TLW's Afghanistan War Historyscope |
By T.L. Winslow (TLW), the Historyscoper™ |
© Copyright by T.L. Winslow. All Rights Reserved. |
Original Pub. Date: Nov. 1, 2012. Last Update: Sept. 12, 2023. |
Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to the Afghanistan War. Since I'm the one-and-only Historyscoper (tm), let me quickly bring you up to speed before you dive into my Master Historyscope.
Early in 329 B.C.E. blonde-blue Macedonian conqueror Alexander III the Great (-356 to -323) invades soggy Persian-held Sogdiana in C Asia SE of the super-salty (10%) Aral Sea between its filler-uppers the Oxus (Amu Darya) (S) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) (N) Rivers, and conquers the Persians under Spitamenes (Spitamaneh) (-370 to -328) with difficulty, then invades Afghanistan and captures Gandara (Kabul) (125 mi. E of the Khyber Pass), causing the Afghanis to resist with guerrilla fighting, which Alexander meets with scorch-and-burn tactics; he then detours NE through the Hindu Kush in the spring, and captures Arachosia in Mar.; meanwhile the pagan Kafirs in Kafiristan are formed by Greeks staying in the country, becoming an unconquerable region that is later used as the setting of Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King". Alexander allegedly founds the town of Kandahar (Candahar) (originally Alexandria) in Afghanistan 250 mi. SW of Kabul.
On Nov. 26, 1738 the Battle of Khyber (Kheibar) Pass is a decisive V for 10K Persians under Nader Shah and Nasrollah Mirza over the Mughal Empire, whose 20K-50K soldiers are wiped out; the Persians destroy Kandahar (Qandahar) in Afghanistan and occupies Ghazna, Kabul, and Peshawar.
In 1800 with British backing, Zaman Shah is captured and blinded by his brother
Mahmud Shah Durrani (1769-1829),
who becomes ruler of Afghanistan next year (until 1803, then 1809-18), facing family civil war, while vizier
Fateh Khan Barakzai (-1818),
eldest son of Barakzay clan head
Sardar Payinda (Payenda) Khan
and grandson of Jamil Khan Barakzay directs state affairs.
In Aug. 1839 the First Anglo-Afghan War
begins (ends 1842) when the British East India Co. sends an army to dethrone Dost Mohammed and replace him with
ousted Shah Shoja of the rival Sadozay clan of the Durranis, taking Kandahar and Kabul and installing him as their puppet.
The worst retreat in British history and it's where, the country that has not been conquered since Alexander the Great?
On Jan. 6, 1842 an uprising causes 4.5K British and 12K native auxiliaries under incompetent Scottish-born Maj. Gen.
William George Keith Elphinstone (1782-1842)
to decide to retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad 90 mi. away, but they are ambushed on Jan. 8 (Sat.) at the narrow (5-150 yd.)
Khoord-Kabul (Khyber) Pass (home of the Afridi tribe) by the Ghilzais border tribe under Mohammad Akbar Khan,
after which the remnants are wiped out on Jan. 13 near Gandamak, with one Brit, asst. surgeon
William Brydon (1811-73) allowed to escape to tell the other Brits the horror story;
the British keep a stiff upper lip and send more forces, force the pass in Sept. and seige Kabul; Shah Shoja is murdered, the British take Kabul, declare victory, and retreat,
er, leave on Oct. 11, allowing Dost Mohammed to return to power (until 1863), ending the First Anglo-Afghan War (begun 1839) - but not teaching the Euro powers any lessons?
On Feb. 21, 1879 exiled Afghani ruler Shir Ali dies; on May 26 Britain signs the Treaty of Gandamak
with his son and successor Mohammed Yaqub Khan (1849-1923) (until Oct. 12), forcing him to allow a permanent
British mission in Kabul, cede the Khyber Pass to British India, and surrender the country's external sovereignty to Britain; the British begin to build a new road through
"their" Khyber Pass (finished 1880), then make a mistake and withdraw their troops, only to have the British agent and his companions massacred by natives in Kabul;
the pissed-off British led by Maj. (later field marshal) Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832-1914)
return, take Kabul and depose Yaqub Khan on Oct. 12, then march to the relief of Kandahar; meanwhile on Oct. 12
Mohammad Ayub Khan (1857-1914) ("the Afghan Prince Charlie") becomes emir of Afghanistan (until May 31, 1880),
continuing the Second Anglo-Afghan War (begun 1878).
On July 22, 1880 British puppet Abdul Rahman (Abd-al-Rahman) (Abdur Rahman) Khan (1844-1901),
a nephew of Shir Ali becomes amir of Afghanistan; on Sept. 1 the British win the
Battle of Kandahar (Baba Wali),
ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War (begun 1878), then pull out of the country when the new Liberal Gladstone cabinet begins meeting, ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War (begun 1878), and leaving
Afghanistan as an independent state; the withdrawal is complete by next year; Rahman goes on to survive four civil wars and 100 revolts by increasing the size and funding of the army and
centralizing control, while the British provide him with military supplies; he also builds bridges and roads to help unify his control.
On Sept. 12, 1897 the Battle of Saragarhi in the North-West Frontier Province of British India (modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan)
sees 21 British Sikh soldiers make a last stand to the death against 10K madass Afghans; on Sept. 14 a British Indian contingent recaptures the post; Sikhs begin celebrating Saragarhi Day on Sept. 12.
On Feb. 20, 1919 Habibullah Khan (b. 1901) is murdered while on a hunting trip in Afghanistan, and his conservative-backed anti-British brother
Nasrullah Khan (1875-1920) is proclaimed emir, but Habibullah's 3rd son
Amanullah Khan (1892-1960) gets army backing and becomes emir of Afghanistan
almost immediately (until 1929) (king in 1926), then gets in a war with Britain and India in an attempt to strengthen his independence
while trying to modernize and Westernize, stirring resentment from the Young Afghans; in May the
Third Anglo-Afghan War begins (ends 1921), with Afghan troops invading the Indian frontier
but soon driven back, and an armistice signed at the end of May; on Aug. 8 the
Treaty of Rawalpindi
causes the British to formally recognize Afghan sovereignty while terminating their annual subsidies; this time the Brits begin turning
the well-travelled Khyber Pass into a 2-lane automobile road, which is completed after the war ends.
On Nov. 22, 1921 the Treaty of Kabul (Anglo-Afghan Treaty) of 1921
secures full formal independence for Afghanistan; the Third Anglo-Afghan War (begun 1919) ends, and Afghanistan is made safe for Westerners once again.
On Apr. 9, 1923 Afghanistan proclaims the 1923 Afghan Constitution,
giving the emir all executive powers and the right to appoint half of the legislature, which has mainly consultative functions.
In 1924 Afghanistan promulgates a new penal code which incl. secular law aspects,
pissing off the religious establishment, which considers it an attempt to invade their turf.
In July 1928 Afghan emir Amanullah begins Turkish and Persian-inspired reforms, incl. military conscription, modernization, and secular education,
funded by a new tax on men; he then really pisses the Muslims off by opposing their favorite women keep-downs of veiling and polygamy, and
rubs it in by forcing all Afghans residing in or visiting Kabul to wear Western dress; in Nov. a revolt begins, and his days are numbered.
On Jan. 14, 1929 Afghan emir Amanullah resigns in favor of his older brother
Inayatullah Khan Seraj
(1888-1946), who abdicates on Jan. 17 after a coup by Tajik bandit
tribesman Habibullah Kalakani (referred to by his Pashtun enemies as
Bacha-i Saqao, or "son of a water-carrier"), who declares himself emir
under the name Habibullah Ghazi (1890-1929) and rules until Oct. 13, when the Musabihan brothers,
led by army CIC Gen. Mohammed (Muhammad) Nadir Khan (1880-1933) occupy Kabul and seize power, declaring Nadir as emir on
Oct. 16 and executing Habibullah on Nov. 3; the new emir reconciles with Amanullah's opponents, but sticks to a modernization program,
promising to move more slowly and not mess with Muslim sacred cows; Amanullah flees to Rome and abdicates next year, plotting a comeback.
On Oct. 31, 1931 Afghanistan promulgates a new 1931 Afghan Constitution,
establishing a bicameral parliament consisting of an elected lower house (3-year terms) and royally-appointed upper house, with all executive powers vested in the king, who has veto power;
the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam is the officially established religion, with the legislature bound to obey it in legislation, the courts in its rulings, and the king in his duties;
the constitution doesn't mention women; in practice the lower house members are also chosen by the king, who uses the parliament to keep tribal leaders in Kabul during the summer months
so they won't cause trouble back home.
On Nov. 8, 1933 king (since Oct. 16, 1929) Mohammed Nadir Shah (b. 1880) is assassinated in revenge for his execution of a political figure
last year, and his son Mohammed (Muhammad) Zahir Shah (1914-2007)
succeeds him as king of Afghanistan (until July 17, 1973), with his two paternal uncles sharing the position of PM and running the govt.,
beginning with Mohammad Hashim Khan (1885-1953) (Nov. 14, 1929-May 1946),
who continues Nadir Shah's policies, followed in May 1946-Sept. 7, 1953 by Shah Mahmud Khan (1890-1953);
meanwhile the king's cousin, exiled king Amanullah unsuccessfully plots to regain the throne from exile in Rome, eventually enlisting German aid - no Ark of the Covenant, no deal?
In 1934 Afghanistan is admitted to the League of Nations.
In 1936 the Fakir of Ipi (-1960)
begins a revolt in Waziristan,
keeping it up until Britain leaves in 1947 despite 40K troops being used to catch him.
On Sept. 7, 1953 Sardar Mohammed Daoud (Daud) Khan) (1910-78),
cousin of Zahir Shah becomes PM of Afghanistan (until Mar 10, 1963).
On Dec. 18, 1955 the Soviets and Afghans extend their non-aggression treaty by 10 years.
In Mar. 1956 Afghanistan implements its first Commie-style Five-Year Plan.
In 1959 the Afghan govt. issues a decree making veiling optional for women, and pretty much bans it among
female state employees and female relatives of high govt. officials; meanwhile E Afghanistan is rocked by tribal revolts.
On Mar. 10, 1963 King (since 1933) Zahir Shah of Afghanistan forces the
resignation of PM (since 1953) Muhammad Daoud, and ends 30 years of
rule by relatives in the office of PM, appointing former minister of mines
Mohammad Yusuf Khan (1917-98)
as new PM (until Nov. 2, 1965), then taking over personally and embarking on a liberalization program
while simultaneously allying with the Soviets.
On Oct. 2, 1964 a new
1964 Afghan Constitution
is promulgated in Afghanistan, with king Muhammed Zahir Shah retaining
extensive powers, along with a bicameral legislature which appoints a
cabinet; women are granted the vote - baby let me see you smile?
On Jan. 1, 1965 the People's Dem. Party of Afghanistan,
its first Communist org. is founded by Nur Muhammad Taraki (1913-71) and
Babrak Karmal (1929-96).
On Aug. 26-Sept. 24, 1965 the first parliamentary elections are held in Afghanistan, without activity by political parties - if you give them an inch they'll take a mile?
On Oct. 29 after a new legislature is elected and an impasse over approval of the cabinet brings student riots, killing three, journalist and senior diplomat
Mohammad Hashim (Hashem) Maiwandwal (1919-73),
known for his advocacy of evolutionary Socialism becomes PM of Afghanistan (until Oct. 1967),
replacing Mohammed Yousef; he quickly pacifies the students but makes their wiggle-room limits clear.
In 1966 305-mi. U.S.-funded gravel-asphalt
Afghanistan Eisenhower Highway
between Kabul and Kandahar opens, reducing travel time to 6.5 hours; by 1996 after Soviet tanks use it, the road deteriorates so much that
the trip takes 23 hours, after which the U.S. rebuilds
it in 2002-3 for $250M.
In 1971 the worst drought in Afghan history begins (ends 1972), killing 100K - why
should anybody care about that remote corner of the world?
On July 17, 1973 after drought and famine, plus rebellions by Pashto tribes
along the Pakistan border, the govt. of king (since 1933)
Mohammed Zahir Shah
(1914-2007) of Afghanistan is bloodlessly overthrown by the
king's brother-in-law and first cousin (former PM)
Mohammed Daoud Khan
(1910-78) with 1K Soviet-trained troops while the
king is vacationing the island of Ischia near Naples, and abdicates on
Aug. 24 in the Afghan embassy in Rome, becoming Afghanistan's
last shah (until ?); Khan proclaims a repub. backed by leftists,
then suspends the constitution of 1964, abolishes all royal titles
incl. his own, and declares himself pres. and PM, going on to crush
the emerging Islamic movement; the shah returns from exile in 2002,
and is given the title "Father of the Nation".
On May 1, 1975 Afghanistan nationalizes its banks.
On Feb. 2, 1977 the 1977 Afghan Constitution
is proclaimed.
On Apr. 27, 1978 the Afghan Communist Rev.
begins with the pro-Soviet leftist Saur Revolt (Great Saur Rev.);
Pres. Mohammad Daoud Khan (b. 1910) is executed along with several fallen govt. leaders, and on Apr. 30 the Marxist Dem. Repub. of Afghanistan is proclaimed,
with Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917-79) installed as pres. and PM (until Sept. 14, 1979),
and Babrak Karmal as deputy PM, becoming the first country in South Asia to fall while under Communist rule, although it's to other Commies; on Dec. 5 Taraki
and the Soviets sign a 20-year Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness,
incl. Soviet military assistance, which the Soviets later use as their pretext for invasion; meanwhile the Muslim pop. in the countryside
won't go with atheistic Communism or secular govt., and stick to Sharia despite mass arrests and executions, causing mujahideen forces to
gear up to topple them, and in June the Afghan Muslim fundamentalist guerrilla
Mujahidin (Mujahideen) Movement
is born, launching the Afghanistan War (ends ?) - we're baack?
In 1978 Raytheon Missile Systems begins fielding the shoulder-fired solid-fuel Mach 2 (1.5K mph)
FIM-92 Stinger
infrared homing surface-to-air missile (first tested in 1975), which goes on to fame in Afghanistan (and the crash of TWA Flight 800) after debuting
on May 21, 1982 in the Falklands War; after the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, the U.S. spends $55M trying to buy them back, obtaining about 300 of ?.
On Feb. 14, 1979 Adolph "Spike" Dubs (b. 1920), Russian-speaking U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan is kidnapped
in Kabul by Muslim extremists, and later killed in a shootout with the police.
On Sept. 14, 1979 after visiting Moscow on Mar. 20 and meeting with Leonid Brezhnev to request Soviet ground troops and 300K tons of wheat, Marxist Afghan pres. #3
(since Apr. 30, 1978) Nur Muhammad Taraki (b. 1913) after a brutal reign that killed 15K-45K is murdered on the orders of his rival PM Idi, er, Marxist
Ghilzai Pahstun Hafizullah Amin (b. 1929),
who becomes pres. #4 of Afghanistan (2nd Commie pres.), and announces the death of Taraki due to an "undisclosed illness"; after causing thousands of
Afghans to flee to Iran and Pakistan to organize mujahideen resistance to the atheistic infidel Commie regime (the ones in Peshawar, Pakistan being described
by the Islam history ignoramus Western press as freedom fighters), and trying to play both sides by claiming that the Saur Rev. is based on the principles of
Islam and handing out Qurans and invoking Allah's name in speeches, pissing the Muslims off more, and trying to ally with Pakistan and the U.S. and/or China and
Pashtunize the country, pissing the Soviets off, the KGB assassinates Amin on Dec. 27, issuing disinfo. that he was a CIA agent.
On Dec. 24, 1979 after fearing that it is in danger of being toppled by Islamic mujahideen forces, 85K Soviet troops of the 40th Army invade and seize
control of Afghanistan; on Dec. 27 Pres. Hafizullah Amin is assassinated by the KGB, and Babrak Karmal (1929-96)
becomes puppet pres. #5 of Afghanistan (3rd Commie) (until Nov. 24, 1986), beginning the Soviet-Afghan War
(ends Feb. 15, 1989), in which 13K-15K Soviet soldiers and 1M Afghans are killed, 35,478 Soviet solders are wounded and 311 go MIA, and 3M civilian refugees flee
to Pakistan and Iran; by 1985 the Soviets have 120K troops in Afghanistan after 8K deaths and 25K casualties, while the CIA believes they needed 500K troops to win;
fear of Communism trumping fear of resurgent Islam, the U.S. backs the mujahideen, giving them $600M a year, along with matching funds from the Persian Gulf states
incl. Saudi Arabia, and more support from China and the U.K.; the U.S. gives them hundreds of FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles in 1985-6;
to keep them from the Soviets, treasures from the Afghan Nat. Museum in Kabul are locked in a basement vault on the grounds of the pres. palace, with the secret
"key holders" guarding the key until 2003, incl. the 1st cent. C.E. Bactrian Gold,
discovered in a burial ground in the Karakum Desert in 1978 by Soviet archeologist
Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi (1929-).
On Jan. 2, 1980 Pres. Carter asks the Senate to delay ratification of the arms treaty in response to the Soviet action in Afghanistan.
On Jan. 4 in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pres. Carter announces a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics and a partial (not covered
by the 1975 agreement) 17M metric ton embargo of U.S. grain sales to the Soviet Union, which has its 2nd straight bad harvest, causing Argentina to
take up the slack; later in Jan. Coca-Cola announces that it will substitute high-fructose corn syrup for half the sucrose because of Carter's embargo,
which causes lower U.S. corn prices, helping them offset higher sugar prices which reach 24 cents per lb. by June, up 60% from 1979.
On Jan. 13 the U.S. offers Pakistan a 2-year aid plan to counter the Soviet threat in Afghanistan; on Jan. 14 the U.N. votes 104-18 to deplore the Soviet acts in Afghanistan.
On Feb. 22 Afghanistan declares martial law.
On June 22 the Soviet Union announces a partial withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.
On July 2 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pres. Carter signs
Proclamation 4771,
requiring 18-to-25-y.-o. males to register for the military draft.
On July 27, 1980 after watching a CBS-TV special with Dan Rather in a stripper-filled hot tub at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and hearing that Soviet troops have been
booby-trapping children's toys with explosives in Afghanistan (and worrying about the Soviet Union gaining access to the Persian Gulf),
well-positioned Trinity, Tex.-born U.S. rep. (D-Tex.) (1973-97) Charles Nesbitt "Charlie" Wilson (1933-2010),
member of the House Appropriations Committee (a womanizing boozer AKA Good Time Charlie, whose all-female staff is called Charlie's Angels)
gets religion, visits refugee camps in Pakistan in fall 1982, survives a federal investigation into cocaine drug use in summer 1983, and with the help
of Houston, Tex. lobbyist Joanne King Herring (1929-) (Zsa-Zsa Gabor lookalike?) and
U.S. rep. (D-Md.) (1963-85) Clarence Dickinson "Doc" Long (1908-94),
chmn. of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the House Appropriations Committee begins pumping up funding for the CIA operation in Afghanistan, starting
with $40M in 1983, fighting CIA reluctance to get the U.S. into a war with the Soviets and going on to funnel $1B into the mujahideen war against the Soviets, assisted by
Swiss-born neocon U.S. under-secy. of defense for policy (1981-88) Fred Charles (Fritz Karl) Ikle (Iklé) (1924-2011) in
getting Pres. Reagan on Feb. 18, 1986 to overrule the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff and order the release 35-lb. shoulder-mounted heat-seeking Raytheon FIM-92 Stinger missiles to
shoot down Soviet Mi-24 Hind helis to mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (1947-),
1977 founder of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG),
and issuing the soundbyte: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones"; on Sept. 26, 1986
the first three Hinds are shot down, and the Stingers turn the tide, causing the helis to have to raise their ceiling, and after 100+ helis are shot down the Soviets finally pull out on Feb. 15, 1989 after 10 years;
too bad, the U.S. leaves the devastated Afghanis unsupported with economic or military aid, causing the Muslim fundamentalists to take over, later
using the training and weapons against the U.S., causing Charlie to issue the soundbyte "These things happened and they were glorious, but we fucked up the endgame";
Hekmatyar goes on to become PM of Afghanistan in 1993-4 and 1996, then after aiding al-Qaida he is designated an internat. terrorist on Feb. 19, 2003 by the U.S. State Dept.
On Aug. 22, 1981 five Afghan resistance groups form the Mujahideen Alliance, which by 1985 is up to seven groups, called the
Islamic Unity of Afghanistan (Seven Party) (Peshawar Seven) Mujahidin (Mujahideen) Alliance,
dedicated to kicking the Soviets out of Afghanistan and even seeking
representation in the U.N.
On Mar. 8, 1982 the U.S. accuses the Soviets of killing 3K Afghans with poison gas - twenty
years later they might have praised them for it?
On Aug. 4 Taliban-aligned Afghanis on orders of Pakistan and financed by the
U.S. attack the Soviet embassy in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
wounding two soldiers and capturing two more.
On Oct. 22 Afghan jihadists fire U.S.-supplied rockets into the
Soviet embassy
in Kabul, becoming the first major attack on it since the Dec. 1979 invasion.
On Nov. 3 the
Salang Tunnel Fire
in C Afghanistan is caused by a Soviet two fuel convoys colliding, killing
up to 2.7K, which is covered-up by the Soviets.
On Nov. 4-6 Afghan fighters blow up the Soviet oil pipeline near
Bagram Air Base N of Kabul, and another at
Dash-e-Qalagi in N Samangan Province bordering
the Soviet Union.
On Mar. 21, 1983 U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan
meets with
leaders of the Taliban, praising them as "valiant and courageous
Afghan freedom fighters", and uttering the Islam history ignoramus
soundbyte
that they are the "moral equivalent of America's Founding Fathers" - does he
know who's rolling over in Washington's tomb?
In 1984 Maktab al-Khidamat,
AKA the Afghan Services Bureau is founded by
Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) and his mentor
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
(1941-89) (who persuaded him to come to Afghanistan) to recruit and fund
foreign mujahidin for the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, with
offices in the
Al Kifah Refugee Center
in Brooklyn N.Y. and the
Islamic Center of Tucson, Ariz.; after Azzam
breaks with bin Laden over use of assets for a global jihad, he is
assassinated on Nov. 24, 1989, and bin Laden absorbs the org. into al-Qaida
(founded 1988).
