to shut down Al Qaeda bases, demanded that US bombings of the country stop, and demanded proof that Osama bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks before extraditing him to a third country. Bush rejected the terms and carried on with his plans.[4]

Although the invasion and the subsequent war started as an American operation, the United Nations Security Council authorized a security mission to take place in Afghanistan. It was named the International Security Assistance Force, and it was established on December 20, 2001.[5] Over the years of operation, it included 28 NATO and 14 non-NATO countries.[6] NATO itself assumed control of ISAF in August 2003 [Berdal 2016, p 163]. The overall number of troops which rotated throughout the war is not known, but the size of deployed forces went up to 130 000 personell at times.[7]

From the start of the ISAF mission, the US generally continued to do primarilly offensive missions, with other ISAF personell engaging in security, support and training missions, although US personell participated in training missions, and other ISAF contributors participated in offensive missions.

The war in Afghanistan soon turned into what has been described as a "geopolitical black hole“ [Ali Shah 2008, p 57] After a fierce offensive by the US and other ISAF forces, the Taliban withdrew, only to return in an offensive of their own in 2003 [Gall 2014, 70]. After they lost their territory, they fell back into towns and villages and in 2003 they started emerging again and waged a guerilla warfare campaign against the international force, uniting with Hezb-e-Islami and Al Qaeda, from which they learned new guerilla tactics.[8]

The next few years were marked by a relative silence until 2006, when over the course of few years, the Taliban made a return in a series of large Summer offensives, with the one in 2006 being particularly violent. NATO involvement which after 2003 became larger than before, mainly because of the need of the United States to commit troops to their war in Iraq, was met with growing insurgency [Berdal 2016, p 165]. A series of NATO convoys were attacked in 2008 on their way from Pakistan in an apparent attempt by the Taliban to disrupt supply lines.[9]

With the arrival of Barack Obama at the position of the president of the United States, talks started of leaving Afghanistan one day. The path towards leaving Afghanistan started by adding more troops to the country [Berdal 2016, p 165], in what was called the „surge“ in order to overwhelm the enemy. The number of US troops rose up to around 100 000[10], and in 2009, a classified report leaked in which General Stanley McChrystal stated that a succesful operation in Afghanistan would require 500 000 troops over 5 years.[11] Officially and publicly, McChrystal asked for 40 000 troops and was granted 30 000. [Jha 2010, p 7] That had to do- the United States were by 2012 fully committed to leaving Afghanistan as soon as they could given the fact that the war has been long perceived as a heavy burden on the country, and given the fact that Osama bin Laden had been extrajudicially assassinated by US special forces in 2011 in Pakistan.[12]

However, the problem of the ANA and the ANP being trained to an unsatisfactory level persisted. Declassified data from 2014 states that the US overestimated the abilities of the ANA, which was shrinking in number due to desertions[13] while the ANP was, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, corrupt, with officers unable to guarantee if their subordinates are even coming to work.[14]

Despite the setbacks, the United States and ISAF forces decided to scale back their operations in Afghanistan. So, on December 28, 2014, Operation Enduring Freedom ended in Afghanistan, along with the ISAF mission. They were replaced by Operation Freedom's Sentinel and the Resolute Support mission, which took the back seat in the war against the Taliban, continuing to mainly train and support the ANA and ANP, while those two organization carry the bulk of fighting.