On May 4, 1986 Afghan PM (since 1979) Babrak Karmal is removed by the Soviets,
and replaced by Communist Party secy.-gen. Najib Ahmadzai, AKA
Mohammed (Muhammad) Najibullah
(1947-96), who becomes the 4th and last Commie pres. of Afghanistan
next Sept. 30 (until Apr. 16, 1992).
On Nov. 13 a
Soviet Politburo meeting on Afghanistan
features Mikhail Gorbachev uttering the soundbyte:
"We have been fighting in Afghanistan for six years already. If the approach is not changed, we will continue to fight for another 20-30 years...
Are we going to fight endlessly as a testimony that our troops are not able to deal with the situation? We need to finish this process as
soon as possible."
On Feb. 4, 1987 Afghan women's rights activist
Meena Keshwar Kamal (b. 1956)
(founder of the Rev. Assoc. of the Women of Afghanistan) is assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan by Afghan KGB (KHAD) agents.
On Jan. 6, 1988 Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze is quoted by the
Afghan news agency as saying that the Kremlin wants to pull an estimated
115K soldiers from Afghanistan in the coming year starting in May.
On Apr. 14 the
Geneva Accords,
a U.N.-mediated agreement is signed by Pakistan and Afghanistan, with
the U.S. and Soviet Union as guarantors, pledging that Afghanistan
will become a nonaligned country, and providing for the withdrawal of
all Soviet troops from Afghanistan by Feb. 15, 1989; the mujahadin
rebels reject the pact and continue fighting with the U.S.-backed guerrillas.
On May 15 the Soviet Union begins withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan
8.5 years after Soviet forces had come looking to kick mujahidin butt
(ends Feb. 15); on May 18 a cheering crowd in the Soviet town of
Termez
greets the first returning Soviet soldiers.
In 1988 the pesky infidel Soviets out of the way in Afghanistan with infidel U.S. help,
multimillionaire Saudi financer and Sunni Wahhabi Muslim anti-Crusader freedom fighter
Osama (Usama) (Arab. "lion") bin Laden
(1957-2011) founds
Al-Qaida (Al-Qaeda)
(Arab. "the [Data] Base") to support Muslim terrorist activity worldwide;
the name originally refers to a center for processing Arab volunteers to
fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan?
On Jan. 26, 1989 after Pakistani gen.
Hamid Gul
(1936-) diverts mujahideen fighting the Soviet-Afghan War to start an
uprising in East Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir in N India, the
Indian flag is raised in Kashmir, causing India to send paramilitary
troops; Gul goes on to become the "Father of the Taliban".
On Jan. 30 the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan closes.
On Feb. 15 the Soviet Union announces the pullout of the last of its troops
from Afghanistan, and begins unilateral withdrawal of troops from
Eastern Europe.
In May Afghanistan guerrillas elect
Sibghatullah Mojadidi
as head of their govt.-in-exile.
On Oct. 4, 1990 Tarin Kot,
capital of Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan falls to Muslim guerrillas
after they shoot down 95 Afghan soldiers who had surrendered;
two weeks later another 125 soldiers are murdered while negotiating the
surrender of Qalat, capital of neighboring Zabul Province.
In 1990 the militant Islamist org. Lashkar-e-Taiba
(Army of the Pure or Righteous) is founded in Afghanistan by Pakistani univ. prof.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (1950-)
and Zafar Iqbal (1955-),
with HQ in Muridke (near Lahore), Pakistan; it operates under cover of the
Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (Jamaat-ud-Dawa)
charitable org., which the U.N. Security Council declares a terrorist front group on Dec. 11, 2008.
In Apr. 1991 after offering the services of his Afghan mujahadeen fighters to Saudi regent
Abdullah against Sadam Hussein, only to have him accept 500K U.S. troops instead,
Osama bin Laden calls the Saudi govt. traitors and flees, moving to Pakistan, then to Sudan (until 1996).
On Apr. 15, 1992 the Mujahidin Alliance in Afghanistan deposes Muhammad Najibullah, who resigns on
Apr. 16; on Apr. 22-24 Kabul is taken without resistance, and an interim govt. takes power
until the June 28 election of
Burhanuddin Rabbani (1940-2011)
as pres. by the people, er, a supreme council of rebel leaders (until Sept. 27, 1996); on Dec. 30
an electoral assembly confirms him, but opponents charge the election with being rigged.
In Jan. 1994 the Sunni Muslim
Taliban
("student") movement, founded by 1-eyed Mullah
Mohammed Omar
(1959-) in the S Afghanistan province of Kandahar from members of the
40M-member Pashtun tribal group rapidly advances against Rabbani's govt.,
and launches bombing raids in Kabul.
On Nov. 8 the U.N. secy.-gen. presents a
Report on Human Rights in Afghanistan,
detailing the horrible retro Islamic Sharia system of the Taliban.
On Feb. 22, 1995 Afghan pres. Rabbani refuses to relinquish power to an interim
council as proposed by the U.N.; deputy PM (former mujahideen against the Soviets)
(former engineering student at Colo. State U.)
Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai
(1944-) becomes acting PM (until June 26, 1996), then flees Afghanistan in
Sept. 1996 as the Taliban is about to capture Kabul, returning after the
fall of the Taliban in 2001, and brokering a meeting between the Taliban and
U.S. Brig. Gen. Edward M. Reeder in summer 2009. where they agree to cut
al-Qaida loose but won't accept U.S. access to three airbases.
In Mar. the
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAPI),
funded by the Asian Development Bank to pipe natural gas from the
Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, S Afghanistan, and Pakistan into India is launched;
too bad, the Taliban nixes it in Aug. 2001, pissing off the U.S., and after they
invade and oust them, the new Afghan govt. reinstates the project.
On Sept. 27 Taliban forces in Afghanistan capture
Hierat.
In May 1996 Sudan under U.S. and Saudi pressure expels Osama bin Laden, who
after an invitation from Northern Alliance leader
Utad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf (1946-)
moves back to Afghanistan and sets up shop with his
Al-Qaida (Al-Qaeda) al-Jihad
("the base or foundation of holy war") terrorist org., which is organized
into cells worldwide.
On Sept. 25-26, 1996 Kabul, Afghanistan is captured by the ultra-medieval throwback
Pakistan-backed Taliban after a 2-day siege which kills hundreds;
the warlords flee, incl.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
who later aids al-Qaida in fighting the U.S.-backed regime of
Hamid Karzai, getting designated an internat. terrorist by the U.S.
State Dept. on Feb. 19, 2003, and
Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953-2011),
whose Sunni Sufi views don't jive with the Taliban, making him join the
resistance; meanwhile many of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami
Gulbuddin warlords switch to the Taliban; on Sept. 26 Taliban founder
Mohammad Rabbani
(1956-2001) (no relation) becomes the new Afghan PM (until 2001); on
Sept. 27 the Taliban force Pres. Burhanuddin Rabbani out of power,
and begin reenacting medieval Islamic Sharia law incl. stoning, hand
severing, and the suppression of women, who are ordered out of schools and
workplaces and told to stay home; former Soviet-backed pres. Muhammad Najibullah
is hanged in the soccer stadium along with his brother;
men are told not to shave or trim their beards; meanwhile Afghanistan
comes to the brink of starvation.
Furthermore I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued?
On Feb. 23, 1998 at a press conference in Khost, Afghanistan, fundamentalist
(fanatic) Islam's new Robin Hood
Osama bin Laden
(1957-2011) announces the formation of the
World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,
which he says has a duty to "kill Americans and their allies", with a single-minded
purpose of driving the U.S. out of the Middle East and destroying Israel;
later the real plan to Islamize the entire Earth by violence leaks out?;
"In compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all
Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and
military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can, in any country
in which it is possible. We with Allah's help call on every Muslim who
believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded, to comply with Allah's order
to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they
find it. Unless you go forth, Allah will punish you with a grievous penalty,
and put others in your place"; Mullah Muhammad Omar puts bin Laden into strict isolation
to keep him from carrying out plots against the U.S., and tries to get a ruling by the Afghan supreme court that he is guilty of the U.S. embassy bombings on
Aug. 7 in order to turn him over to the govt. of Saudi Arabia?; by 2001 up to 75% of all Muslims sympathize with the idea of supporting
"jihad"; meanwhile, the stupid, er, wise Euro and U.S. authorities accept mobs of Islamic immigrants, thinking they can integrate them into their
tolerant societies, but only creating a fifth column? - stay tuned for terror?
On Apr. 17 the Taliban and other Islamists waging civil war in Afghanistan agree to a ceasefire; too bad, the Taliban begins
slaughtering thousands of Afghan Shiites (until 2002).
In May ABC News reporter John Miller (1958-) conducts an interview with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
That's Ninety-Eight for Nairobi, Two Thousand One for Twin Tower Fun?
On Aug. 7 the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings
see simultaneous al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; the Nairobi blast kills 224, incl. 12 Americans,
and injures 5K; the Dar es Salaam blast kills 11 Africans, and injures 72; suspicions lead to Osama bin Laden, who, on Oct. 7 is
claimed by the London-based Arabic newspaper
al-Hayat to have acquired nuclear weapons from Soviet Central Asian countries; on Nov. 4 a multi-million-dollar
reward, the first of many is
placed on his head by the U.S.; on Aug. 20 the U.S. retailiates by sending cruise missiles
to pound terrorist camps in Sudan and Afghanistan (SE of Kabul), hoping to score payback and kill Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida associates, but he is tipped-off
by Pakistani intelligence and escapes three hours before the attack; on Aug. 20 U.S. cruise missiles destroy the
El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and later U.S. officials lamely claim it was involved
in the manufacture of chemical weapons; on Aug. 22 concrete barriers are positioned around the Washington Monument, just in case;
four low-level bin Laden followers (a Lebanese, a Saudi, a Jordanian and a Tanzanian) are apprehended in Africa and extradited to the U.S., where
in 2001 they are all convicted in a New York federal court for their roles in the bombings and sentenced to life; Egyptian-born
Ali Mohammed al-Amriki (Arab. "the American") (1952-), a Muslim double agent mole who worked
for the CIA and U.S. special forces and trained al-Qaida fighters incl. El Sayyid Nosair (murderer of Rabbi Kahane) is charged with the bombings, and
pleads guilty in Oct. 2000; Tanzanian-born Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (1974-)
is captured in 2004 and held in Guantanamo Bay, and on Nov. 17, 2010 acquitted of 284 of 285 charges, and convicted only of conspiracy to destroy U.S. property, receiving
a 20-year sentence, dashing Obama admin. plans to prosecute Islamic terrorists in civil rather than military courts; his lengthy confession was
suppressed?
On Aug. 8 the Taliban wins a V in Mazar-i Sharif
in N Afghanistan, followed on Aug. 11 by Taloqan,
the last major city to fall to them, after which they take more territory
along the Uzbekistan border on Aug. 12, giving them control of over 90%
of Afghanistan; the other 10% in the N along the Tajikistan border is held
by the Northern Alliance (United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan),
headed by Ahmad (Ahmed) Shah Massoud
(1953-2001), AKA "the Lion of Panjshir"; on Aug. 8 nine Iranian diplomats
are killed in a consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, causing Iran on Sept. 10
to announce that it holds the Taliban responsible.
On Sept. 10 Iran sends 200K troops to the Afghan border.
On Sept. 24 Saudi Arabia recalls its envoy from Kabul and expel's
Afghanistan's chief ambassador from Riyadh, accusing that country of
harboring arch-enemy Osama bin Laden.
On Feb. 10, 1999 after decided to prevent him from contacting foreigners, the Taliban sends a group of 10 gunmen to replace the bodyguards of
Osama bin Laden, causing a gunfight; on Feb. 13 they take control of his compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan and take away his satellite phone.
On Mar. 14, 1999 secret U.N. talks
in Turkmenistan end in an accord that "in principle" Afghanistan will soon be ruled by a coalition govt.; this doesn't stop the Taliban,
which continues through the year, beginning a major offensive on July 28 to attempt to gain control of the remaining 10% of the well-bearded country.
On Nov. 14 the U.S. and U.N. tighten economic sanctions on Afghanistan for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden, freezing foreign assets,
which sparks anti-U.N. riots across Afghanistan.
On Dec. 24 al-Qaida-connected Pakistani Muslim terrorists hijack Indian Airlines Flight 814 (Airbus A300)
en route from Kathmandu to Delhi with 189 aboard, forcing it to land in Afghanistan, then using the Taliban to negotiate the release of terrorists
Maulana Masood Azhar (1968-), British-born Pakistani militant (with high Pakistani govt. connections)
Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (1973-), and
Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar (1967-), who all go on to be harbored by the Taliban and Pakistan govt. and
engage in terrorism against the U.S. despite U.S. secy. of state (1997-2001)
Madeleine Korbel Albright (1937-) telling Congress that she is "concerned about the fact that groups...
involved in the recent hijacking... operate in Pakistan" and "We have been concerned about Pakistan's support for the Taliban, who are in turn closely
linked to Osama bin Laden"; thanks to lame U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton and his soft-on-Muslim-terrorists policy, Ahzar, founder of the Pakistani terrorist group
Jaish-e-Muhammad
with the goal of separating Kashmir from India later helps kidnap and murder U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002; Sheikh became Osama bin Laden's
"special son", and Oct. 6, 2001 it is revealed that he wired $100K from the UAE to 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta, then on Nov. 28, 2008 tries to start a war
between Pakistan and India by calling billionaire Pakistan pres. (2008-) Asif Ali Zardari (1955-)
from prison and pretending to be Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee; in Dec. 1989 Zargar founded the Pakistani Islamic terrorist group
Al Umar Mujahideen,
a subgroup of Lashkar-e-Omar, which also helps with the Daniel Pearl murder.
In Mar. 2000 CIA agent (1982-2005) Gary Berntsen
is sent to Afghanistan to capture a senior al-Qaida leader; too bad, the mission is called off, pissing off Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who says that the U.S.
is "not serious"; after 9/11 he returns with a new mission to eliminate al-Qaida completely, only to be backstabbed by the Pakistan ISI.
On July 6 U.S. gen. Tommy Ray Franks (1945-) succeeds Gen. Anthony Zinny as cmdr. of the U.S. Central Command
(until July 7, 2003), overseeing a 25-country region incl. the Middle East, and going on to lead the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
On Sept. 6 the Taliban captures the Northern Alliance HQ of Taloqan, Afghanistan, and on Sept. 7 requests the U.N.
to recognize it as the official Afghan govt.; the U.N. Security Council responds on Dec. 19 by voting 13-0-2 (China, Malaysia) for
Resolution 1333 to recall all resolutions on Afghanistan, tighten diplomatic sanctions,
and impose an arms embargo, repeating its demands for extradition of Osama bin Laden - french me a fry, bring me a nut, kashmir me, I won't comply?
On Jan. 8, 2001 the Taliban orders the death penalty for anyone who converts from Islam to a different religion in Afghanistan; the same day they
massacre 300 unarmed Shiite Hazaras in Yakaolang - pissing the Shiite out of Iran?
On Jan. 19 U.N. sanctions against Afghanistan begin following a 30-day deadline for the handover of Osama bin Laden by the Taliban; meanwhile
Afghanistan has its worst drought in 30 years.
On Jan. 29 110 Afghan refugees freeze to death in camps near the W city of
Herat.
On Mar. 21 the Taliban blows up the two 1,500-y.-o.
Buddhas of Bamyan,
one 125 ft. (world's tallest) and the other 115 ft. in
Bamiyan, Afghanistan,
143 mi. NW of Kabul (on the ancient Silk Road); the region was once
a center of Buddhism but now has 400K Persian-speaking education-loving
mostly Shiite
Hazaras,
which the Taliban has been persecuting since 1996.
In June Taliban leader Mullah Omar gives an interview to journalist
Arnaud de Borchgrave
in which he says that Osama bin Laden had given a written pledge to
him not to use his base in Afghanistan to launch any attacks against
the U.S.; the 9/11 attack starts a split?
On Sept. 9 Afghan anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Group leader ("the Lion of Panjshir")
Ahmad Shah Massoud (b. 1953)
is assassinated in Takhar Province by two Tunisian-born Belgian al-Qaida members incl.
Abdessatar Dahmane (Dahmane Abd al-Sattar) (-2011),
who pose as journalists, and are promptly killed; Dahmane's Moroccan-born Belgian wife
Malika El Aroud (1959-)
marries Tunisian-born al-Qaida member
Moez Garsalloui (1967-);
in June 2007 they are convicted in Switzerland of running a number of al-Qaida
propaganda Web sites.
On Sept. 11, 2001 (Tues.) the
9/11 Attacks
see the New York City skyline changed after 19 lowdown cowardly stinking crazed
Satan-controlled Muslim raghead jihad terrorist scumbags (incl. 15 Saudis)
hijack four U.S.
commercial airliners and take over the unprotected cabins, using flying lessons
given them in the U.S. to steer and
crash into the twin towers
of the World Trade Center (WTC)
(dedicated in Apr. 1973), and also the
Pentagon;
Am. Airlines Flight 11
(Boeing 767) from Boston to Los Angeles hits the
North Tower at 8:46:26 a.m. with a direct hit that disables all the elevators;
actor Tony Perkins' wife
Berinthia "Berry" Berenson Perkins
(b. 1948) is on Flight 11;
United Airlines Flight 175
(Boeing 767) from Boston to Los Angeles hits the South Tower at
9:02:54 a.m. at an angle, permitting people to escape;
Am. Airlines Flight 77
from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles hits the SW face of the Pentagon
at 9:43 a.m. on the 60th anniv. of its groundbreaking; it was really a
U.S.-launched missile,
and was covered-up?; Pres. Bush first informs the nation of "an apparent
terrorist attack on our country" at 9:30 from the school; at 9:45 a.m. the
FAA grounds all civilian domestic and internat. flights to/from the U.S.,
although an El Al
(Boeing 747) flight is allowed to take from JFK Airport to Tel Aviv at 4:11 p.m.;
commercial flights resume on Sept. 13, followed by private flights on Sept. 14; on
Sept. 20 a flight
containing Bin Laden family members is allowed to leave the U.S., carrying
four Americans; on
Sept. 11 NBC-TV commentator Tom Brokaw answers a speculation by Matt Laurer
with "This is war. This is a declaration and execution of an attack on the United States",
later chanting "War! War!"; "When I saw the second airplane hit, I knew jihad has come to
America" (Nonie Darwish); the South Tower implodes at 9:59:04 a.m., followed by the North Tower
at 10:28:31 a.m., after the jet fuel ignites tons of paper, which causes
internal temps as high as 2K F; Pres. Bush is informed of the South Tower
crash at 9:07 a.m. by White House chief of staff
Andrew Hill "Andy" Card Jr.
(1947-) while visiting with 2nd grade (mainly black) students at
Emma E. Booker Elementary School
in Sarasota, Fla., and turns red, but stays with the kids, reading aloud from
the children's story
The Pet Goat
(by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner) with them;
United Air Lines Flight 93
from Newark, N.J. to San Francisco carrying 37 passengers and 7 crew crashes at 10:10 a.m. in Somerset County, Penn. (80 mi. SE of Pittsburgh
and 150 mi. NW of Washington, D.C.) as the 33 all-American passengers fight back
against the four ragheads instead of cowering like sheep, and kick surprised terrorist
butt, although too late to prevent the crash; Flight 93 passenger
Todd Morgan Beamer (b. 1968)
becomes a U.S. hero when he quarterbacks the makeshift anti-raghead team with
the all-American words "Let's roll!", which are heard on his cellphone; his
sad-proud wife Lisa later founds the charity
Heroic Choices;
British-born former U.S. Army officer
Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescoria (b. 1939),
vice-pres. of security at Morgan Stanley (scheduled for retirement at year's end)
dies after helping 2.7K coworkers to safety; after rushing in to help not knowing
about the impending collapse; 343 firefighters die in the Twin Towers, and firefighter
(Argentine native)
Sergio G. Villanueva
becomes a hero; two Port Authority of N.Y. and N.J. police
officers survive the towers' collapse and are rescued from the rubble after 22 hours;
300K are evacuated by boat in lower Manhattan after hundreds of craft answer a
Coast Guard call for help "From All Available Boats" and converge on the West Side;
2,976
are killed in the 9/11 attacks, incl. 2,605 in New York City, 125 at the Pentagon
(incl. 55 military personnel), and 246 on the four planes, with 24 listed as
missing, becoming the most Americans lost on U.S. soil since the Sept. 17, 1862
Battle of Antietam, and the greatest single-day civilian loss of life in the U.S.
since the May 31, 1889 Johnstown Penn. Flood; many Palestinians openly
celebrate the attack
on the Great Satan U.S.; Iraqi pres. Saddam Hussein utters the
soundbyte
"The American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity";
the govts. of Cuba, Iran, Libya and North Korea join a
worldwide
chorus denouncing the attacks; Arab leaders denouncing the attacks incl.
King Hussein of Jordan, Egyptian pres. Hosni Mubarak, and Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri;
some Muslims around the world
express
sympathy for the 9/11 victims, incl. a moment of silence at a World Cup match
between Bahrain and Iranon Sept. 14, and a candlelight vigil by Palestinians in
Jerusalem on Sept. 15 along with another in Tehran; on Sept. 14 Ireland holds a
nat. day of mourning, the only country other than the U.S. and Israel to do so;
the Taliban in Afghanistan condemns the attacks but denies that Osama bin Laden
is behind them; bin Laden also
denies involvement,
claiming that there is a govt. within the govt. of the U.S. that wants to turn the
21st cent. into a cent. of conflict between Islam and Christianity, suggesting U.S.
Jews and intel agencies;
the economic repercussions cost the U.S. economy $1T (same as Bush's June 7
tax cut); 40K workers work at "The Pile" at Ground Zero for the next 8 mo.,
removing 1M tons of rubble, and 69% of them later develop permanent lung problems
known as "WTC Cough".
On Sept. 11 after watching the 9/11 news on TV,
T.L. Winslow (TLW) (1953-)
of Denver, Colo. shelves his numerous other careers as computer programmer,
engineer, fiction writer et al., and begins full-time work on
T.L. Winslow's Great Track of Time,
placing it on the World Wide Web on his Web site
www.tlwinslow.com, where it first
becomes accessible on Google on Oct. 29, until it receives over 100K hits
and takes too much time and expense, pulling the plug in May 2003 and
continuing to work on it for pub. by traditional channels.
In Nov. Pres. Bush signs an
executive order
making non-citizens serving in the U.S. military on active duty
eligible for citizenship; on Nov. 13 he signs another
executive order giving the U.S.
intel community extensive orders to go after terrorists - jump the border,
go to Iraq, lose a leg, get your papers?
In 2001 Iraqi nutcase Saddam Hussein's directorate of gen. security
reports
to him that the TV series "Pokemon" is an Israeli plot to contaminate
the minds of Iraqi youths, and that the title is Hebrew for "I'm Jewish".
On Sept. 16, 2001 Osama bin Laden
denies involvement
in the 9/11 attacks, saying "I would like to assure the world that I
did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by
people for personal reasons"; on Sept. 28 he adds "I have already said
that I am not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States.
As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge
of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children
and other human beings as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids
causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice
is forbidden even in the course of battle... The United States should try
to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself, the people who
are a part of the U.S. system but are dissenting against it, or those who
are working for some other system, persons who want to make the present
century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their
own civilization, nation, country, or ideology can survive. They may be anyone,
from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the U.S. itself, there
are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups capable of causing
large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who
have been annoyed with President Bush ever since the Florida elections and
who want to avenge him... Then there are intelligence agencies in the U.S.,
which require billions of dollars worth of funds from Congress and the
government every year... They needed an enemy... Is it not that there
exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret
government must be asked who carried out the attacks"; on Dec. 26 he adds
that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan is "a vicious campaign based on mere suspicion".
The Bush Empire Strikes Back?
On Oct. 7, 2001 (anniv. of the 1777 2nd Battle of Saratoga, the 1780 Battle of
King's Mountain, and the 1918 Relief of the Lost Battalion) after the
Taliban refuses to hand over Osama bin Laden, citing lack of evidence
despite admitting to harboring a fugitive from justice, the first U.S.
military counterattack against Osama bin Laden begins, with a massive
daily bombing campaign
against Taliban and al-Qaida terrorist camps in Afghanistan, aided by the
CIA's elite Special Activities Div. and British forces, overthrowing
Taliban control of Afghanistan with minimal U.S. force loss and no conventional
military forces; the U.S. communicates with anti-Taliban Iran before and
after the invasion for the 1st time since the 1985-6 Iran-Contra Affair; on
Oct. 14 the Taliban offers to discuss handling bin Laden over to a neutral
country, but maintains the evidence requirement, and is rejected; on Nov. 12
(night) the Taliban retreats S from Kabul, and by Nov. 13 they withdraw Jalalabad,
followed by their last city stronghold of Kandahar in early Dec; on Nov. 15
they release eight Western aid workers after 3 mo. in captivity; the horrible
Sharia imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan relaxes, only to begin to rebound
in 2003, with police looking the other way; meanwhile Am. philosopher
Noam Chomsky
later calls the Afghan invasion "one of the most immoral acts in modern history".
On Oct. 8, 2001 Pres. Bush creates the
U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security,
with former (1995-2001) Penn. gov.
Thomas Joseph "Tom" Ridge (1945-)
as acting dir. (until Jan. 24, 2003), becoming the biggest federal govt. reorg. since the 1940s, subsuming
every govt. agency from the Secret Service to the Coast Guard in an effort to protect the "critical infrastructure";
they set up the Web site Ready.gov for the public, with the
motto "Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed"; too bad, by 2010 the intel apparatus
balloons
to 1,271 govt. orgs. and 1,931 private cos. working in 10K locations around
the U.S., with 854K granted top secret security clearances, becoming a
secret govt. that could threaten the freedom of its own people; by 2010
its surface
yearly budget
is $75B, which doesn't incl. domestic counter-terrorism and military programs.
On Dec. 1, 2001 converted Muslim U.S. citizen
John Philip Walker Lindh
(1981-) ("the American Taliban") is captured in Aghanistan among Taliban forces and
charged
with conspiracy to kill Americans outside the U.S., and gets a 20-year sentence after
agreeing to a plea bargain; he later goes by name
Abu Sulayman Al-Irlandi
("the Irishman"); on Dec. 9 Kandahar, the last Taliban-controlled city falls, causing
Quetta Shura (leadership council)
to be formed by the top Taliban leadership in the Balochistan province of Pakistan;
Osama bin Laden remains at large as the Raghead Robin Hood of Fractured Medieval Space Age Islam;
the U.S.
blows its chance
to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora (50 mi. SE
of Kabul at the W edge of the tribal areas) in Dec., after which he ends up in Abbattobad,
Pakistan.
On Dec. 9, 2001 the Taliban govt. in Afghanistan collapses after 2 mo. of
bomging by the U.S. combined with ground fighting by Northern Alliance troops; on
Dec. 22 Hamid Karzai
(1957-) is sworn in as interim Afghan pres.
On Dec. 13 Osama bin Laden (b. 1957) is
killed,
and his death is revealed in newspapers in Pakistan on Dec. 15, but the U.S. govt. covers
it up to keep the war on Iraq and Afghanistan going?; the Bush family and the bin Laden
family have been business partners
since the 1990s?
On Mar. 2, 2002
Operation Anaconda,
designed to mop-up remaining Taliban forces in E Afghanistan is launched,
killing 500 of 1K Taliban fighters, and later declared a success by
U.S. officials.
On Mar. 25 a 6.1 earthquake in the
Hindu Kush
in Afghanistan kills 1K and leaves several thousand homeless; it was
secretly caused by the U.S. using
earthquake weapon technology?
On Apr. 17 a U.S. pilot drops a 500 lb. bomb near
Kandahar, Afghanistan where
Canadians are conducting a live fire exercise, killing four.
In May
Mohammad Zahir Shah
(1914-), former Pashtun king of Afghanistan who abdicated in 1973
returns from exile; meanwhile U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai
(also a Pashtun) gains popular support, plus grudging acceptance from
former Northern Alliance leaders, who are Tajik.
On June 13 interim leader Hamid Karzai is elected pres. of Afghanistan
(until ?).
On July 27 Canadian-born Pakistani descent Muslim
Omar Ahmed Khadr
(1986-) is captured after a 4-hour firefight in Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan
after killing U.S. soldiers, becoming the youngest inmate at Gitmo, and
getting latched onto by the U.N. and Western liberals as a child soldier,
resulting in the Obama admin. accepting a plea bargain in Oct. 2010
that lets him walk in as little as a year.
On Sept. 5 a car bombing in
Kabul, Afghanistan kills 30 and wounds 167.
On Dec. 27 the U.S.-backed
Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement
to build a $7.6B natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through S Afghanistan
into Pakistan and India is signed by Turkmenistan and Afghanistan; too bad,
the Taliban takes over S Afghanistan, causing the plan to be stalled.
In 2002 the New York Times pub. a 2K-page U.S. Army
Report on POW Torture and Abuse
at Bagram Prison (AKA Bagram Collection Point) in Afghanistan, detailing
the beating deaths of two civilian Afghan POWs in 2002; seven soldiers
are charged.
On Oct. 30, 2003 the U.S. House approves an $87.5B package for Iraq and
Afghanistan, and on Nov. 3 the U.S. Senate approves it; it becomes
a pres. campaign issue when Dem. candidate Sen. John Kerry of Mass.
issues the
soundbyte:
"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
On Nov. 16 French U.N. worker
Bettina Goislard
(b. 1974) is shot and killed in Afghanistan.
On Nov. 23 five U.S. soldiers are killed in a
heli crash in
Afghanistan.
On Dec. 6 a
U.S. warplane
pursuing a "known terrorist" attacks a village in E Afghanistan,
mistakenly killing nine children.
On Dec. 14 female Afghan politician
Malalai Joya
(1978-) gives a speech at the 502-delegate Loya Jirga constitutional convention,
speaking out against the warlords and clerics (former mujahideen), calling
them war criminals who shouldn't be appointed to planning groups or be part
of the Afghan govt., getting her thrown out, becoming known as
"the bravest woman in Afghanistan"; after being elected to the Afghan
parliament in Sept. 2005 and continuing to speak out, she is suspended in
May 2007 for "insulting" fellow reps (until ?).
On Jan. 6, 2004 13 children and two adults are killed in Afghanistan's S
Kandahar Province after a time bomb in an apple cart goes off on a
street regularly used by U.S. military patrols.
On Apr. 22 NFL player
Patrick Daniel "Pat" Tillman
(b. 1977), who forfeited a multimillion dollar contract to serve
as a U.S. Army Ranger in Afghanistan is killed by friendly fire near
the Pakistani border after emerging from a canyon where the enemy fired
on them; his younger bro' Kevin Tillman is in a convoy behind him;
the military tries a coverup but goofs up and creates a firestorm of
controversy.
On June 2 the Taliban stages an ambush in
NW Afghanistan, killing three foreign
aid workers and two Afghans.
On Sept. 10 Osama bin Laden's chief deputy Ayman al-Zawahri claims in a
videotape broadcast
that the U.S. is on the brink of defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan:
"The Americans in both countries are between two fires. If they continue
they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything";
the 3rd tape in a row issued by Al-Qaida on Sept. 10 - why a day early
this time and why no mention of attacks in the U.S.?
On Sept. 12 violent demonstrators in
Herat, Afghanistan ransack four U.S.
office compounds to protest the removal of Gov. Ismail Khan by the
central govt.; he is replaced by Sayed Muhammad Khairkhwa,
a member of the same Jamiat-i-Islami faction.
On Sept. 15 ex-U.S. Green Beret
Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema
(1956-) is sentenced to 10 years by a court in Kabul, Afghanistan
for running a private jail and torturing terror suspects; he is released
and deported on June 2, 2007 after a gen. amnesty is declared by pres. Hamid Karzai.
On Dec. 7 Hamid Karzai (1957-)
is sworn in as the first popularly elected pres. of Afghanistan
(until ?); U.S. vice-pres. Dick Cheney attends the ceremony in Kabul; men line up
for a shave after five hairy years under the intolerant Taliban.
In 2004 a secret 2004 CIA program
to hire Blackwater Worldwide to kill top al-Qaida leaders is begun, staging
raids
in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004-6, and not revealed until Aug. 2009.
On Jan. 16, 2005 the U.S. frees 81 detainees in Afghanistan ahead of the
Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.
On Feb. 14 Pres. Bush asks Congress to provide $81.9B more for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the total price tag for the war
on terrorism since 9/11 a whopping $300B.
On Mar. 30 First Lady
Laura Bush visits Kabul, Afghanistan, where she talks with
Afghan women freed from Taliban repression and urges greater rights - just
don't read a Christian Bible or kkkkk-kkkkk?
On Apr. 6 a U.S. CH-47 Chinook heli crashes in a dust storm near
Ghazni, Afghanistan
S of Kabul, killing 15 military and three civilian contractor personnel.
On Apr. 13 Afghanistan pres. Hamid Karzai calls for a security
partnership with the U.S. to make its military presence there permanent.
On June 1 an al-Qaida suicide bomber detonates in a mosque during a funeral in
Kandahar, Afghanistan,
killing 20, incl. Kabul's police chief, and wounding 42 others, becoming
the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the violent surge began in Mar.
On June 15 Taliban rebels break into a medical clinic near the Pakistan
border in Afghanistan and kill a doctor and six of his assistants; the
same day hundreds of insurgents clash with U.S.-led coalition forces,
and seven insurgents are killed.
On June 19 fighting in S Afghanistan kills 20 militants; meanwhile the
Taliban claims that it has assassinated a kidnapped Afghan police chief
and five of his men who collaborated with the U.S.
On June 21 Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops battle rebels in the
Daychopan
district in Zabul Province in S Afghanistan, killing 40 rebels while
killing a policeman and wounding five U.S. soldiers and two more
policemen.
On June 22 a U.S. U-2 spy plane crashes while returning to its base in
the UAR from a mission in Afghanistan, killing the pilot.
On June 26 U.S. troops sweep the
Khakeran Valley
in Afghanistan 130 mi. NE of the main S city of Kandahar, seeking up to 300
insurgents.
On July 4 a U.S. airstrike in E Afghanistan in the same province where
the U.S. heli was downed a week earlier kills 17 civilians; meanwhile
rebel attacks across the country kill 700.
On July 10 the body of a missing U.S. commando is found in E Afghanistan, becoming the last member of a 4-man Special Forces unit that disappeared
the previous month to be found.
On July 11 four terror suspects incl. a top al-Qaida lt. escape from a U.S. military jail in Afghanistan; the identity of Omar al-Farouq
is acknowledged in Nov.; on Sept. 25, 2006 he is killed during a raid on his home in Basra, Iraq.
In July four terrorist suspects incl. al-Qaida's highest ranking
operative in SE Asia and a Saudi al-Qaida operative escape from the U.S. military detention center
Cell 119 in Bagram, Afghanistan; it takes
until Dec. for the military to admit how dangerous the escapees were.
On Aug. 6 British Labour MP (1983-2003) and foreign secy. (1997-2001)
Robert Finlayson Cook
(b. 1946), who resigned as House of Commons leader on Mar. 17, 2003
in protest of the Iraq invasion dies four weeks after describing al-Qaida
as a fiction invented by Western intel: "Bin Laden was, though, a product
of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout
the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad
against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally 'the
database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen
who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the
Russians."
On Aug. 16 17 Spanish NATO peacekeeper soldiers are killed and five are
injured in a heli crash in a W Afghan desert in
Herat Province in a sandstorm.
On Sept. 18 (Sun.) Afghanistan holds its first contested legislative
elections in more than 25 years; the Taliban fails to disrupt the
voting, wounding three people in 19 attacks; there are 582 female
candidates out of 5.8K for a quarter of the seats in parliament and 34
provincial councils reserved for women.
On Sept. 25 a U.S. CH-47 military heli crashes near
Daychopan, Afghanistan
180 mi. SW of Kabul, killing all five aboard.
On Oct. 8 the 7.6
South Asian Earthquake of 2005
rocks Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, killing 73K and leaving 3.5M
homeless; hundreds are trapped in a 19-story bldg. in Islamabad; 11K
are killed in Muzaffarabad, capital of Kashmir; on Oct. 10 Kuwait and
the UAR each announce $100M and the U.S. pledges $50M in aid after govt.
officials predict the death toll will climb to 20K-40K; on Oct. 15 the
Pakistani death toll reaches 38K, with 2M homeless; on Oct. 19 the
death toll soars to 79K, and aftershocks send up huge clouds of dust;
the Quantum Shift Concert
raises money for the relief effort, featuring Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono,
Paul Simon, and his son Harper Simon.
On Oct. 23 (Sun.) a team of top Afghan officials visits S Afghanistan to
investigate allegations that U.S. soldiers cremated the remains of
Taliban fighters in violation of Muslim Sharia and then used the scene
for propaganda.
On Nov. 12 Afghanistan elects provincial reps to the Meshrano Jirga, its
upper house of parliament (house of elders), becoming the country's first
elected legislature in 30 years, meeting for the first time on Dec. 18.
On Dec. 4 a would-be suicide bomber detonates when hit by a motorbike
in Kandahar, Afghanistan,
killing them both and wounding two others hours earlier two
U.S. helis collide during combat operations, wounding six.
On Dec. 11 a suicide bomber kills himself and wounds three civilians near
a U.S. and Afghan military convoy in
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
In 2005 the U.S. govt. launches the
Youth Exchange and Study (YES)
initiative for teen students from Afghanistan; in June 2011 after scores of
students flee to Canada rather than return home, they scrap it.
In 2006 global terrorism incl. 14K total attacks with 20K killed, incl. 7K attacks in Iraq with 13K killed, with more than 50% of the
victims being Muslims; attacks in Afghanistan are up 53% over 2005, while attacks in Europe and Indonesia are down; the Taliban destroys
200 schools and kills 20 teachers this year, driving 200K children from classrooms, then next Jan. announces that it will open its own Islamic
Sharia schools in Mar. with $1M funding; the number of
Islamic extremist Web sites
grows to 4.5K from 12 in 1998.
On Jan. 5 a suicide bomber in
?, Afghanistan kills 10 and wounds 50.
On Jan. 7 a newly built checkpoint near
Miran Shah
in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border
(where thousands of troops had tried to flush out the remnants of
the Taliban) is attacked, and eight security forces killed; the area
has been wild and untameable since Alexander the Great.
On Jan. 14 two men on a motorbike in Kabul, Afghanistan shoot and kill
former Taliban deputy interior minister
Mohammed Khaksar,
who switched loyalties to the U.S. after 2001, and was called "a traitor
to our cause" by Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammed Yousaf; 10 are killed
and 40 are wounded at an Islamic feast.
On Jan. 15 a suicide car bomber kills two civilians and a senior
Canadian diplomat in a
Canadian military convoy in S Afghanistan; the
Taliban claims credit.
On Jan. 16 a suicide bomber on a motorbike in a crowd watching a
wrestling match in
Kandahar Province, Afghanistan kills 21.
On Feb. 2 (night) 200 Taliban fighters ambush a police patrol near
Sangin, Afghanistan,
causing a pitched battle that kills 27 by Feb. 4.
On Feb. 8 the U.S., Russia, and Germany decide to cancel Afghanistan's debts, incl.
$108M owed to the U.S. and $44M to Germany from before the 1979 Soviet Invasion, and
$10B owed to Russia from loans to the puppet Communist govt. in the early 1990s.
On Mar. 21 the Bush admin. issues a whimpy subdued
appeal
to Afghanistan to let Afghan man
Abdul Rahman,
who converted from Islam to Christianity be spared the death penalty; on
Mar. 29 he is freed from prison in Kabul after a court drops capital charges
of apostasy, and receives asylum in Italy after an internat. uproar
incl. an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI - it should be a world crime to be
a Muslim in the first place?
On Apr. 12 Pakistani forces kill al-Qaida member
Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah (b. 1960)
of Egypt in a raid near the Afghan border in the N Waziristan village
of Naghar Kalai, along with six other militants.
On Apr. 16 41 Taliban militants and six police are killed in Kandahar Province
in SE Afghanistan by U.S.-led coalition forces, 2.5K of which
are involved in an operation against the Taliban; an attack on a house
in E Afghanistan kills seven and wounds three Afghan civilians.
On Apr. 22 four Canadian soldiers are killed by a roadside bomb in S
Afghanistan in the mountainous
Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar Province, where they took over from U.S. forces 1 mo. earlier, becoming the deadliest attack
on Canadian troops since being deployed in Afghanistan four years earlier. On May 17-18 more than 100 are killed in a string of attacks by the
Taliban in Afghanistan; Pres. Hamid Karzai accuses the madrasas in Pakistan of prepping students for jihad.
On May 21 a U.S. airstrike on the village of Azizi
in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan kills 16-34 civilians along with 80 militants, drawing the ire of Pres. Hamid Karzai.
On May 29 violent anti-foreigner protests in Kabul, Afghanistan begin after a U.S. military truck crashes into traffic, killing four, and the
soldiers fire into the crowd, killing four; a total of eight are killed and 107 injured before the streets are pacified of rioters shouting "Death to America".
On July 9 hundreds of Canadian and Afghan soldiers raid Taliban strongholds in Kandahar Province, killing at least 15 militants and one Canadian.
On July 17-Sept. 12 the 50+-day Siege of Musa Qala (Arab. "Fortress of Moses") in Helmand Province, Afghanistan sees a small force
of British and Danish troops hold off a Taliban siege.
On Aug. 3 militants kill four Canadian soldiers and wound 10 in Pashmul, Afghanistan
W of Kandahar; meanwhile a suicide car bomb in a market in Panjwayi 15 mi. away, killing 21 civilians and wounding 13.
On Aug. 17 a coalition aircraft mistakenly drops a bomb in SE Patika Province in Afghanistan, killing 10 Afghan police officers on border patrol.
On Aug. 19-20 rolling battles with Taliban insurgents and Afgahan and NATO troops kill 71 militants and five Afghan security forces.
On Aug. 26 a Taliban cmdr. and 15 other militants are announced killed in S Afghanistan, 1 day after 13 insurgents were killed along wih two
French soldiers; meanwhile Canadian troops mistakenly kill a policeman and wound six others; the death toll in the past 4 mo. is now over 1.6K.
On Aug. 27 a British NATO soldier is killed and seven Afghan troops are wounded in insurgent attacks in Kandahar Province in S Afghanistan;
meanwhile police kill 10 suspected Taliban militants attacking a govt. compound.
On Aug. 28 a suicide bomber targeting a former police chief kills 21 civilians in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan.
On Sept. 2 NATO forces launch
Operation Medusa, a major
anti-militant campaign by 8K Canadian, British, and Dutch troops in
Afghanistan's Kandahar Province, claiming to kill 517 militants by Sept. 13.
On Sept. 4 U.S. warplanes mistakenly fire on Canadian troops in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, killing one and wounding five, but claim that 200 insurgents
are also killed in the operation; meanwhile a suicide vehicle bombing in
Kabul kills one British soldier and four Afghans.
On Sept. 8 a car bomb in Kabul, Afghanistan kills 16 incl. two U.S. troops,
and U.S. officials announce that a suicide bombing cell is hunting foreign
troops there.
On Sept. 10 a suicide bomber assassinates Gov.
Abdul Hakim Taniwal of
Paktia Province in E Afghanistan, while NATO kills 94 Taliban fighters
in the S, bring the 9-day toll to 420; meanwhile Pres. Hamid Karzai
attends the inauguration of a $25M Coca-Cola bottling plant in Kabul.
On Sept. 13 NATO
releases its first figures of deaths from suicide
bombings in Afghanistan, 173 (151 civilians), incl. 50 on Sept. 13,
but NATO nations fail to agree on calls for an extra 2.5K troops.
On Sept. 18 three suicide bombers kill 19 across Afghanistan, while
bombers and gunmen kill at least 41 in Iraq.
On Sept. 25 women's rights champion
Safia Ama Jan
is murdered outside her home as she leaves for work by two men on a
motorcycle in Kandahar, Afghanistan; Taliban cmdr. Mullah Sadullah
claims credit; she was shot even though she was wearing the full burqa.
On Oct. 18 NATO heli air strikes kill nine civilians in three mud-dried homes
in Ashogho, Afghanistan in the S, and another rocket strikes a
house in a village to the W, killing 13, hurting NATO's hopes of winning
local support.
On Nov. 27-28 a Nato Summit in Riga, Latvia is held to
deal with the deteriorating conditions in opium-king (90% of the world
supply, 1M addicts) Afghanistan, where NATO has 32K troops;
Pres. Bush attends, and urges increased military spending and the
inclusion of non-NATO countries Japan, Australia and South Korea into
joint missions.
On Dec. 10 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai gives a
speech on the
58th anniv. of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, tearfully
lamenting the killing of Afghan children by NATO and U.S. bombs and
Pakistani terrorists.
On Dec. 17 a suicide bomber detonates in front of a U.S. convoy outside
Khost City
in E Afghanistan, killing one Afghan civilian and wounding two others.
In 2006 Chalmers Johnson pub.
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,
containing the soundbyte:
"Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies.
America's version of the colony is the military base; and by following
the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our
ever more all-encompassing imperial footprint and the militarism that
grows with it... even more than in past empires, a well-entrenched militarism
[lies] at the heart of our imperial adventures"; "Each year we spend
more on our armed forces than all other nations on Earth combined"
on U.S. troops "in more than 130 countries"; the U.S. officially
has 737-860 overseas bases, plus 100+ secret ones.
In 2007 suicide bombers conduct 658 attacks worldwide, incl. 542 in
U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, double last year's total; the first
known suicide attack was in 1983 (U.S. Embassy in Beirut), and by the end
of this year 1,840 incidents kill more than 21,350 and injure 50K, with
86% of incidents occurring since 2001, and the highest annual numbers in
the past four years.
On Jan. 13 AP reports that Pres. Obama is going to ask Congress for an
additional $13B for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, on top of the
record $708B Pentagon budget, making him the first pres. whose defense
budget exceeds $700B.
On Jan. 17 U.S. defense secy. Robert Gates calls for 2K-3K more GIs for
Afghanistan and 21.5K for Iraq.
In Jan. Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai appoints
Izzatullah Wasifi
as head of his 84-person anti-corruption dept., only to find out that
he did four years in a Nevada state prison for selling heroin in the 1980s.
On Feb. 4 U.S. Gen.
Dan K. McNeill
takes command of the 35.5K NATO-led troops in Afghanistan after 9 mo. of
British command.
On Feb. 27 an explosion outside the main U.S. military base
in Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan kills 23 and wounds 7
during a visit by U.S. vice-pres. Dick Cheney; al-Qaida leader
Abu Laith al-Libi is suspected as the mastermind.
On Mar. 4 a minivan crashes into a convoy of U.S. Marines and officials
in Barikaw
in Nangarhar Province in E Afghanistan,
killing 10 and wounding 34 Afghans as the cowboy Americans fire on every
civilian car and pedestrian they pass, causing hundreds of Afghans to
protest near the blast site.
On Mar. 4 a U.S. Marines special ops unit loses it and opens fire into
a crowd near
Jallalabad, Afghanistan,
killing 19 Afghans and wounding 50 after a suicide bomber rams their
convoy; on May 8 U.S. Army brigade cmdr. Col. John Nicholson publicly
apologizes and pays $2K compensation to each family, calling it a
"terrible, terrible mistake"; on Jan. 8, 2008 Marine Sgt.
Nathanial Travers testifies that the Marines fired into civilian
traffic even though they saw no evidence that they convoy was fired
upon first.
On Mar. 6 NATO launches
Operation Achilles,
its largest offensive yet against insurgents in S Afghanistan,
centered in Helmand Province, sending 4.5K NATO and 1K Afghan nat. army troops,
with 1.5K U.S. troops expected to eventually join.
On Mar. 9 China draws attention to U.S. abuses of human rights in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, saying it has no standing
to criticize its abuses.
On Mar. 15 U.S.-led coalition forces mistakenly kill five Afghan police
manning a checkpoint in Helmand Province.
On Mar. 17 a suicide bomber rams his vehicle into a Canadian military
convoy in S Afghanistan, killing a child and wounding four, incl. a
NATO soldier; meanwhile, a martar attack in NATO's largest base in S
Afghanistan wounds three soldiers.
On Mar. 19 a car bomb explodes next to a U.S. Embassy convoy on a busy
road in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing a bystander and wounding five
security guards.
On Apr. 6 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai announces for the first time
that he has held meetings with Taliban members, but rules out talks
with their leader Mullah
Muhammed Omar
(1959-).
On Apr. 22 a suicide bomber kills six and wounds 40 civilians in the
E Afghanistan city of
Khost, Afghanistan.
On Apr. 29 Afghanis carrying the bodies of five Afghans (incl. a woman
and teenage girl) killed in a U.S.-led raid block a highway in E Afghanistan
with rocks and fell trees to denounce the Afghan govt. and demand an
explanation.
On May 15, 2007 Pres. Bush nominates Lt. Gen.
Douglas E. Lute
(1953-) as the "war czar", his asst. adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan
(until ?) - Cool Hand Lute?
On May 20 a suicide bomber targeting a U.S. convoy kills 14 and wounds 31
in a crowded market in
Gardez, Afghanistan in E Afghanistan.
On May 30 a U.S. CH-47 Chinook heli is shot down in Helmand Province,
Afghanistan near
Kajaki, Afghanistan,
site of a U.S.-funded hydroelectric dam, killing five U.S. and two other soldiers.
On June 12, 2007 Afghan police mistakenly attack U.S. troops, who respond
by killing eight of them and wounding four.
On June 12 U.S. undersecy. of state
R. Nicholas Burns
(1956-) tells reporters in Paris that Iran is funding insurgents
across the Middle East, and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, upping
the ante on statements made by U.S. defense secy. Robert Gates a week
earlier that Iranian weapons were falling into their hands somehow.
On June 17 a bomb explodes in a bus carrying police instructors in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 35 and wounding 52, becoming the deadliest insurgent attack since
the 2001 U.S.-led Afghan invasion; meanwhile an airstrike by the U.S.-led
coalition accidentally kills several Afghan boys in E Afghanistan.
On June 20 the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in Am. (AMJA) issues a
fatwa
prohibiting Muslims from providing food and supplies to U.S. and allied
troops working in Muslim countries incl. Iraq and Afghanistan.
On June 25 6-y.o. Afghan boy
Juma Gul
tells soldiers at Forward Operating Base Thunder that he had been recruited
by the Taliban as a suicide bomber, which the Taliban dismisses as
propaganda.
On July 3 masked al-Qaida militants clash with police in
Islamabad, Pakistan,
killing nine and wounding dozens; on July 4 police capture
radical cleric
Maulana Abdul Aziz
as he tries to sneak out of the seiged
Red Mosque (Lal Masjid)
dressed in a woman's burqa, after which over 1K of his followers
surrender, continuing to work for a Taliban-style govt.; on
July 10 govt. troops storm the Red Mosque, where militants are holding
150 hostages, and capture it, killing 50 militants, incl. cleric
Abdul Rashid Ghazi
(b. 1964), who told the private Geo TV network in advance
"My martyrdom is certain now"; eight soldiers are killed;
the surprise al-Qaida war on the Pakistani govt. causes a
rift
with the Taliban, which splits into the
Tahreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan and the
regular Taliban in Afghanistan; the militant
Ghazi Force
is created to avenge the assault - it was the heat of the moment
showing in your eyes?
On Oct. 8 Afghanistan ends a 3-year moratorium and executes 15 prisoners
by firing squad.
On Nov. 10 six U.S. soldiers walking in the mountains of E Afghanistan
are ambushed and killed by militants, raising the U.S. death toll in
Afghanistan to 101, surpassing the record of 93 in 2005 and 87 in 2006.
On Nov. 12 U.S. congressional Dems. pub.
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,
which concludes that the economic cost to the U.S. of the Iraq and Afghan Wars
so far totals approx. $1.5T.
On Nov. 19 a suicide bomber targeting a provisional gov. kills seven in
Kandahar, Afghanistan,
incl. the gov.'s 25-y.-o. son and six police officers, injuring 14.
On Nov. 28 NATO admits that its warplanes mistakenly bombed an
Afghan road construction crew sleeping in tents, killing 14
workers while hunting Taliban fighters in E Afghanistan.
On Dec. 27 Western envoys
Mervyn Patterson and Michael Semple
of the U.K. are expelled from Afghanistan for holding meetings with Taliban
leaders in Helmand Province.
In Dec. the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
Islamist umbrella group is formed in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the
Afghan border in Pakistan by 13 groups under leader
Baitullah Mehsud (1974-2009),
with the purpose of a Sharia state and resistance against the U.S. and NATO.
On Dec. 21, 2007 Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War
(Relativity Media) (Universal Pictures) debuts, based on the 2003 book by George Crile III, staring Tom Hanks as U.S. rep. (D-Tex.) (1973-96)
Charles Nesbitt "Charlie" Wilson (1933-),
who funneled arms to Afghan guerrillas in 1987-7 via Operation Cyclone and broke the Soviets' backs, leading to the downfall of the Soviet Union, then watched helplessly as Afghanistan
was taken over by the Taliban; also stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a rogue Greek-extraction CIA agent, plus believable aging sex goddess Julia Roberts to sell tickets?;
does $119M box office on a $75M budget.
On Jan. 14, 2008 a Taliban suicide bomber at the luxury
Serena Hotel
in Kabul, Afghanistan kills six incl. an American and Norwegian journalist; meanwhile U.S.
officials announce that they are sending an additional 3.2K Marines to
Afghanistan for a spring offensive.
On Jan. 31 a U.S. missile strike in Waziristan in NW Pakistan near
the Afghan border kills
Abu Laith al-Libi
(b. 1967), a senior al-Qaida cmdr. suspected of engineering the
Feb. 2007 bombing of the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan
during a visit by U.S. vice-pres. Dick Cheney.
On Feb. 17 a suicide bomber at a dog-fighting competition in
Kandahar, Afghanistan kills 80.
On Feb. 28 news that Prince Harry has been serving on the front lines in
Afghanistan with the British army for 10 weeks (first British royal since
Prince Andrew in the Falkland Islands in 1982) leaks on the U.S Web Site
Dredge Report,
causing him to be quickly withdrawn to avoid an assassination attempt.
On Mar. 13 a suicide bomber targeting U.S. troops in Kabul goofs and kills six
Afghan civilians; meanwhile U.S. forces strike across the bordeer into Pakistan
at a suspected Taliban compound, killing four more civilians, pissing off Pakistani
officials.
On Mar. 20 a suicide bomber kills five and wounds 11 outside a brigade HQ
in the Pakistan tribal region on Afghanistan's border while U.S. vice-pres.
Dick Cheney is visiting Kabul for talks with Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai.
On Apr. 27 (Sun.) Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
escapes an attempted assassination
in Kabul; three are killed and 10 are wounded.
On Apr. 29 a suicide bomber and some gunmen attack a
poppy eradication team
in E Afghanistan, kiling 19 (incl. 12 police officers) and injuring 40.
On June 8, 2008 a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan kills three British
soldiers as U.S. First Lady
Laura Bush
makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan - if you get caught between the
Moon and New York City, I know it's crazy, but it's true?
On June 11 U.S.-led forces drops more than a dozen bombs in Pakistani tribal
regions near the Afghan border, killing 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops.
On June 13 (Fri.) 30 Taliban militants stage a rocket attack on prison in
Sarposa Prison
in Kandahar, S Afghanistan, freeing 1.5K prisoners incl. 400 Taliban members.
On June 15 Afghan Pres.
Hamid Karzai
threatens to send troops into Pakistan if Taliban fighters there continue
crossing his border.
On June 16 Pres. Bush visits
London,
receiving pledges of new financial sanctions against Iran and a commitment
for a car bomb's worth, er, 230 new British troops for Afghanistan; meanwhile
Taliban fighters take over seven villages on the outskirts of
Kandahar,
causing residents to flee.
On June 17 a
suicide attack
in Kabul, Afghanistan kills 35.
On June 18 hundreds of Afghan and Canadian troops launch a major
new offensive
against the Taliban in S Afghanistan in Kandahar and other areas.
On June 30 Pres. Bush signs a
bill
providing $162B for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; meanwhile the U.S.
military absorbs $400M a mo. increase in fuel costs, and Iraq opens
internat. bidding for eight huge oil and gas fields which they hope
will double production by 2013 to 5M barrels.
In June the U.S. death military toll in Afghanistan is 28, highest since
they arrived in late 2001; meanwhile the Group of Eight foreign ministers
meets in Japan to address the issue of opium in Aghanistan, which is
financing the Taliban, and agree to create a coordinating body to oversee
$4B in aid to the tribal areas to improve police and military training,
and implement anti-drug trafficking programs on the Turkish model, which
allows farmers to sell their opium to pharmaceutical companies to make legal
medicines.
On July 6, 2008 Afghan officials
claim
that fighter aircraft battling militants accidentally kill 27 Afghan civilians
walking to a wedding ceremony in E Afghanistan, which the U.S. military denies.
On July 13 the
Battle of Wanat
sees 100-150 Taliban guerrillas attack a coalition outpost in Dar-l-Pech
district in the E Afghanistan Kunar Province, killing nine U.S. soldiers,
most since June 2005, when 16 were killed.
On July 18 MIT-educated female neuroscientist
Aafia Siddiqui
(1972-) allegedly attempts to murder U.S. citizens while being
questioned at a police HQ in Afghanistan; after shouting down witnesses, she
is ejected from her federal trial; on Sept. 23, 2010 despite a worldwide protest
she is
sentenced
to 86 years by a federal judge in New York City.
In July the U.S. paratroopers of
Chosen Company
are attacked by the Taliban in E Afghanistan, losing nine after almost
being overrun by 200 insurgents, later causing new loose-mouthed U.S.
Afghanistan CIC (June 15, 2009 to June 23, 2010) Gen.
Stanley Allen McChrystal
(1954-) to change his strategy.
On Aug. 22 coalition forces turn into
baby killers
when they kill 76 civilians, incl. 50 women and 19 children in a military
operation in the Shindand district of Herat Province in W Afghanistan,
stinking themselves up.
On Aug. 25
Anthony Cordesman
of the Center for Strategic And Internat. Studies in Washington, D.C.
issues a report claiming that "the U.S. is now losing the war against
the Taliban", and calling for the U.S. to treat Pakistani territory as a
combat zone; meanwhile the U.S. military death toll in Afghanistan this
year is 101.
On Sept. 1 Allied troops kill three Afghan children and wound seven more
in a mistaken artillery strike, then kill two more children and their father
in a second incident near Kabul, piling up the wrongs, incl. 60 children plus
30 more killed on Aug. 22 in W Afghanistan; meanwhile Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
openly calls for the U.S. to stop bombing and exercise more caution
when operating in civilian areas.
On Oct. 9 a suicide bomber in
Islamabad, Pakistan
carrying a box of sweets wrecks a residential bldg. housing
anti-terrorism police, injuring six officers; another roadside bomb
in Pakistan hits a police bus carrying prisoners, while a U.S. unmanned
aircraft kills nine near the Afghan border.
On Oct. 26 nine policemen kidnapped by Shirani tribesmen in
Dera Ismail Khan
in Pakistan near the Afghan border are released; on Oct. 27 a
U.S. missile hits the house of a Taliban cmdr. there, killing 20.
On Oct. 30 a Taliban suicide bomber in a govt. ministry in C Kabul, Afghanistan
kills five and injures 12.
On Nov. 3, 2008 a U.S. airstrike in
West Baghtu
in Kandahar Province hits a wedding party, killing 36, incl. 10 women
and 23 children, causing Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai on Nov. 5 to plead the allies
to try harder to avoid injuring noncombatants, saying "We cannot win the fight
against terrorism with airstrikes", adding "This is my first demand of the new
president".
On Nov. 9 Canadian reporter
Melissa Fung
is released after four weeks in captivity in Afghanistan, saying they held her in a
small underground cave.
In Nov. 10 New York Times correspondent
David Stephenson Rohde
(1967-) is kidnapped S of Kabul by the Taliban along with Afghan reporter
Tahir Ludin
(1964-); they scale a wall and escape next year in the N Waziristan
region of Pakistan after 7 mo. 10 days; meanwhile the NYT blacks out coverage to aid them, although they regularly refuse to
heed federal govt. requests to black out news on the specific ways in which it combats terrorists.
On Nov. 12 U.S. authorities announce that a supply convoy for the 65K allied forces in Afghanistan was hijacked by Taliban fighters near the
Khyber Pass.
On Nov. 12 the Taliban attacks Afghan schoolgirls in Kandahar for daring to get educated, splashing battery acid on them and hurting
11 girls and four teachers; after a worldwide outcry, 10 Talibanis are arrested on Nov. 25.
On Nov. 13 pranksters distribute thousands of free copies of the New York Times with a
prank headline that the U.S. Iraq War and Afghanistan War have ended;
it is actually dated July 4, 2009 and describes the Obama Utopia with nat. health care, a rebuilt economy, higher progressive taxes, a nat.
oil fund to study climate change et al.
On Nov. 16 after a suicide car bomber hits a U.S. convoy in Herat, Afghanistan,
wounding two soldiers, and insurgent attacks go up 30% compared to
2007, Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai invites the
Taliban
to talks, offering protection, and saying that the U.S. can leave
the country or try to oust him if they don't like it.
On Nov. 22
Rashid Rauf
(b. 1981) (a British citizen) and
Abu Zubair al-Masri
(a Saudi militant) are killed by a U.S. missile raid in N Waziristan
near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; they had been linked to a jetliner
bomb plot; meanwhile on Nov. 23 protests are staged in Islamabad
calling for the severing of ties with the U.S.
On Nov. 29 NATO and Afghan troops kill 53 militants in Afghanistan,
incl. Taliban cmdr.
Haji Yakub,
who was hiding behind a woman's burqa.
On Dec. 10 a
mistaken attack
by U.S. forces in Afghanistan kills six Afghan police officers and one civilian.
On Dec. 16
French police
find five sticks of dynamite in a Paris dept. store along with a demand
for the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.
On Dec. 20 adm. Mike Mullen, chmn. of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
says that the U.S. may double the number of troops in Afghanistan
by next summer from 30K to 60K.
In 2009 2,412 Afghan civilians
are killed, a 14% increase from 2008, with the Taliban responsible for
two-thirds after the U.S. restricts the use of airstrikes.
On Feb. 11 the Taliban hits the justice and education ministries in the heart of
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 20 and wounding 57, showing how bad the U.S. position is becoming.
On Feb. 12 U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.)
admits that the CIA launches
drones from bases inside Pakistan, not from across the border in Afghanistan
as believed.
On Feb. 14 a U.S.
missile strike
in Pakistan near the HQ of the Taliban chief near the Afghan border kills three.
On Feb. 17 Pres. Obama approves 17K more U.S. troops for Afghanistan,
which has historically been known as "the Graveyard of Empires"; on
Feb. 18 U.S. gen. David McKiernan warns that the new troops will
take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have "stalemented" the
allies - and just why does Obama want to keep the U.S. in that
wild hellhole when he's committing to pulling out of Iraq?
On Feb. 24 a roadside bomb in
S Afghanistan
kills four U.S. troops, becoming the deadliest of the year so far.
On Mar. 5 U.S. secy. of state Hillary Clinton proposes an internat.
meeting on Afghanistan to incl. "key regional and strategic countries"
incl. Iran, even though on Mar. 5 she accused its leaders of fomenting
divisions in the Arab world, promoting terrorism, threatening Israel
and Europe, and seeking to "intimidate as far as they think their
voice can reach".
On Mar. 27 Pres. Obama utters the
soundbyte
that the U.S. goal in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually
destroy al-Qaida".
In Mar. Afghanistan passes the
Sharia Personal Status Law,
effective in July, requiring wives to obtain their husband's permission just
to leave home, granting child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers
instead of mothers and grandmothers, requiring a woman to "make herself up"
and have sex whenever the husband demands it, and giving the hubby the right
to cut off her maintenance if she doesn't, while reducing the penalty for
a man raping a child or elderly woman to a mere fine.
In Mar. the Obama admin. gives Congress detailed plans behind closed doors
to send up to 80
narcs
(narcotic agents) to Afghanistan in an attempt to disrupt the
main source of financing for terrorists - 80 more drug billionaires
in the making?
On Apr. 9 Pres. Bush, er, Obama asks Congress for
$83.4B
for U.S. military and domestic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,
pushing the cost of the two wars to $1T since 9/11; as a candidate,
he opposed the same special troop funding.
On Apr. 15 300
Afghan women
protest in Kabul a new law that imposes disgusting medieval Islamic Sharia
law on women, esp. the right to marital rape; men respond by stoning
them - they should have that infidel women's libber crap f*cked out of them?
On Apr. 19 a U.S.
missile strike
in S Waziristan, Pakistan on the Afghan border kills three al-Qaida militants and destroys a truck filled with high explosives that could have been used in
a suicide bombing; the incident shows the growing strength of al-Qaida in shaky Pakistan.
On May 4, 2009 the U.S. coalition battles the Taliban in the W Afghan Farah Province,
with the Taliban using Afghan civilians as human shields, after which the pissed-off Afghan govt. comes down on the
Talibanis, er, U.S. forces, claiming that they killed 147 civilians.
On May 6 Pres. Obama meets with leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and states
that "The security of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States are linked", calling for a joint strategy to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida militants.
On May 10 human rights groups in the U.S. announce that they are investigating reports that U.S. troops have been illegally using
white phosphorus
as weapons against the Taliban in Afghanistan; it is legal to use it to illuminate a target or create smoke, but innocent civilians can
get burned if it is used over populated areas, which constitutes a war crime.
On May 11 U.S. defense secy. Robert Gates replaces gen. David D. McKiernan with Lt. Gen.
Stanley Allen McChrystal (1954-) as top U.S. gen. in Afghanistan less than a year after he took
over, indicating that the U.S. is in deeper doo-doo?; McChrystal assumes command on June 15 (until June 23, 2010); on June 21 he
announces
that the U.S. will sharply restrict airstrikes to situations in which they are needed to prevent coalition troops from being overrun in an effort to reduce civilian deaths.
On May 11 stressed-out U.S. Sgt. John M. Russell (b. 1964-) of Sherman, Tex.
fires
on his comrades inside a combat stress clinic in Baghdad, killing five; meanwhile U.S. Army Specialist
Zachary Boyd (1990-) is photographed in E Afghanistan fighting the Taliban dressed in pink boxer
shorts reading "I Love NY" and flip-flops, drawing the praise of U.S. defense secy. Robert Gates, says it takes "a special kind of courage", and "I can only
wonder about the impact on the Taliban... What an incredible innovation in psychological warfare."
On May 12 up to 12 suicide bombers stage synchronized attacks on govt. buildings in
Khost
(E of Kabul) in Afghanistan, triggering scattered fighting that kills 20 and wounds three U.S. soldiers.
In May the U.S. military burns stacks of Bibles
in Afghanistan to avoid Christian proselytizing of precious Muslims.
On June 30 after the U.S. begins a major offensive in
Helmand Province, Afghanistan,
U.S. Pfc. Bowe Robert Bergdahl (1986-)
of Hailey, Idaho (who wrote that he is "ashamed to be an American"?) goes AWOL, and is kidnapped
in E Afghanistan by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani Network, who release a video of him on July 18,
saying a "drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison"; another video
is released on Xmas.
In the summer former Afghan PM (1995-6) Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai (1944-)
brokers a meeting between the Taliban and U.S. Brig. Gen. Edward M. Reeder, where they agree to cut al-Qaida loose but won't accept U.S. access to three airbases.
On July 13, 2009 after eight British soldiers are killed in Afghanistan, bringing the British death toll to 184, exceeding losses in Iraq, British PM
Gordon Brown tells
Parliament that the 9K British troops in Afghanistan have the "strongest possible plan", plus enough resources "to do the job".
On July 19 a Russian-owned civilian heli
crashes and burns after takeoff in S Afghanistan's largest NATO base, killing 16 civilians.
On July 20 U.S. defense secy. Robert Gates bolsters
U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 22K; meanwhile four GIs are killed by a roadside bomb in E Afghanistan, bringing the July coalition death toll to 55 incl. 30 from the U.S.
On Aug. 3 a remote-controlled bomb set by the Taliban kills 10 civilians and
two police and critically injures a police chief in Herat
in W Afghanistan.
On Aug. 10 U.S. gen.
Stanley McChrystal
tells the press that the Taliban have advanced out of their old
strongholds in S and E Afghanistan, and are gaining the upper hand
as they move N and W; no surprise, in Sept. he releases a
66-page document
saying that unless he gets 45K more troops within the next year, the
8-year conflict "will likely result in failure"; on Sept. 21 he orders the
troops to pull out of rural areas and concentrate on protecting major urban centers;
meanwhile U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, retired Lt. Gen.
Karl W. Eikenberry
thinks that more troops should be conditioned on the Afghan govt. meeting benchmarks.
On Aug. 12 U.S. Lt. Gen.
Rick Lynch
tells the press that he's urging the military to deploy more unmanned
vehicles on the ground to go with the unmanned drones, with the soundbyte
"Let's get those kids out of the vehicles" in Iraq and Afghanistan - one day
the U.S. military will consist of robot soldiers commanded by human officers?
On Aug. 14 Pakistan
lifts
a ban on political activity in its tribal regions near the Afghan border, granting
them parliamentary rep in hopes of reducing the influence of the Taliban.
On Aug. 15 a Taliban suicide car bomb near the main gate of the
NATO-led internat. mission
in Kabul kills three Afghans and wounds 70.
On Aug. 18 a suicide car bomber kills 7+ in Kabul, while a Taliban
rocket hits the pres. palace grounds as
violence
across Afghanistan precedes the election; on Aug. 19 gunmen storm a bldg. in
Kabul
and battle police for hours, becoming the 3rd attack in Kabul
in five days; on Aug. 20
elections
in Afghanistan reelect pres. Hamid Karzai to a 2nd term, although
his chief rival
Abdullah Abdullah
(1960-) also claims a V;
Afghan women
stay away from the polls; meanwhile the U.S. reveals a plan to make
finance minister
Ashraf Ghani
into a chief exec serving beneath him; too bad, after a U.N. team does a
recount
and uncovers massive voter fraud of 1M votes for Karzai, lowering his
total from 54% to 48.3% on Oct. 19, a new election is called for on
Nov. 7, causing Karzai to
question
the reliability of the U.S. as a partner on Oct. 25; on Nov. 1
Double Abdullah
drops out
of the runoff election, and calls Karzai's reelection illegal.
On Aug. 19 an
ABC News-Washington Post Poll
reveals that a majority (51%) of the U.S. pop. thinks that the Afghanistan War
is not worth fighting; 47% thinks it is.
On Aug. 28 a suicide bombing at the main NATO border crossing
between Pakistan and Afghanistan kills 18+ Pakistani security
officials; meanwhile the Taliban make a comeback in N Afghanistan,
incl. the Baghlan, Kunduz, and Taqhar Provinces, where mainly German
troops guard the N supply route that supplements the more vulneratle
routes through Pakistan.
In Aug.-Sept. the U.S. and British govt. spend millions of dollars
to try to persuade
Afghan farmers
to give up growing poppies and substitute wheat and fruit, offering
them cheap credit and jobs; the poppy planting season begins in Oct.
On Sept. 2, 2009 a Taliban suicide bomber attacks officials leaving a mosque E of Kabul,
killing Afghanistan's chief deputy intel chief
Abdullah Laghmani
plus 22 others - Afghanistan is becoming Obama's Vietnam?
On Sept. 4 a NATO air strike against two Taliban-hijacked fuel tankers in
Kunduz
province in N Afghanistan kills up to 142, incl. civilians who are
burned alive in a giant fireball, pissing off the Afghanis;
after Taliban activity drops off, the police force is cut by
one-third in 2006, leaving a few thousand German peacekeepers;
too bad, they begin a
resurgence
in 2007; on Nov. 27 former German defense minister
Franz Josef Jung
resigns as employment minister, along with gen. inspector
Wolfgang Schneiderhan and state secy. Peter Wichert.
On Sept. 8 four U.S. Marines die in an ambush in the
Battle of Gangjal
in E Afghanistan;
Dakota L. Meyer (1988-)
wins the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle.
On Sept. 9 (9/9/09 - lucky day to the Chinese) U.S. defense secy.
Robert M. Gates
gives his first interview to al-Jazeera TV network, admitting that
the U.S. made a "serious strategic mistake" when it turned its back
on Afghanistan after the Soviets were defeated there, and pledging
that "both Afghanistan and Pakistan can count on us for the long term" - meaning
how many months?
On Sept. 9 NATO troops free British NYT reporter
Stephen Farrell
in N Afghanistan; too bad, his colleague Mohammad Sultan Munadi plus
a British soldier and civilian are killed during the rescue.
On Sept. 15 JCS chmn. U.S. Adm.
Michael Mullen
tells the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. "probably" needs
to send more troops to Afghanistan.
On Sept. 17 a suicide bomber attacks a convoy of Italian NATO soldiers
in the heart of Kaboom, er,
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing six, plus 10 civilians; 50+ are injured; the 3rd suicide bomb
in Kabul in the last five weeks.
On Sept. 19 al-Qaida releases a
video
warning the German people that unless they elect a govt. that withdraws its
troops from Afghanistan on Sept. 27 they will stage attacks in Germany, causing
rumor of a German 9/11.
On Sept. 29 a crowded passenger bus hits a roadside bomb in
Kanadhar, Afghanistan,
killing 30 incl. 10 children, and injuring 30+.
On Sept. 30 a suicide bomber rams a military convoy of foreign forces in the
Mandozai District
of Khost Province in SE Afghanistan, killing one GI.
On Oct. 2, 2009 a suicide bomber hits a U.S. convoy in S Afghanistan,
killing two U.S. soldiers; meanwhile officials announce that they
got a U.S. and a British soldier on Oct. 1 to say
Happy October, Infidels.
On Oct. 3-4 the 12-hour
Battle of Kamdesh
in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan sees 53 U.S. soldiers defend ammo depot Combat Outpost Keating with
no air cover from 350 Taliban fighters after 35 Afghan army soldiers flee, losing eight KIA and
22 injured after killing 150 Taliban, becoming NATO's biggest loss of life since
10 French troops were killed in an ambush in Aug. 2008, causing a Taliban spokesman on Oct. 6 to utter
the non-surprising soundbyte "We are prepared for a long fight"; two Army staff sgts. earn the Medal of Honor;
the base was poorly defended because troops were being diverted to search for AWOL soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
On Oct. 8 (8:40 a.m. local time) a bomb outside the
Indian embassy
in C Kabul, Afghanistan kills 17 and wounds 76 (2nd embassy suicide attack in 16 mo.),
showing that the 8-year war against the Taliban is being lost.
On Oct. 22 former U.S. vice-pres.
Dick Cheney
says that Pres. Obama is "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger"
in Afghanistan, causing the White House to fire back "The vice-president was for seven
years not focused on Afghanistan. Ever more curious, given the fact than increase in
troops sat on desks in this White House, incl. the vice-presidents for more than 8 mo.,
a resource request filled by Pres. Obama in March"; meanwhile on Nov. 3 the EU endorses a
"step change" in
policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, backing Obama's military plans.
On Oct. 26 a U.S. heli crash
in W Afghanistan kills seven U.S. troops and three U.S. civilians, and injures 12 Americans and 14 Afghans; meanwhile two U.S. helis collide
in flight, killing four and wounding two, all going to make Oct. the deadliest mo. for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with 55, and 281 for the year.
On Oct. 27 the New York Times reports the Ahmed Wali Karzai,
brother of Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for the last eight years despite being involved in the opium trade,
helping to recruit a paramilitary force for the CIA in and around Kandahar.
On Oct. 28 (5 a.m.) Taliban militants kill six U.N. foreign staff in an attack on an
Internat. Bakhtar Guest House in Kabul, Afghanistan as part of their plan to disrupt Nov. 7 elections.
On Nov. 3 an Afghan policeman
shoots and kills five British soldiers in Helmand Province, then escapes, proving that the Taliban has infiltrated the police force.
On Nov. 7 (the Taliban sets up an ambush for U.S. and Afghan troops in
Zabul Province
in E Afghanistan in "F.O.B. Nowhere", but they outsmart them, killing
17-20 Taliban instead with no losses of their own.
On Nov. 9 NATO and Afghan officials
claim
to have killed 130+ Taliban fighters in N Afghanistan, incl. eight cmdrs.
during a 5-day operation.
On Nov. 9 a suicide bomber in an auto-rickshaw kills three in
Peshawar, Pakistan,
while Islamist militants kill four soldiers in South Waziristan.
On Nov. 14 NATO and Afghan forces kill several insurgents in
Shinand District
in Herat, W Afghanistan, incl. an armed woman.
On Nov. 18 a U.S. official reports that Afghan mine minister
Mohammad Ibrahim Adel
accepted a $30M bribe in Dec. 2007 in Dubai from the Chinese Metallurgical Group Corp.
to approve a $2.9B copper extraction province in Logar Province.
On Nov. 18 U.S. secy. of state
Hillary Clinton
visits Afghanistan, telling Hamid Karazi to clean up corruption.
On Nov. 19 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai is
inaugurated
amid a state of siege in Kabul, with no Western heads of state present,
although Hillary Clinton did bring her 18M votes.
On Nov. 20 a Taliban suicide bomber in Farah City
in SW Afghanistan kills 17 incl. a senior police official, and wounds 29;
meanwhile politician Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is targeted by a bomb under
a bridge near Kabul, but escapes, although five of his bodyguards are
killed; meanwhile a U.S. missile strike near
Mir Ali
in North Waziristan kills eight militants, a poll by
Fritz Wendel
finds that 65% of Americans are expecting a Muslim terrorist attack within 6 mo.
In Nov. U.S. SSgt. Calvin Gibbs
arrives at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Afghanistan, talking fellow soldiers into forming a "kill team" that goes on to murder Afghans
and collect fingers as trophies; Gibbs is convicted
by a military jury of 15 counts incl. murder, and sentenced to life in priz in Nov. 2011.
On Dec. 1, 2009 Pres. Obama gives a speech
at West Point Military Academy on Afghanistan, announcing that he's sending 30K new troops to bring the total to 100K, with a time limit of July 2011
to stabilize the country and train the security forces to take over and begin withdrawing (without specifing a time limit for the last withdrawals), with the soundbytes:
"I want the Afghan people to understand, America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering";
"I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future", adding that to achieve those goals "We need a stronger,
smarter and comprehensive strategy", adding "I do not make this decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security
is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida", calling it "our vital
national interest" to deny al-Qaida safe bases to plan attacks on the U.S.; also "The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished
quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan", and "There have been those in Pakistan who have argued that the struggle
against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little, or seeking accommodation with those who use violence";
too bad, on Aug. 30 Gen. Stanley McChrystal told him he needed 40K more troops (to be supplied by other nations?), the public setting of a
time limit undermines Afghan and Pakistani confidence, and he never mentions the real problem of nuke-packing
Pakistan;
the key questions of whether the Taliban is a threat to the U.S. and/or is going to invite al-Qaida back into Afghanistan is sidestepped, or the idea of
negotiating with the Taliban for an immediate withdrawal if they finally hand over Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida men; on Dec. 4
Rusell Wiseman,
may of Arlington (near Memphis), Tenn. accuses Obama of timing his speech deliberately to block the airing of the "Peanuts" Christmas TV
special, proving he's a Muslim; on Dec. 2 U.S. House majority leader Sten Hoyer
(D-Md.) says that he supports a war surtax to offset the cost of the Afghanistan war; meanwhile since Aug. 30 the U.S. lost 116 troops in
Afghanistan since Gen. McChrystal asked for the reinforcements, incl. 17 in Nov., 58 in Oct., and 37 in Sept.; on Dec. 4 NATO leaders
pledge
7K troops to back Obama up; on Dec. 8 Gen. McChrystal tells
the Afghan govt. that troops will only begin pulling out in July 2011, and it might take several years to complete; U.S. Sen. (D-Mich.
Carl M. Levin
says that "The surge that is needed is a surge of Afghan troops"; meanwhile on Dec. 3 the New York Times
reports
that the CIA is expanding its use of drones in Pakistan, incl. in Balochistan Province in S Pakistan where Taliban leader Mullah Omar is
believed to be hiding in the provincial capital of Quetta, and U.S. nat. security adviser Gen.
James R. Jones
delivers a "blunt message" to the Pakistan govt. that it must become more aggressive in going after al-Qaida and the Taliban or the U.S. will do it
for them; on Dec. 10 the U.S. conducts its first unmanned airstrike in South Waziristan since the mid-Oct. Pakistani Army offensive, hitting a Taliban stronghold in
Tanga
in the Ladha region, and killing two Taliban and four al-Qaida fighters.
On Dec. 2 Am. filmmaker Michael Moore (1954-) appears on Larry King Live, saying that he feels sorry for Obama
for deciding to pump up the Afghanistan War because 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were mainly from Saudi Arabia, then turning around and lamenting that
the job wasn't done as fast as with Hitler and Mussolini in WWII, and claiming it will become Obama's Vietnam, yet dissing the idea of setting a deadline - although the U.S. actually won
the Vietnam War then unilaterally pulled out and let the Commies take the weak South Vietnamese govt. at jet speed while Americans got into disco?
On Dec. 6 Human Rights Watch releases a Report on Denial of Women's Rights in Afghanistan,
containing the soundbyte: "Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, and the establishment of the [Hamid] Karzai government, Afghan women continue to be among the worst off in the world.
Their situation is dismal in every area, incl. in health, education, employment, freedom from violence, equality before the law, and political participation."
On Dec. 8 an early morning a U.S. Special Forces raid on the village of Armul
in the Laghman Province of Afghanistan results in 13-15 civilians massacred, causing 5K to march on the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam shouting anti-Obama
and anti-Karzai slogans, spreading to the neighboring province of Nangarhar, where 3K students occupy the main highway between Kabul and Jalalabad on Dec. 9.
On Dec. 8 U.S. gen. Stanley A. McChrystal
tells the U.S. Senate that there are up to 27K Taliban in Afghanistan but that they can
be defeated; meanwhile a joint press conference in Kabul by Hamid Karzai and U.S. defense
secy. Robert Gates is held, in which Karzai predicts that it will take 15-20 years before
the Afghan govt. can stand on its own against the Taliban, and Gates responds that "our
government will not again turn our back on this country or the region", and "We will fight
by your side until Afghan forces are large enough and strong enough to secure the nation
on their own", adding that the July 2011 withdrawal date is "conditioned-based" and "gradual",
and not a complete pullout but a "gradual change in the U.S. military's role".
On Dec. 15 a suicide car bomber in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul
near the home of former Afghan vice-pres.
Ahmad Zia Massoud
and the pro-West Heetal Hotel (owned by the son of former pres. Burhanuddin Rabbani)
kills eight and wounds 40; Massoud's brother Ahmad Shah Massoud was an anti-Taliban
fighter killed on Sept. 9, 2001 by al-Qaida.
On Dec. 15 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai gives a
speech
at an anti-corruption in Kabul, where he tries to defend corrupt Kabul mayor
Abdul Ahad Sahibi, calling for his charges to be overturned, showing that
the corruption goes to the top and can never be ended, just an act put on
to keep U.S. money flowing in?
On Dec. 16 two senior U.N. officials claim that the #2 U.S. U.N. official in Afghanistan
Peter W. Galbraith
tried to get the White House to help him replace Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai in
Sept. when the election fraud was being exposed, and that Karzai got pissed-off
after hearing about it, causing Galbraith to be expelled and fired; the
#1 official Richard C. Holbrooke also clashes with Karzai over the election,
but never got caught mentioning replacing him.
On Dec. 24 a suicide car bomber in
Kandahar, Afghanistan
kill eight Afghan civilians.
On Dec. 26 German defense minister
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg
says that the West should abandon hopes of creating a democracy in Afghanistan
because its backward Sharia-loving Muslims are unsuited to it, and the
country's govt. has to incl. the Taliban.
On Dec. 27-29 the
Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention
in Toronto attracts 6.5K-17K Muslims, who cheer after a speaker says
that Allah destroyed the Soviet Union for invading Afghanistan, and
might do the same thing to the U.S.
On Dec. 28 U.S.-led troops are accused of dragging innocent children
from their beds and shooting them during a Dec. 27 night raid in
Ghazi Khan
villege in Kunar, E Afghanistan that killed 10, causing "Death to America" protests in Kabul and Jalalabad; NATO spokesmen
initially
call the victims insurgents until Afghan govt. investigators ID them as civilians, incl. eight children ages 11-17.
On Dec. 29 an Afghan soldier turns jihadist at a military base in Badghis Province
in W Afghanistan, killing one U.S. soldier and wounding two Italian soldiers with an explosives-laden vest.
On Dec. 30 (10 a.m.) suicide bombers strike Anbar Province
in W Afghanistan, ambushing local leaders and killing 24 and wounding 58; meanwhile Kuwait-born Jordanian Taliban double agent suicide bomber (a physician)
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi (b. 1977)
is permitted to enter U.S. Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost Province in E Afghanistan sans body search,
killing seven CIA employees, five Canadians, one Afghan, and one Jordanian intel officer,
Sharif Ali bin Zeid (Zaid), and wounding six CIA officers,
becoming the deadliest attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the war, exposing the CIA fighting a dirty war on the Afghan border alongside its Jordanian allies?;
his Turkish wife Defne Bayrak
tells the AP that his hatred of the U.S. motivated him, and that the jihad must go on; he leaves a
recording
bragging on how he capitalized on the "stupidity" of Jordanian and U.S. intel officials, plus a
posth. message
calling on Muslims to wage jihad and become martyrs like him; CIA base chief
Jessica Matthews,
who only spent 3 mo. in Afghanistan or served in a war zone is a misguided result of affirmative action at the CIA?;
he was paid by the Taliban?
On Dec. 30 the Afghan govt. accuses U.S.-led troops of killing innocent children in
Ghazi Khan
village in Narang district in E Kunar Province during a night raid that killed 10, causing anti-U.S. demonstrations in Kabul and Jalalabad, with
chants of "Death to America"; the U.S. responds that they were part of an Afghan terror cell manufacturing IEDs, and that they killed nine
who who were shooting at them from several bldgs.
On Dec. 31 (2:00 a.m.) Pakistan commandos raid a private clinic in
Wana
in South Waziristan, killing four foreign militants and a woman.
On Jan. 1, 2010 a U.S. drone aircraft fires a missile that kills at least
three militants in a car in Pakistan's
North Waziristan
region on the Afghan border; meanwhile a Taliban suicide car bomber in
Shah Hasan Khel
in NW Pakistan targeted at an anti-Taliban militia kills almost 100,
pissing off tribal elders; meanwhile on Jan. 1 a suicide bomber at a
volleyball tournament near
Lakki Marwat, Pakistan
(in NW Pakistan near Waziristan) kills 75.
On Jan. 2 the
Afghan parliament
rejects 14 of 24 cabinet nominees by pres. Hamid Karzai as being
cronies or under the influence of warlords, telling him to submit new acceptable ones.
On Jan. 5 (night) 14 suspected Muslim terrorists die after their
explosives-rigged bus blows up prematurely in
Kunduz Province, Afghanistan.
On Jan. 8 Afghan Pres.
Hamid Karzai
defends his record on corruption, calling it "blown out of proportion".
On Jan. 11 an explosion outside the village of
Nawa, Helmand
in S Afghanistan kills a U.S. Marine, plus
Rupert Hamer (b. 1960) of
the Sunday Mirror, who becomes the first British journalist killed in the
Afghan War.
On Jan. 11 a
poll
by ABC News, the BBC, and ARD German TV is released claiming that almost
70% of Afghans support the presence of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan,
and 61% favor the troop buildup; 42% blame the Taliban for the violence.
On Jan. 12 NATO and Afghan security forces open fire during a demonstration in
Garmsir
in Helmand Province S Afghanistan, a former Taliban stronghold.
On Jan. 12 protests in
Kabul, Afghanistan
triggered by rumors that internat. troops destroyed copies of the Quran kill six.
On Jan. 14 a suicide bomber at a market in
Dihrawud
in the ethnic Pashtun Uruzgan Province of Afghanistan 250 mi. SW of Kabul
kills 20 incl. three children.
On Jan. 17 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzi announces a new
peace plan
featuring "economic incentives" to lure the Taliban to join his
govt. ranks, saying that many Taliban fighters "have no ideological
commitment to the principles, values or political movement led by Mullah
Omar" and are "not supporters of the ideology of al-Qaida"; Pakistani
army chief Gen.
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
announces that Pakistan wants a role in the negotiations.
On Jan. 18 the
Taliban
stages a brazen attack in C Kabul, Afghanistan, with suicide bombers
at several locations along with a gun battle inside a shopping center.
On Jan. 21 Afghan CIC U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal
announces
that he plans on tightening the rules on night raids in Afghanistan to
avoid pissing-off the pop. and throwing them into the arms of the Taliban.
On Jan. 22 U.S. Marine Lance Cpl.
Ryan T. Mathison
steps on an IED and it fails to go off; on Jan. 23 a roadside bomb kills two
U.S. soldiers in
S Afghanistan,
bringing the year's total to 22.
On Jan. 25 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
announces
that Western allies back his plans to reconcile with Taliban fighters.
On Jan. 28 world leaders meet in
London, England
to discuss the allied war effort in Afghanistan and discuss how to combat
Islamic radicalization in Yemen.
On Jan. 30 (dawn) a joint U.S.-U.N. airstrike in
Wardak Province
SW of Kabul mistakenly targets an Afghan army post, killing four
Afghan soldiers, pissing off the Afghan govt.; meanwhile a U.S. drone strike in the
Mohammad Khel
area of North Waziristan kills five; meanwhile a suicide car bomber in
Bajaur
in NW Pakistan kills 14; meanwhile a suicide bomber at a falafel restaurant
near a Shiite shrine in Sunni-dominated
Samarra
(60 mi. N of Baghdad) kills two; meanwhile critics
diss
the Obama admin. for never admitting to the strikes.
On Feb. 1, 2010 Kazakhstan foreign minister
Kanat Saudabayev
begins a 5-day visit to the U.S., calling for a summit meeting of the
Org. for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and warning the U.S. against
quitting Afghanistan "without creating the conditions for the Afghans
to turn away from arms and to move to plowshares".
On Feb. 2 Afghan Pres.
Hamid Karzai
leads a delegation to Mecca, then on Feb. 3 holds talks with King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia to ask for spiritual and financial help against the Taliban,
while Abdullah says that the Taliban must deny sanctuary to Osama bin Laden
before they will agree to mediate in any peace deal.
On Feb. 2 top Pentagon officials
tell
the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that they are scaling back the "Don't Ask Don't Tell"
policy, no longer aggressively pursuing disciplinary action against
gay service members who are outed by 3rd parties, with JCS chmn. Adm. Mike Mullen
saying that lifting the ban is "the right thing to do"; Ariz. Sen. John McCain
comes out against the idea, telling them to "Keep the impact it will have on our
forces firmly in mind"; Mullen also
tells
the committee that the next 12-18 mo. will be critical in reversing the momentum
gained by the Taliban in Afghanistan, adding "Our future security is greatly
imperiled if we do not win the wars we are in", asking for $192B for the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 18 mo., $33B to be used to send 30K more
troops to Afghanistan by fall.
On Feb. 2 (night) the U.S. carries out its
largest drone missile attack
so far, launching 16-8 and killing 10+ in North Waziristan.
On Feb. 3 veiled U.S.-educated Pakistani female neuroscientist
Aafia Siddiqui
(1972-) is convicted by a jury in New York City of shooting at
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008, raising her arm after the verdict
and uttering the soundbyte "Your anger should be directed where it belongs",
referring to Israel, sparking angry protests in cities in Pakistan.
On Feb. 5 Pres. Obama attends a
funeral for
the seven CIA employees killed in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, telling the CIA to
"carry on their work, to complete this mission, to win this war and to keep our
country safe"; on Feb. 5 the Obama admin. sends a
cable
to the U.S. embassy in Britain, ordering them to conduct outreach to "empower"
the British Muslim community.
On Feb. 10-?
Operation Moshtarak
by 15K U.S., British and Afghan troops targets
Marjah, Afghanistan
in Helmand Province, becoming the first major offensive of the Obama admin.; on
Feb. 25 after heavy fighting the U.S. installs a
new Afghan govt.
in Marjah.
On Feb. 11 a suicide bomber in a border policeman's uniform in
Paktia Province
35 mi. E of Gardez in Afghanistan wounds five Americans.
On Feb. 14 an errant U.S. rocket strike in
Helmand Province
in Afghanistan hits a civilian compound, killing 10 incl. five children.
On Feb. 18 a U.S. missile strike on a militant compound near
Miranshah
in North Waziristan, Pakistan, kills three militants; meanwhile a bomb
explodes in a mosque in the
Aka Khel
area of the Khyber tribal region of NW Pakistan, killing 29
(incl. some militants) and wounding 50, while U.S. special envoy
Richard Holbrooke
meets with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad to discuss the recent revelation
that they have been arresting Afghan Taliban leaders on their soil.
On Feb. 20 the
Dutch govt.
collapses over military deployment in Afghanistan; on Sept. 21 Dutch PM
Jan Peter Balkenende
announces that Dutch troops will begin leaving S Afghanistan in Aug. for
lack of authority of his caretaker govt. to accept a NATO request to stay.
On Feb. 22 a NATO airstrike in
Day Kundi Province
near the border with Uruzgan on a 3-vehicle convoy mistakenly
kills 27 Afghan civilians, pissing off the Hamid Karzai govt. off; meanwhile a
suicide bomber in E Afghanistan kills 15, incl. tribal leader
Haji Zaman (Mohammad Zaman Ghamshaik),
who led the failed capture of Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Nangarhar
province in Tora Bora in 2001; meanwhile the U.S. govt.
announces
that NATO neglect has allowed the Taliban to build up its forces by 35% in
the last two years.
In Feb. the
Pentagon
spends $6.7B on Afghanistan, compared with $5.5B on Iraq, putting
Afghanistan on top for the first time; the cumulative cost for both
wars is greater than $1T.
In Feb. several top members of the Taliban
Quetta Shura
(leadership council) are detained by Pakistani intel, who agrees to repatriate
them if they didn't commit any crimes in Pakistan.
In Feb. videos taken by the Taliban Islamist
Haqqani
network showing them raping young women surface, with 2nd in command
Sirajuddin "Siraj" Haqqani, his cousin Ishak, and uncle Ibraham photographing
their rapes as they go from village to village to seek Taliban recruits,
becoming known as the "Taliban Abu Ghraib".
On Mar. 1, 2010 the govt. of
Afghanistan
announces a ban on news coverage of Taliban strikes, claiming they embolden them.
On Mar. 1 Islamic militants blow up a fuel tanker near
Peshawar
carrying fuel for NATO troops; meanwhile Pakistani PM
Yousuf Raza Gilani
says that Islam has no room for terrorism - no, it has a million rooms?
On Mar. 1 six NATO service members are killed in separate attacks in
Afghanistan, incl. near
Kandahar City,
and nine Afghan civilians die in four bombings in the S.
On Mar. 2 Pakistan
seizes
a Taliban and al-Qaida network in the Bajaur tribal area in NW Pakistan
along the Afghan border; during the night Taliban militants blow up a boys
school in the
Spin Qabar
area of Kyber Agency, while others throw grenades at a univ. music
concert, killing one student.
On Mar. 6 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
calls
on the Taliban to stop attacking schools so that the 5M Afghan children
can reach their potential; meanwhile at 8:30 a.m. a car bomb in
Najaf
kills three and wounds 54.
On Mar. 14 a Taliban assault in
Kandahar, Afghanistan
described as a preemptive response to Western plans to eradicate them kills 35.
On Mar. 19
Kai Eide,
former top U.N. official in Afghanistan complains that recent arrests by Pakistan
of high-ranking Taliban figures have torpedoed secret talks with the West.
On Mar. 22 British security minister
Lord West
announces that al-Qaida bomb makers from Afghanistan may already
have the ability to produce a dirty bomb, and might plant it on a small
craft and float it up the Thames River to London, causing him to set up a
command center to track suspicious boats.
On Mar. 25 the top U.N. official in Afghanistan holds the first reconciliation
talks with reps. of Taliban warlord
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
On Mar. 28 (Sun.) Pres. Obama makes a
surprise visit
to Kabul, Afghanistan, his first since taking office, meeting with
pres. Hamid Karzai and dining with him and Taliban warlords; meanwhile U.S. gen.
Stanley A. McChrystal
(senior NATO cmdr. in Afghanistan) utters the soundbyte
"We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven
to be a threat", which is jumped on by war critics, who call for war crimes
prosecutions.
On Mar. 31 a bicycle bomb near a crowd gathering to receive free vegetable
seeds from the British govt. in return for giving up opium poppy growing near
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan,
capital of Helmand Province in Afghanistan kills 13 and wounds 45.
On Apr. 1, 2010 San Francisco, Calif. police chief
George Gascon
apologizes for remarks made on Mar. 25 that the U.S. faces the threat
of domestic terrorism from Yemen and Afghanistan, and that significant numbers
of people from those countries reside in the Bay Area, pissing off the
Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) et al.
On Apr. 1 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzi delivers a scathing
sour grapes attack on the West,
accusing the U.N. and the West of perpetrating a "vast fraud" in the 2009 pres. election
in order to deny him reelection and/or make him "an ineffective president",
drawing criticism from Afghan politicans and the White House.
On Apr. 2 German soldiers in Afghanistan accidentally kill six Afghan soldiers
in a firefight with the Taliban near
Kunduz, Afghanistan,
while losing three KIA.
On Apr. 9 after a coverup fails, U.S. Special Forces cmdr. vice-adm.
William H. McRaven
goes personally to Paktia in E Afghanistan to offer family head
Haji Sharabuddin two sheep and $3K for the deaths of his two sons, who were accidentally
killed along with two pregnant women and a teen girl by U.S. forces on Feb. 12; he follows ancient
Pashtun tribal ritual
for paying blood money.
On Apr. 13
James Carafano
of the Heritage Foundation criticizes Pres. Obama, saying that his
cutting of conventional military capabilities and talk of pullouts from
Iraq and Afghanistan is creating a dangerous environment vis a vis Iran.
On Apr. 15 another suicide bombing in
Kandahar, Afghanistan
kills three foreigners and three Afghan soldiers.
On Apr. 17 two suicide bombers dressed in burqas detonate in a refugee camp in
Kacha Pukka, Kohat
in NW Pakistan, killing 41 and wounding 62.
On Apr. 18 U.S. Adm.
Mike Mullen,
chmn. of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says that a U.S. strike against Iran
would go a "long way" to delaying its nuclear weapons program, but that he considers
it his "last option" right now; meanwhile Iranian pres. Madman Inastraightjacket
boasts
of Iran's military might and says that no country would dare attack it; he also
orders
the U.S. and its allies to leave Afghanistan.
On Apr. 20 New York City businessman
Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (AKA Michael Mixon)
(1953-) is sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempting to funnel
money to an Islamic terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
On Apr. 25 Afghan troops kill three civilians in their home overnight, causing
protesters to torch NATO trucks in
Logar Province
in E Afghanistan.
In Apr. USAF flight surgeon Lt. Col.
Terrence Lakin
of Colo. refuses to board his plane until he sees proof that Pres. Obama
was born in the U.S., causing him to be court-martialed; on Dec. 15 a federal jury
convicts
him of disobeying orders to deploy to Afghanistan, and he is sentenced to 6 mo. in military
prison and dismissal from the Army.
On May 2, 2010 Afghan cleric
Mullah Adahdad
is killed by a U.S. Army platoon from the 5th Stryker Brigade,
2nd Infantry Div., after which it is revealed that he was unarmed and that
they had a conspiracy to kill unarmed Afghan men, dismember the corpses, and
pose for photo ops, becoming a war crimes scandal.
On May 7 due to the Times Square Bomber, U.S. Afghan military cmdr.
Stanley A. McChrystal
meets with Pakistani military chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and
urges him to speed up their offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida in
North Wazaristan; meanwhile on May 8 Pakistan
announces
the test-firing of two nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, the Shaheen-1 (range 400 mi.),
and the Ghazvani (range 180 mi.).
On May 12 a NATO tanker carrying fuel for troops in
Spin Boldak
in S Afghanistan is blown up by a planted bomb.
On May 12 Pres. Obama and Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai make a joint appearance
at the White House, and Obama
says
that U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the surrounding region is
"in our national security interests" because of recent terrorist plots
in the U.S. that have ties to the region, while seeming open to the idea of
negotiating
and reconciling with elements of the Taliban; on May 13 U.S. state secy.
Hillary Clinton
vows that despite Karzai's plan to reintroduce Taliban extremists
into society, the U.S. will not abandon the women of Afghanistan to Sharia.
On May 12 U.N. officials reveal that up to one-third of the
Afghanistan poppy harvest
has been destroyed by a mysterious disease, implicating the U.S. and
NATO summer offensives.
On May 13 Afghan and NATO forces kill 18 militants in
Helmand Province
in S Afghanistan.
On May 17 a Pamir Airways
local plane with 38 passengers and five crew crashes in the Hindu Kush region of
Afghanistan near Kabul, Afghanistan, killing all aboard.
On May 18 a suicide bomber in a Toyota minivan explodes in a Nato convoy in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 18 incl. five U.S. soldiers and one Canadian soldier, and wounding 47,
mostly civilians in rush-hour traffic; on May 18 a brazen pre-dawn attack on
Bagram Air Base
in Afghanistan N of Kabul kill seven Islamic guerrillas and wounds six foreign
troops; the U.S. death toll in Operation Infinite Justice, er, Enduring Freedom tops the 1K mark.
On May 22 (8 p.m.) Taliban fighters launch a ground assault against
Kandahar Air Field
300 mi. SW of Kabul in S Afghanistan, wounding several coalition troops
and civilian employees, becoming the 2nd attack on a major military
installation this week.
On May 29 a
grand council (jirga)
of Afghans meets in Kabul, where the Afghan govt. offers Taliban leaders
exile overseas if they agree to stop fighting, along with "de-radicalization"
classes and thousands of new jobs for militants who renounce violence.
On May 30 U.S. Gen.
Stanley A. McChrystal
says that Afghan insurgents are being trained and equipped inside Iran.
On May 31 German pres. Horst Kohler announces his surprise
resignation
after suggesting that the country's mission in Afghanistan is partly
motivated by commercial concerns.
On May 31 #3 al-Qaida leader
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid
(Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law) (an Egyptian) is reported to have
been killed in Pakistan by a U.S. missile strike.
On May 31 Afghan Red Cross worker
Sayed Mossa
is arrested for converting from Islam to Christianity; the Red Cross stinks
themselves up by cutting him loose?
On June 1, 2010 three gunmen attack a hospital in
Lahore, Pakistan,
killing eight then taking several hostages.
On June 7 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
removes
two top security officials, the interior minister and intel chief
for failing to stop an attack on a major peace conference.
On June 7
10 NATO soldiers
are killed in Afghanistan, becoming their deadliest day in months, incl.
five U.S. soldiers killed in an IED blast in E Afghanistan; meanwhle
the war in Afghanistan official becomes the
longest war in U.S. history,
104 mo.
On June 9 a suicide bomber at a wedding ceremony in
Nagaan
in Afghanistan's Kandahar Province kills 39 and wounds 73.
On June 10 U.S. gen.
Stanley A. McChrystal
says that the planned Kandahar offensive in Taliban land in Afghanistan
will take months longer than planned; meanwhile new British PM
David Cameron
visits Kabul, reaffirming British support for the effort.
On June 13 the U.S. announces the finding of vast
mineral riches
in Afghanistan, incl. iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium, worth
$1T-$3T, turning the country into the new El Dorado.
On June 13 52-y.-o. Colo. Christian construction worker
Gary Brooks Faulkner
(1958-) is arrested in N Pakistan en route to Afghanistan carrying
a pistol and 40-in. sword plus Bible materials, telling investigators
that he is on a solo mission to kill Osama bin Laden; he is released on
June 24 and arrives in Denver around midnight, being hailed as the
Rocky Mt. Rambo - they should have helped him?
On June 15 U.S. gen. (prostate cancer survivor)
David Howell Petraeus
(1952-) collapses at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blaming
dehydration and a skipped breakfast; he
calls
the conflict a "roller coaster", and warns that the Afghan campaign could
be heading toward a crisis".
On June 17 a nationwide alert is issued for
17 Afghan pilots
who went AWOL from
Lackland Air Force Base
in Tex.; seven turn themselves in; on July 7 the number is
increased
to 46; they are being used for a false flag op by the U.S. in order to start
another war?
On June 20 two bombs in push carts explode in
Lashkar Gah
in Helmand Province, killing two and wounding 14 in the first blast,
and injuring five in the 2nd blast, incl. an Afghan soldier.
On June 20 the British govt. announces the foiling of a
Taliban plot
to kill Afghan schoolchildren on their first day of school by planting bombs in the school.
A rolling stone finally gathers some moss?
On June 22 U.S. gen.
Stanley A. McChrystal
is called to Washington to try to save his job after remarks dissing
Obama and Biden to Rolling Stone mag. are publicized, incl. an
aide calling vice-pres. Joe Biden "Joe Bite Me", tendering his resignation in
advance of his June 23 meeting with Obama, who says that he "exercised poor judgment",
while White House press secy.
Robert Gibbs
says that he made "an enormous mistake", adding "I think the magnitude
and graveness of the mistake here are profound" but wants to talk to him before
making a decision, "to see what in the world he was thinking", adding that Obama
is questioning whether he is capable and mature enough for his job; on June 23
after the meeting with him Obama announces that McChrystal has resigned and is
being replaced as CIC of Afghanistan by his boss David Betrayus, er, Petraeus,
with the soundbyte "The conduct represented in the recently published article
does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It
undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our
democratic system, and it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work
together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan"; Petraeus takes command on
July 4, while McChrystal retires with 4 stars; Obama fires McChrystal despite
Afghan leaders
lobbying
for him, saying that it could disrupt progress in the war and jeopardize the
offensive against the Taliban in S Afghanistan; the article
The Runaway General
by Michael Hastings is officially pub. on June 25, but online articles
are made available on June 22; on June 24 Obama
disavows
the July 2011 Afghan drawdown date, with the soundbyte "We didn't say we'd be
switching off the lights, we said we'd begin a transition phase that would allow
the Afghan government to take more and more responsibility" (before the Taliban
takes it over along with all them billions of infrastructure?); the
Taliban
in Afghanistan says that the dismissal is aimed at hiding U.S. failure in
Afghanistan, and that Petraeus is "no smarter"; on July 2 Robert Gates quietly
changes the rules to require Pentagon approval before journalists can interview
sensitive military or civilian officials, and on July 8 nominates USMC gen.
James N. Mattis
as Petraeus' replacement; meanwhile publisher
Mort Zuckerman
says that Obama is being increasingly viewed as incompetent by the rest
of the world when it comes to foreign policy, especially with his
ingenue view that the U.S. is not at war with the Muslim World, and the
25 Euro countries
that have a combined 30K troops in Afghanistan see the firing as an
indicating that Obama is losing the war and it's time to pull their troops
out - never has a leftist antiwar rag got the chance to influence the war
machine like this?
On June 22 a female suicide bomber hiding the bomb beneath her burqa kills
two U.S. soldiers in
Kunar Province, Afghanistan,
becoming Afghanistan's first female suicide bomber.
On June 27 CIA dir.
Leon Panetta
says that the last time the CIA had good intel on the location of
Osama bin Laden was in "the early 2000s", and that there are less than
100 al-Qaida still in Afghanistan after they moved to the tribal areas of
Pakistan; he also
admits
that sanctions won't dissuade Iran from trying to get nukes.
On June 29 a U.S. Senate panel unanimously approves Gen.
David H. Petraeus
as new Afghan war cmdr., vowing to continue Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's
strategy of trying to avoid civilian deaths; the full Senate confirms him
99-0 on June 30.
On June 29 protests on the outskirts of
Kabul, Afghanistan
over a reported U.S. attack on a madrassa that disrespected its sanctity
by bringing in dogs and detaining people result in clashes with police that
injure 20, incl. 15 police; Afghan authorities claim that only Afghan police
were involved in the madrassa operation - what's your flavor?
On June 29 a U.S. drones kills 6+ in
Karikot
village in Pakistan's NW tribal belt.
On June 30
Jalalabad Airfield,
one of the biggest NATO bases in Afghanistan is attacked by the Taliban.
On June 30 British defense secy.
Liam Fox
warns the U.S. and NATO against "premature" withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying
"To leave before the job is finished would leave us less safe and less secure."
In June the
Dancing Boys Scandal
sees employees of U.S.-based DynCorp hired to train Afghan policemen exposed
for paying young dancing boys to entertain them in N Afghanistan.
On July 2, 2010 the number of
combat-related U.S. casualties in Afghanistan
during the Obama admin. (452) passes the total during the Bush admin. (448).
On July 2 (3:30 a.m.) six suicide bombers storm a U.S. Agency for Internat. Aid (USAID) in
Kunduz, Afghanistan,
killing four and wounding several.
On July 4 Taliban militants behead school headmaster
Sakandar Shah Mohammadi,
head of Berooni School in Qara Bagh district, Ghazni Province in
S Afghanistan, and torch two schools - stop the symptoms of thought
before they stop you?
On July 7 NATO troops
mistakenly kill
five Afghan army allies in an airstrike against insurgents in E Afghanistan
incl. three U.S. soldiers.
On July 10 five U.S. troops and a dozen civilians are killed in battles in
E and S Afghanistan.
On July 12
Ustad Ahmad Farooq,
al-Qaida official in charge of the Da'wah and Media Dept. for Pakistan
releases an interview claiming that their war in Afghanistan and
Pakistan is a bona fide jihad per Islamic Sharia law, with the soundbyte:
"The battle which is being fought here in Pakistan... cannot be described as
khurooj [rebellion against an Islamic state] - it is jihad. The way we are
confronting America in Afghanistan and any army that is siding with America,
whether it be the Afghan National Army or different tribal chieftains, is the
same way we are confronting America in Pakistan and the Pakistani Army that
is aiding America. That is jihad, and this too is jihad. It is a duty
incumbent upon every individual."
On July 13-14 Taliban attacks in S Afghanistan kill 8+ members of the U.S.-led
NATO forces, incl. three who are killed in a night assault on a police post in
Kandahar.
On July 16 Pres. Obama's
approval rating
for handling the Afghanistan War hits a record low of 43%, down from 52% in Dec.; former Carter nat. security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski
tells MSNBC's Morning Joe: "I think we're now going through a phase
in which there is a sense of pervasive malaise which affects different
groups in society in different ways... There's no grand mobilizing
idea. And I have a sense that Obama, who started so well, and who really
captivated people - he captivated me - has not been able to generate yet some
sort of organizing idea for an age which combines a malaise that's pervasive
and percolating."
On July 18 a suicide bombing in
Kabul, Afghanistan
kills three civilians three days before the 60-nation
Kabul Conference on
July 21, where Hamid Karzai calls for all foreign troops to pull out by 2014.
On July 23 a NATO rocket in
Sangin District
in Helmand Province, Afghanistan kills 52 civilians, incl. women and children,
causing Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai on July 26 to
condemn
the strike and call on NATO to make avoiding civilian casualties their top priority.
On July 24 a bombing in
S Afghanistan
kills five U.S. service members; meanwhile two U.S. troops are
abducted
by the Taliban after leaving Kabul.
On July 25 a cache of
90K secret records
of U.S. screwups in the Afghan War from Jan. 2004 to Dec. 2009 from
WikiLeaks is announced after they gave them to several major newspapers
incl. the New York Times, the U.K. Guardian, and Der Spiegel; the
records reveal that the Pakistani govt. helps the Taliban, that an incident
in 2007 shows they might have acquired SAMs, that the U.S. set up a secret
black unit to hunt down and "kill or capture" sans trial Taliban leaders,
and that Iran
helps smuggle arms to the Taliban; on
July 26 White House press secy.
Robert Gibbs
says that the leaked documents pose a security threat to the U.S.; despite the
fallout; on July 29 Taliban spokesman
Zabihullah Mujahid
says that his men are studying the leaked reports so they can hunt
down informants; on July 27
Jon Stewart
expresses outrage that the U.S. gave Pakistan $6.6B in aid in
2002-8, and pledged another $7.5B over the next five years, even as it
financed, trained, and colluded with the Taliban against the U.S.
On July 26 the
101st Airbone 4th Brigade Combat Team,
the last brigade of Pres. Obama's Afghan surge prepares to head for
Afghanistan.
On July 27 the House passes a $59B war funding bill by a 308-114 vote,
with 102 Dems. voting against, revealing a split with Pres. Obama.
On July 28 retired Pakistani gen.
Hamid Gul
denies allegations that he was a key link between the Taliban in
Afghanistan and their backers in Islamabad.
On July 30 Afghan protesters shout "Death to America" and set fire to vehicles in
Kabul
after a SUV accident kills four Afghans.
In July at least
66 U.S. troops
are killed in Afghanistan, the deadliest mo. in the 9-year Afghanistan War;
270 Afghan civilians
are killed.
On Aug. 1, 2010 Pres. Obama says that his
goal
for the Afghanistan War is not to turn it into a "model of Jeffersonian democracy"
but to keep it from returning to being a terrorist haven, calling it "difficult,
very difficult, but it's a fairly modest goal"; meanwhile
Netherlands becomes
the first NATO country to pull its troops out of Afghanistan.
On Aug. 7 the Taliban announces the murder of eight "Christian missionary"
medical doctors
in Afghanistan, who were found shot dead on Aug. 6, incl. British surgeon
Karen Woo, who was set to get married in two weeks, and Colo. dentist
Thomas Grams
(b. 1959-); the internat. Christian aid group
Internat. Assistance Mission
denies that the medics were proselytizing.
On Aug. 15 the Taliban orders the
stoning for adultery
of a young couple in the NE province of Kunduz, Afghanistan,
sparking outrage incl. Pres. Hamid Karzai.
On Aug. 19 the U.S. troop death count in Afghanistan reaches 575, the same
as during the Bush years, making it Obama's war?
On Aug. 23 U.S. Gen.
David Petraeus
claims that the Taliban's momentum has been reversed in S Afghanistan.
On Aug. 28 Islamic jihadists in U.S. Army uniforms launch pre-dawn attacks at
Forward Operating Base Salerno,
a major NATO base in Khost province in E Afghanistan 60 mi. SE of Kabul
near the Pakistan border and the nearby camp where seven CIA employees
were killed last year in a suicide attack; this time they are repelled
with no casualties.
On Aug. 30 insurgents attack Afghan civilians praying at a mosque in
Marjah
in Helmand Province, killing two and wounding one.
On Sept. 1 U.S. Pfc.
Naser Jason Abdo
(1990-) makes news for refusing to fight in Afghanistan, saying "I don't believe
I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don't believe I could sleep at
night if I take part, in any way, in the the killing of a Muslim", and "Islam is much more peaceful
and tolerant religion than it is an aggressive religion. I don't believe that Islam allows me to
operate in any kind of warfare"; after going AWOL from Ft. Campbell, Ky. when child porno and
bombmaking components are found in his belongings, and being caught trying to purchase guns in
Killeen, Tex., on July 28 he is
arrested
for planning a jihadist attack on Ft. Hood, being found with explosives; on July 29 as he is
leaving the courtroom where he freely admits his guilt, he shouts "Nidal Hasan Ft. Hood 2009".
On Sept. 1 Hamid Karzai's brother
Mahmoud Karzai
calls for the U.S. to intervene to head off a meltdown of Kabul Bank,
Afghanistan's biggest bank, which he is a major shareholder in, after which
depositors throng its branches, causing Hamid on Sept. 2 to tell Afghans not to
panic; on Sept. 7 Mahmoud Karzai's Kabul Bank assets are frozen.
On Sept. 1 former British Labour PM (1997-2007)
Tony Blair
(1953-) releases his new memoir "A Journey"; on Sept. 3 he gives
an interview on it, calling radical Islam the greatest threat facing the
world, saying that after 9/11 he didn't understand it yet, but that
its roots go far deeper than he thought, and "If they could, they would
use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons" and kill 300K not just 3K,
saying "This is actually more like the phenomenon of revolutionary Communism",
and "It's the religious or cultural equivalent of it, and its roots
are deep, its tentacles are long, and its narrative about Islam
stretches far further than we think into even parts of mainstream opinion who
abhor the extremism, but sort of buy some of the rhetoric that goes with it"; on
Sept. 4 he holds the first public signing of his memoir in
Dublin, Ireland,
where protesters hurl shoes and eggs at him.
On Sept. 4 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karazi announces the formation of a
High Council for Peace
to hold talks with the Taliban.
On Sept. 11 Pres. Obama marks the
9th Anniv. of 9/11
at the Pentagon, giving a
speech
with the soundbyte "We define the character of our country", continuing his act of
pretending Islamic jihad doesn't exist by calling al-Qaida "some small band of
murderers", while vice-pres. Joe Biden attends services at Ground Zero which begin
with a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m when the first plane hit the North Tower of
the WTC, and First Ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush mark it at the
Shanksville, Penn. Flight 93 Memorial Site;
New York anti-mosque activists Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller of
Stop the Islamization of Am. and the Freedom Defense Initiative lead 40K in a
protest
against the Ground Zero Mosque (Cordoba House) (Park51) in New York City,
where Dutch politician Geert Wilders delivers his
No Mosque Here Speech,
with the soundbytes "A tolerant society is not a suicidal society", "We must draw
the line so that New York, rooted in Dutch tolerance will never become New Mecca",
and "We must not give a free hand to those who want to subjugate us"; too bad, the
already-subjugated major media skunk it despite giving unlimited publicity to the
1-man band Pastor Terry Jones; N.J. Transit worker
Derek Fenton
bravely burns pages from his Quran at Ground Zero, and is taken away
by the pigs for questioning, then released, two days later getting fired,
after which the ACLU takes up his cause, getting his job back with damages
and lost wages by Apr. 2011; six men from
Gateshead, Tyneside, England
are later arrested for filming themselves burning Qurans on 9/11.
On Sept. 14 a panel of U.S. nat. security experts releases a
report
saying that Pres. Obama is abandoning the U.S. to Muslim Sharia by his policy
of delinking Islam to terrorism et al., threatening subversion of the U.S.
Constitutional govt.
On Sept. 18 elections in Afghanistan are attacked by the Taliban with 739
attacks as 2.5K candidates incl. 400 women run for the 249 seats of the
lower house; the results are announced on Oct. 8.
On Sept. 19 Pres. Obama makes his first appearance in a church since Easter Sun. at
St. John's Episcopal Church
in Washington, D.C.; it later is revealed that the church also invited
Jerusalem-born Muslim guest speaker Dr.
Ziad J. Asali
(1942-), 2003 founder of the
Am. Task Force on Palestine,
which promotes a 2-state solution, with Asali known as the official
U.S. delegate to the funeral of Yasser Arafat; ask the PC media why
they tried to cover it up, although Obama left before he spoke; meanwhile his
moderate Repub. point man
Colin Powell
appears on NBC's "Meet the Press", calling all the talk of his secret
Muslim leanings and foreign birth "nonsense", saying "Let's not go down low...
Let's attack him on policy, not nonsense."
On Sept. 21 a U.S. Army Black Hawk heli crashes in
Zhari District
in Zabul Province in S Afghanistan, killing nine coalition service
members, becoming the deadliest coalition heli crash since 2006, and bringing
the yearly death total to 529 (2.1K since the start of the war), making it the
deadliest year of the war.
On Sept. 30
Pakistan
cuts a key NATO supply route for its forces in Afghanistan after a NATO
aircraft crosses into Pakistani airspace to fight Afghan rebels, and kills
three Pakistani troops; despite a U.S. apology, they
refuse
to reopen it; on Oct. 1 militants attack
NATO fuel convoys
in Pakistan, burning 27 tankers - Obama's foreign policy is coming apart?
On Oct. 4, 2010 former senior U.N. official
Antonio Maria Costa
claims that Taliban sleeper cells have been set up inside Afghan police
and army forces, and are waiting for orders to strike.
On Oct. 10 U.K. aid worker
Linda Norgrove
(b. 1974) is killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan during a rescue
attempt by U.S. forces after being held hostage since Sept. 26.
On Oct. 12 a
Nat. Air Cargo
cargo plane crashes outside Kabul, Afghanistan, killing six Filipinos, one Indian, and a Kenyan.
On Oct. 20 NATO officials
announce
that U.S. and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in Kandahar Province
in recent weeks.
On Oct. 23 the New York Times reveals that Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai has been
receiving bagfuls of cash from Iranian ambassador
Feda Hussein Maliki
via Karzai's chief of staff Umar Daudzai.
On Oct. 23 four Taliban suicide bombers dressed in burqas attack the main U.N.
compound in
Herat
in W Afghanistan, but score no casualties before they are killed.
On Oct. 24 Afghanistan announces its first TV soap opera
The Secrets of This House.
On Oct. 25 a bomb planted on a motorcycle explodes at the gate of the Sufi
Farid Shakar Ganj Shrine
in Pak Pattan, Pakistan (125 mi. W of Lahore), killing five.
On Nov. 5, 2010 a combined Afghan-coalition forces captures the Haqqani terrorist network's
shadow gov. for the
Spera
district of Khost Province in Afghanistan.
On Nov. 6 leading U.S. Senate Repub.
Lindsey Graham
of S.C. says that the U.S. should consider "neutering" Iran's navy and
air force if it doesn't stop trying to get nukes, adding that a surgical
strike on nuclear facilities would bring military retaliation on U.S.
forces in Afghanistan, and is probably already too late anyway.
On Nov. 16 Pres. Obama awards U.S. Army SSgt.
Salvatore Giunta
the Medal of Honor, becoming the first for the Afghanistan War, and
the first awarded since the Vietnam War.
On Nov. 19 U.S. officials
announce
that the military is sending its first contingent of heavily-armored battle tanks to Afghanistan.
On Nov. 20 Taliban suicide bombers in bicycles kill four and wound 31 in
Mehtar Lam, E Afghanistan.
On Nov. 22 it is revealed that talks being held for months by the Afghan govt. with
Taliban leader
Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour
were actually being held with an imposter.
On Nov. 24 Pakistani federal minister
Maulana Attaur Rehman
calls the Taliban "true followers" of Islam, sparking controversy.
On Nov. 27 U.S. forces have been in Afghanistan one day longer than the Soviet Union
when it completed its 1989 withdrawal.
On Nov. 29 an
Afghan border policeman
kills six U.S. servicemen during a training mission near the Pakistani border.
In Nov. the U.S. loses 45 troops
killed
in Afghanistan, the deadliest Nov.in the 9-year Afghanistan War.
On Dec. 3, 2010 Pres. Obama makes a
surprise holiday visit
to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, er, to visit the troops at Bagram Air Base,
telling them that we're "tired of playing defense"; he talks with Hamid Karzai only by phone.
On Dec. 3 U.S. Gen.
David Petraeus
addresses his troops at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and pisses-off
Afghans with a statement that corruption has been a part of their history and culture
for "however long this country has probably been in existence".
On Dec. 6 two Islamic suicide bombers in the
Mohmand Agency
in NW Pakistan near the Afghan border kill 50 and wound 100.
On Dec. 9 a
U.N. report
urges Afghanistan to protect women's rights and give up child marriage, honor
killings, and the giving away of girls to settle disputes.
On Dec. 11 a roadside bomb planted by the Taliban in
Khan Neshin District
of Helmand Province, Afghanistan kills 15 civilians; meanwhile a
shootout with NATO troops kills seven, causing 500 to gather in Paktia to shout "Death to Americans".
On Dec. 16 a
White House Review of Pres. Obama's Afghan War Strategy
is released, which concludes that it is "showing progress", but that
"the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable".
On Dec. 16 U.S. Predator drones strike the
Khyber Agency
in Pakistan for the first time in almost six years, killing seven Taliban members.
On Dec. 24 Taliban insurgents launch coordinated assaults in NW Pakistan, killing 11 soldiers
and 24 militants; on Dec. 25 a woman throws a hand grenade at a crowd and then blows up in their
midst at a U.N. food distribution center in
Bajaur Agency
(near Khar in NW Pakistan near the Afghan border), killing 45 and injuring 70,
becoming the first female suicide bomber in Pakistan; Pres. Obama calls it "outrageous" and
"an affront to the people of Pakistan".
In 2011 the Afghan drug war
begins failing as opium prices soar and the allies focus on the Taliban not opium farmers.
U.S. aid to the Middle East:
Afghanistan: $3.9B, Pakistan: $3.1B, Israel: $3B, Egypt: $1.5B ($63B since 1948).
On Jan. 1 three U.S. missile strikes in the
Khyber
tribal region near the Afghan border kill 54 alleged militants during a meeting.
On Jan. 7 a suicide bomber in a public bathhouse in
Spin Boldak
in S Afghanistan on the Pakistani border kills 17 and wounds 20+ washing for weekly prayers.
On Jan. 7 hundreds of protesters in
Kabul accuse Iran of
stopping fuel tanks from crossing the border into Afghanistan.
On Jan. 10 U.S. vice-pres. Joe Biden makes an
unannounced trip to Kabul
to discuss Obama admin. strategy,
saying
that U.S. troops will stay beyond 2014 if the Afghans want them to.
On Jan. 14 Afghan education minister Farooq Wardak
announces
that the Taliban is no longer opposed to female education, and is putting away the face acid.
On Jan. 20 Birmingham imam Shaykh
Asrar Rashid
tells Muslims not to fight in the British armed forces due to their presence in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and calls Queen Elizabeth II a "disgusting woman" for knighting writer
Salman Rushdie.
On Jan. 28 the
German parliament
votes to extend Germany's military mission in Afghanistan by one year despite
polls showing the war's unpopularity.
On Feb. 5 British Special Forces
seize
a shipment of 48 Iranian rockets in Nimruz Province, S Afghanistan en route to the Taliban.
On Feb. 7 Afghan Red Cross activist
Said Musa
(1965-) is sentenced to death for converting to Christianity; he can only
save himself by reconverting to Islam.
On Feb. 18 an Afghan soldier turns jihadist in
Pul-e-Khumri
and fires on German troops, killing three and wounding six.
On Feb. 18 Hillary Clinton expresses the
hope
that military action will split the Taliban from al-Qaida, laying the groundwork for a
political solution in Afghanistan.
On Feb. 21 U.S. Gen.
David H. Petraeus
stinks himself up with a comment that Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in NE
Afghanistan may have burned their own children to exaggerate civilian casualties.
On Mar. 3 Pres. Obama
expresses
"deep regret" over a NATO airstrike that killed nine Afghan boys in the Pech Valley
in Kunar Province on Mar. 1.
On Mar. 14 (2 p.m.) a suicide bomber in
Kunduz Province
in N Afghanistan kills 33 and wounds 42, most of them volunteers trying to enroll in the nat. army.
On Mar. 25 after being criticized for refusing to help the NATO mission in Libya, the German Bundestag
votes to broaden the German mission
in Afghanistan.
On Mar. 25 the Asia Times reports that
Osama bin Laden
was recently spotted in the Hindu Kish Mts. of Pakistan-Afghanitan; meanwhile Al-Qaida in Libya
steals
some SAMs from an arsenal in Libya.
On Mar. 27 Taliban fighters abduct 50 off-duty Afghan policemen in an ambush in the
Chapa Dara
district of NE Kunar Province.
In Mar. the U.S. Army is exposed for its
Afghanistan Kill Team
that posed for photos of murdered civilians.
On Apr. 1 after reports that Christian pastor Terry Jones burned a Quran in Fla. in Mar., a
mob of enraged Muslims in
Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
turns violent, killing eight at a U.N. operational center, beheading two of them, after
which Jones calls on
the U.N. to take "immediate action" against Muslim nations to hold them accountable for
the deaths, urging them to "alter the laws that govern their countries to allow for
individual freedoms and rights, such as the right to worship, free speech and to move
freely without fear of being attacked or killed"; instead, Pres. Obama extends condolences
to the families of the murdered, and
calls
desecration of the Quran "an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry"; on Apr. 2 the Muslims
continue
their rampage in Kandahar, killing 10 and wounding 83, causing U.S. gen.
David Petraeus
to condemn Jones, calling Quran burning "hateful", "intolerant", and "extremely disrespectful",
adding "we condemn it in the strongest manner possible"; a
2nd and 3rd day
of rage sees more marches and mayhem, followed by a 4th and 5th; meanwhile officials in Pakistan
send a
letter
to Interpol demanding the arrest of Jones for his "violent crime", and U.S. Sens. Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) call for Quran burning to be criminalized, with Graham
uttering the soundbyte "Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war."
On Apr. 7 the Taliban attack a police compound in
Kandahar, Afghanistan,
killing six Afghan security personnel, who kill four Taliban jihadis;
the use of an ambulance
by the attackers is later lamented by the Taliban, who promise an investigation and that
it won't happen again.
On Apr. 16 a suicide bomber in an Afghan military uniform kills five NATO and four Afghan
soldiers at Forward Operating Base Gamberi
in Laghman Province, E Afghanistan.
On Apr. 19 a mill outside
Kabul, Afghanistan
that recycles worn-out Qurans into toilet paper draws an angry stone-throwing mob
of 1K, causing the govt. to arrest three and shut it down.
On Apr. 20 U.S. Adm.
Mike Mullen
is interviewed on Pakistani TV, accusing Pakistan's spy agency of supporting the Hawwani network
of Islamic militants in Afghanistan, who are killing U.S. and NATO troops.
On Apr. 25 a daring jailbreak by the Taliban in
Kandahar, Afghanistan
sees 488 escape in a tunnel that took 5 mo. to dig.
On Apr. 27 an Afghan Air Corps pilot gets in an argument with nine Am. trainers
at Kabul Airport,
then leaves, returns with a rifle and methodically slaughters them.
On Apr. 27 two Christian Afghan asylum seekers,
Ahmed Faizi and Ali Hussani
are deported from the U.K. despite fears that they will be killed for
apostasy by the Taliban or other Muslims.
On Apr. 29 a Biannual Report to Congress on the Afghanistan War
claims that the 2009 surge has produced "tangible security progress".
On May 1, 2011 a 12-y.-o. suicide bomber kills three incl. a district council head in
Shaken Ditrict of Paktika Province, Afghanistan on Day One of the Taliban's spring offensive.
Ding, dong, the witch is dead?
On May 1 (23:40 p.m. EDT) (12:40 a.m. local time) 66 years after the announcement of Adolf Hitler's death) Pres. Obama
announces
that pesky al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (b. 1957) was killed by 23 U.S. Navy SEALs, an interpreter, and a tracking dog named Cairo in
Operation Neptune Spear
around 3:30 p.m. EDT in a $200K (20M rupee) 10-bedroom 3K sq. ft. mansion compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan ("City of Pines",
founded as a British garrison town in the 1840s and named after deputy commissioner Maj. James Abbott) in the Hazara district of the NW Frontier Province 31 mi. NE of Islamabad
and 93 mi. E of Peshawar, located only a few hundred yards from the elite Kakul Military Academy, the Pakistani equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst;
Pres. Obama remote-views the hit from his Situation Room along with secy. of state Hillary Clinton, deputy nat. security advisor John O. Brennan et al., with Brennan calling Obama's
decision to green-light the hit one of the "gutsiest calls of any president in memory", later claiming that the U.S. troops had been "met with a great deal of resistance", and that
bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield, later finding out that he misunderstood Am. William McRaven and that he was unarmed; on Nov. 6, 2014 bin Laden's killer is revealed to be
Robert O'Neill (1976-);
the town is HQ of a brigade of the 2nd Div. of the Northern Army Corps, and home to many retired officers; the $1M mansion built in 2006
is surrounded by 18 ft. walls topped with barbed wire(an ISI safe house?); in Aug. the U.S. got a tip about the mansion by tracking his personal couriers;
Osama moved there in 2006 after U.S. drones drove him out of the mountains?; the CIA set up a spy house nearby to watch, and kept it secret
from the Pakistani govt.; fabled Seal Team Six stages Operation Neptune's Spear
with two special ops super-secret stealth helis and an unmanned drone; one heli hard-lands in the compound after mechanical failures;
four are killed besides bin Laden, incl. his oldest son Hamza, a female used as a shield, courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (only one to return fire) and his brother;
the first shot at bin Laden misses, and he shoves a wife at the SEALS before being killed; four of his children and two wives are arrested,
and his computer disks captured (the original al-Qaida or database?); on May 6 al-Qaida
and the Taliban confirm bin Laden's death, promise retaliation;
Pres. Obama remote-views the hit from his Situation Room along with secy. of state Hillary Clinton, deputy nat. security advisor John O. Brennan et al., with Brennan calling Obama's
decision to green-light the hit one of the "gutsiest calls of any president in memory", later claiming that the U.S. troops had been "met with a great deal of resistance", and that
bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield;
bin Laden leaves a will giving $29M to continue global jihad; on May 6
Yemen praises bin Laden's killing, while the
Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas condemn it;
Jordan says that it hopes Osama's death will end the "terror era"; on hearing the good news,
thousands swarm Ground Zero in New York City to celebrate; in Nov. 2011 Navy Seal cmdr.
Chuck Pfarrer
pub. a book about the mission, saying that bin Laden was killed within 90 sec. of entering his home, only 12 bullets were fired, and they would have
captured him if he had surrendered; the Pakistani govt. is not officially involved in the operation although it is suspected they helped locate the
compound and knew of it, with elite Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) kept out of the loop on suspicion they were on bin Laden's side; in
Mar. 2014 it is revealed that Ahmed Shuja Pasha,
head of the ISI knew bin Laden's whereabouts along with other top officials; hundreds flock to
Ground Zero to cheer his death; the intel community
warns
of possible retaliatory attacks; the first of five nat. security meetings about
the compound was held on Mar. 14, and the attack was
originally
authorized in Mar. as a B2 stealth bomber strike, but Obama changed his mind since he wanted evidence that bin Laden was dead; bin Laden's Yemeni former teenie wife
Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah (1983-)
tries to protect him by rushing the SEALs and is shot in the leg, then is left behind when there is no room on the only remaining heli; the news causes
U.S. financial markets to surge; on May 1
Pres. Obama gives a Speech on the Late Osama bin Laden,
issuing the soundbyte "Justice has been done"; too bad, he repeats
his dumbass soundbyte: "The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam", and adds the double dumbass soundbyte:
"Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader, he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al-Qaida slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries including or own,
so his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity" (he should know, he's a true Muslim?);
also: "As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam"; on May 2 Obama adds that
"This is a good day for America", adding "The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden. Today we are reminded that as a nation,
there's nothing we can't do when we put our shoulders to the wheel, when we work together. And we remember the sense of unity that defines us as Americans"; on May 4
Obama ends speculation by announcing
that he won't release bin Laden's death photo, saying he has been ID'd by his wife and children and doesn't want to stir Muslim anger, "That's not who we are",
"We don't need to spike the football"; an
NBC Poll
reveals that 64% agree with his decision; under Osama bin Laden's leadership, al-Qaida was
responsible for 10K deaths and injuries in a dozen years; bin Laden's clothing had
two phone numbers sewn into it, along with 500 Euros; on Obama's orders his body is quickly (within 24 hours of death) buried in the North Arabian Sea after
ritual burial rites
in accordance with Islamic practice, incl. the reading of Quran Sura 1 and its curse on Jews and Christians, despite Obama claiming he isn't a real Muslim, and despite
Sunni doctrine
that it's a "sin"; devout Muslims begin calling the site the "Martyr's Sea"; the quick disposal raises suspicions that it's all a
hoax
to save Obama's presidency despite govt. claims of DNA verification; on May 5 archbishop of Canterbury
Rowan Williams
say that the killing of unarmed bin Laden left a "very uncomfortable feeling"; on May 5 Pakistani army chiefs eat crow, er,
warn
the U.S. not to violate Pakistani sovereignty or face "the direst consequences", and call for
cuts
in U.S. military personnel inside the country, which doesn't stop the U.S. from staging a predator drone strike in NW Pakistan on May 6 that kills eight Talibani;
analysis of the captured material from his compound shows that bin Laden was considering an
attack
on U.S. commuter trains on the 10th anniv. of 9/11; on May 6 Pres. Obama tells cheering solders of the 101st Airborne Div. at
Ft. Campbell, Ky.,
awarding the Pres. Unit Citation to SEAL Team Six, calling them "the finest small fighting force in the history of the world", and
shaking
the hand of the lucky SEAL who killed bin Laden, uttering the soundbyte:
"We're making progress in our major goal... of disrupting and dismantling, and we are going to ultimately defeat al-Qaida. We have cut off their head and
we will ultimately defeat them"; meanwhile the U.S. Congress gets pissed-off at the complicity of the Pakistan govt., and
prepares
a list of sanctions incl. cutting aid; the initial lead of bin Laden's courier's nickname came from
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
after waterboarding, causing the debate on waterboarding to resume; on May 7 the CIA
releases
photos and five videos found in bin Laden's compound showing him
preening
while shooting propaganda films, describing him as thinking of himself as a "head coach" to al-Qaida; on May 8 Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S.
promises
that "heads will roll" as Pakistan investigates how bin Laden could hide for years in his country, and also promises "zero tolerance"; on May 9 Pakistani PM
Yousuf Raza Gilani
calls bin Laden's killing "indeed justice done", but warns against any more unilateral strikes, saying they will be met with "full force";
it is revealed that after 9/11 the U.S. and Pakistan struck a
secret deal
to permit the U.S. to hunt and kill bin Laden on Pakistani soil; on May 11 the
U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee
is allowed to view photos of dead bin Laden; a stash of porno
is found in bin Laden's computer drives; on May 17 U.S. Sen. Majority Leader (D-Nev.)
Harry Reid
says that the U.S. needs a "good relationship" with Pakistan, and now "isn't the time to start flexing our muscles"; Pakistani army chief Gen.
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
faces a colonel's revolt by the 11-man Corps Commanders for letting the U.S. raid happen; Calif. diver
Bill Warren
announces plans to spend $400K searching for bin Laden's body; Pakistan arrests
the CIA informants who helped locate Obama, causing deputy CIA dir. Michael J. Morrell to rate Pakistan's cooperation with the U.S. on counterterrorism operations
as 3 on a scale of 1-10; in 2013 Pakistan begins building a $30M amusement park
in Abbottabad.
On May 7-8 U.S.-Taliban Talks in Germany are mediated by the Germans.
On May 9 NATO announces
that it has significantly weakened the Taliban insurgency by capturing or killing thousands of
militants in Afghanistan in the past 3 mo.
On May 10 hundreds of Taliban militants launch a large-scale attack on Afghan police near
Parun, Afghanistan.
On May 11 NATO forces capture several suspected insurgentsin
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
On May 13 the Pakistan Parliament
holds a 10-hour session and decides that all U.S. incursions incl. drone strikes must end or it will impede free passage of NATO materials headed for Afghanistan.
On May 17 British PM David Cameron announces
that the first 450 troops will withdraw from Afghanistan this year.
On May 17 mixed-up Pakistan ground forces exchange fire
with a NATO heli in Datta Khel near the Afghan border, with Pakistan claiming that the heli
attack their checkpoint; meanwhile Pakistan announces the arrest of a senior al-Qaida operative.
On May 17 a Pew Poll
shows low confidence in Pres. Obama by world Muslims, with the highest being Indonesia, at 63%, and the lowest being Turkey, at 14%; Palestinian Territories: 15%, Jordan: 25%, Pakistan: 16%,
Lebanon: 55%, Egypt: 27%.
On May 18 violence in Afghanistan in Taloqan
in Takhar Province and other locations kills 28.
On May 20 a suicide vest strapped to a 12-y.-o. boy in
Nooristan, Afghanistan
prematurely explodes, killing him along with several other insurgents, causing the Afghan Nat. Intel Directorate to detain 100 other boys 12-17 for their safety.
On May 21 a suicide bomber in an Afghan military uniform detonates inside the main military hospital
in Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing six medical students.
On May 21 Taliban militants blow up a tanker carrying oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan in the
Landi Kotal
area of Pakistan's Khyber tribal region; a secondary explosion kills 15 trying
to siphon fuel; another bomb damages 14 tankers in a nearby town.
On May 23 Afghanistan reports that Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammad Omar
has been killed in Pakistan while in the custody of the Pakistani ISI;
they deny it.
On May 24 a roadside bomb in
Kandahar, Afghanistan
kills 10 road workers and injures 28.
On May 25 the Taliban kills
Khan Mohammad,
head of the Porak girls' school in Logar Province, Afghanistan.
On May 29 a NATO air strike in
Helmand Province, Afghanistan
inadvertently hits two civilian homes, killing two women and 12 children.
On May 31 Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai issues an
ultimatum
to NATO to stop air strikes on Afghan homes, warning them that if they don't then the Afghan
people will drive them out as occupying enemy forces, warning that if they continue "We will
be forced to take unilateral action".
On June 2, 2011 200 Taliban militants dressed in Afghan military uniforms cross the border
and ambush a security checkpoint in
Upper Dir, Pakistan,
killing 25 Pakistani troops.
On June 15 U.S. Muslim soldier Pfc.
Naser Abdo
(1990-), who was approved as a conscientious objector to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is
charged with possession of child porno.
On June 16 Pakistan lobbies for membership in the China-dominated
Shanghai Cooperation Org.,
and urges Afghanistan to join also.
On June 16 al-Qaida
announces
that former #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri is now #1, causing the U.S. to announce
that they will hunt him down and kill him like they did Osama bin Laden; al-Qaida
announces
that it will "never recognize any legitimacy for the alleged" state of Israel".
On June 16 the Taliban warns
Prince Harry
that if he is captured in Afghanistan on his 2nd tour of duty next year, he will be shown no mercy
and will be "destroyed".
On June 17 the
U.S. Conference of Mayors
introduces a resolution calling for a quicker end to the Afghan War and a speedier withdrawal of troops,
becoming their first anti-war resolution since the Vietnam War.
On June 18 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
acknowledges
that the Afghan and U.S. govts. have been holding talks with the Taliban; meanwhile
Taliban suicide attacks in Kabul kill nine.
On June 19 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai accuses U.S.-led NATO troops of remaining in the country
"for their own national interests", causing outgoing U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan
Karl Eikenberry
warns that the U.S. people are growing weary of being viewed as occupiers, saying "My people
in turn are filled with confusion and they grow weary of our effort here."
On June 21 (eve.) Pres. Obama gives a
Speech on Afghanistan
titled "The Way Forward in Afghanistan", saying that he will withdraw 33K troops
by the end of Aug. 2012 in time for the pres. election season, starting with 5K in July and 5K by
the end of 2011; "This decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America's engagement
around the world. When threatened, we must respond with force, but when that force can be targeted,
we need not deploy large armies overseas. We stand not for empire, but for self-determination";
his own top military advisers are against his plan, and NATO doesn't plan on turning over the war
to the Afghan army until the end of 2014.
On June 25 a car bomb in a hospital in
Logar Province, Afghanistan
kills 27 and injures 52.
On June 25 six Taliban militants, some of them in burqas, incl. a husband-wife pair detonated in a
police station in
Kolachi, NW Pakistan,
killing 10 policemen.
On June 28 (night) a Taliban suicide attack at the
Intercontinental Hotel
in Kabul sees six attackers storm it during a conference of Afghan provincial govs.
and go through the rooms targeting the 300 Afghans and foreigners staying there, killing six
until they are killed, showing that they can get the Yankee infidels where they live.
On June 29 French journalists
Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier
are released, becoming the longest-held Western hostages in Afghanistan;
they were kidnapped on Dec. 30, 2009 in Kapisa NE of Kabul.
On June 30 (4 p.m.) a bus strikes a Taliban IED in
Khash Rod District
in the SW Nimroz Province of AFghanistan, killing 20 civilians.
On July 5, 2011 an
Azerbaijani tanker plane
crashes in Afghanistan en route from Baku to Bagram Air Base, killing nine crew.
On July 12 Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai's half-brother
Ahmed Wali Karzai,
head of the Kandahar provincial council is assassinated by police official Sardar Muhammad
at his home in S Afghanistan, leaving a power vacuum in S Afghanistan; the Taliban
claims
responsibility, calling it "one of our biggest achievements"; on July 14 his
funeral is hit by another suicide bomber,
killing four incl. Kandahair's chief cleric.
On July 16 an Afghan army soldier kills a NATO soldier near
Lashkar Gah
in S Afghanistan, which is scheduled to be one of the first places NATO will hand
security control to Afghan forces.
On July 22 a NATO-U.S. strike on a Haqqani Network training camp in
Sar Rowzah District
in Paktika Province, E Afghanistan kills 80.
On July 25 the Taliban shoots down a NATO Chinook heli near the
Nangalam Base
in the Pech River Valley in E Afghanistan.
On July 27 a Taliban suicide bomber with an exploding turban assassinates Kandahar, Afghanistan mayor
Ghulam Haider Hamidi
(b. 1946); meanwhile top U.S. cmdr. Navy SEAL Adm.
Eric T. Olson
says that al-Qaida has been bloodied and is "nearing its end", with the killing of Osama bin Laden
being a near-fatal blow, and the Arab Spring proving that the Muslim World doesn't need it
to overthrow Muslim dictators, although a new gen. of militants
can make it necessary for special ops to fight them for a decade.
On July 28 the Obama admin. accuses
Iran
of a "secret deal" with al-Qaida to provide money, recruits, and transit for attacks
in Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying "This network serves as the core pipeline through
which al-Qaida moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to
South Asia"; the U.S. Treasury Dept. indicts six members incl. Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil,
Atiya Abd al-Rahman, Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari, Abdallah Ghanim Mafuz Muslim al-Khaar,
and Ali Hassan Ali al-Ajmi; Treasury spokesman David S. Cohen says "Iran is the leading
state sponsor of terrorism in the world today."
On Aug. 6, 2011 (a.m.) a U.S. twin-rotor Ch-47 Chinook heli is
shot down
in Wardack Province in E Afghanistan by the Taliban, killing all 38 aboard incl. five Army troops,
seven Afghan commandos and their interpreter, three AF controllers, and 22 Navy SEALs of the
300-member bin Laden-killing Team 6, becoming the largest U.S. military loss since the Jan. 2005 heli
crash in Anbar Province; on Aug. 6 a bomb hits a convoy of NATO supply tankers in
Peshawar, Pakistan,
destroying 16; on Aug. 9 Pres. Obama makes a surprise visit to
Dover AFB
to pay his respects to the heroes; on Aug. 10 U.S. special forces
claim to hunt down and
kill the Taliban cmdr. and shooter responsible for the heli attack;
the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden was a fake because he had been dead for years, and Obama gave
the Taliban the info. and weapons needed to
assassinate
the SEALs who went on the raid to silence them?
On Aug. 14 six suicide bombers storm a provincial governor's compound in
Charikar, Afghanistan
(50 mi. N of Kabul), killing 22.
On Aug. 19 on the anniv. of Afghan independence from Britain in 1919 Taliban suicide bombers attack
the British Council in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing eight; meanwhile a turban bomber in
Helmand Military Corps Center
wounds three policeman.
On Aug. 19 a Ramadan suicide bombing at a mosque in
Ghundi, NW Pakistan
in the Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border kills 48 and injures scores;
they were trying to get anti-Taliban elders.
On Aug. 29 Afghan and coalition security forces kill and capture multiple insurgents
in a Haqqani terrorist network attack cell in
E Afghanistan.
On Sept. 3, 2011 Iranian pres. Madman Imadinnajacket
meets with Qatari emir Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani,
during which the emir gives him a request by Pres. Obama to obtain his consent to maintaining
15K troops in Iraq for another two years, along with a request to stop hostile operations against
U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which Madman replies that if Syria is attacked, "the first
missile will fall on you."
On Sept. 11 an Islamist suicide truck bomber at a NATO base in
Wardak Province
in C Afghanistan kills four civilians and injures 77 troops, becoming
the worst suicide bombing in the Afghan war; the same province where
the Navy SEALs heli was shot down in July.
On Sept. 20 after being lured by a false offer of a Taliban peace offer, former Afghan pres.
Burhanuddin Rabbani (b. 1940),
head of the Afghan high peace council is assassinated by a Taliban (Haqqani Network?) suicide turban bomber
in Kabul, causing Pres. Obama and Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai to issue a joint
condolence statement at the U.N., and claim it won't set peace talks back.
On Sept. 20 the Obama admin.
announces
that it has sharply warned Pakistan to cut ties with the Miranshah-based Taliban Haqqani Network in the
tribal region along the Afghan border (which it blames for the Sept. 13 attack on the U.S.
embassy in Kabul) and help eliminate its leaders, else the U.S. will act unilaterally.
On Sept. 20 four U.S. Marines are killed in an ambush in
Ganjgal, Afghanistan.
On Sept. 25 (eve.) an Afghan employed by the U.S. govt. kills one American and wounds another in
a CIA office in
Kabul.
On Sept. 29 the U.S. Treasury Dept. announces sanctions against brothers
Faizullah and Malik Noorzai
from Afghanistan for raising millions for the Taliban.
On Sept. 30 Afghanistan holds
Sound Central,
its first rock festival since 1975.
On Oct. 1, 2011 senior Haqqani Network leader in Afghanistan
Haji Mali Khan,
uncle of network leaders Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani is captured in Paktiya Province by a NATO-Afghan operation.
On Oct. 9 U.S. special rep for Pakistan and Afghanistan
Marc Grossman
admits that 19K Pakistani civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks since 2003.
On Oct. 14
Ahmed (Saif) Omar Abdul Rahman,
son of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman is killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan.
On Oct. 15 an Islamist suicide attack at the Provincial Reconstruction Team base in
Panjshir, Uzbekistan
kills two security guards; on Oct. 17 the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU) claims credit, and also claims that they had help from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban).
On Oct. 16 U.S. forces
announce
that they have been taking increasing rocket fire from Pakistan in the
past month; officers allege that the jihadists are operating in sight of the
Pakistani military.
On Oct. 22 Afghan Ores. Hamid Karzai
announces
that if the U.S. invades Pakistan, Afghanistan will support Pakistan not the U.S.
On Oct. 28 after advice by her Saudi attache Huma Abedin, U.S. state secy. Hillary Clinton
announces
that the U.S. is now ready to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and
regards his involvement as crucial to peace prospects in Afghanistan.
On Oct. 29 a Taliban (Haqqani Network?) suicide bomber rams his van into an armored NATO bus in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 17, incl. five ISAF troops, becoming the deadliest attack on coalition
forces in over 2 mo.; the Taliban
claims
that the bomber was a Kabul-born 23-y.-o. European Afgahan; meanwhile
an Afghan soldier turns his weapons on Australian NATO soldiers in
Nish, Kandahar Province,
killing three.
On Oct. 31 a 4-man Taliban suicide team attacks a U.N. HQ in
Kandahar City, Afghanistan,
killing five.
On Oct. 31 the
Jund Al-Khalifah
(Soldiers of the Caliphate) based on the Afghan-Pakistan border claim credit for
two bombings in the city of Atyrau in Kazakhstan in retaliation for banning the veil.
In Oct. a total of 23 U.S. soldiers are
killed
in Afghanistan, making the war total 1,720.
On Nov. 4, 2011 U.S. Afghanistan cmdr. Gen.
Peter Fuller
is relieved by Internat. Security Assistance Force cmdr. Gen. John R. Alolen
for making comments against pres. Hamid Karzai and calling his govt.
"isolated from reality".
On Nov. 7 the Taliban posts a
message
on its Web site celebrating the U.S. troop withdrawal as a big V, and calling
the U.S. the "greatest enemy of Islam", mocking Pres. Obama's soundbyte that
the U.S. is not and never will be at war with Islam.
On Nov. 9 coalition forces defeat a massive assault by the Haqqani Network
in Paktika Province, Afghanistan
near the Pakistani border, killing 60-70 terrorists.
On Nov. 11 U.S. Sgt.
Calvin Gibbs
(1985-) is sentenced to life in prison for encouraging his troops to kill three Afghan
civilians; he cut fingers and yanked teeth from corpses to keep as trophies.
On Nov. 16 a
Loya Jirga
(assembly of elders) called by Hamid Karzi to discuss the Afgan-U.S.
Strategic Partnership Agreement is rejected by the Ittehad-e-Ulema
Afghanistan alliance of orthodox clerics, who call for jihad against the
U.S. and its allies, and urges other Muslim clerics to issue fatwas for jihad.
On Nov. 25-26 (night) NATO helis and fighter jets attack two military outposts near the border in
NW Pakistan,
killing 24 Pakistani troops and injuring 13, further tanking U.S.-Pakistan relations, causing Pakistan
to block
supply routes for NATO troops in Afghanistan, after which the CIA
calls off
its drone campaign until ?.
On Dec. 5, 2011 after a request in Nov. 2010 by Afgan Pres. Hamid Karzai, a
Conference on Afghanistan
is held in Bonn, Germany.
On Dec. 5 Iran downs a
U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone
in E Iran after it crosses the Afghanistan border; the Iranians work to
reverse engineer it while Pres. Obama asks for it back.
On Dec. 6 two attacks against Shiites in
Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
kill 56 and wound 160+.
On Dec. 9 a delegation of high-ranking Afghan military and plice
visit
Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and Camp Pendleton.
On Dec. 15 the U.S. flag is lowered at
Baghdad Internat. Airport in Iraq,
marking the end of the 8-year fiasco, er, mission.
On Dec. 25 (2:30 p.m. local time) a suicide bomber at a funeral ceremony in
Taloqan, Takhar, Afghanistan
kills 19+ civilians incl. MP Alhaj Mutalib Baig, and injures 50+.
On Dec. 26 Iran signs an
oil deal
with Afghanistan to provide 1M tons beginning in 2012.
On Dec. 30 a roadside bomb in
Trinkot, Uruzgan, Afghanistan
kills four civilians and injures one.
In 2011 U.S. Army releases the
Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV),
an unmanned blimp-like spy ship that can hover at 20K ft. for up to three weeks, and is planned for deployment in Afghanistan.
On Jan. 8, 2012 a gunman in an Afghan army uniform opens fire on a group of Americans in
Zabul Province, Afghanistan,
killing one soldier and wounding another.
On Jan. 9 an Afghan soldier fires a U.S. military personnel playing volleyball in
Qalat, S Afghanistan,
killing one and wounding three before being killed.
On Jan. 12
Pissgate (Abu Ghraib II) (Abu Piss?)
sees a video circulating on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating
on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, pissing off Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai
and bringing out the PC police, causing Marine Corps Commandant
Gen. James F. Amos to appoint a 3-star
gen. to investigate after Pres. Obama spokesmen Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton
et al. condemn it; the Marines are identified and prosecuted; meanwhile there
is a groundswell of support
for them since Talibanis are barbarians who do far worse to their
enemies, incl. splashing acid in their faces - I thought Obama said
that Talibanis are not true Muslims because they pervert the religion?
On Jan. 12 a U.S. drone strike in
Dogga, North Waziristan
(near Miramsham) kills six militants.
On Jan. 20 a Taliban-recruited gunman in an Afghan army uniform kills four
French soldiers and wounds several others in
Kapisa Province, Afghanistan,
causing the French to suspend training operations and threaten to leave
Afghanistan early; meanwhile on Jan. 19 a U.S. heli crash kills six U.S. Marines;
the Afghan military is increasingly showing its contempt for all infidel soldiers?
On Jan. 25 a combined Afghan-coalition security force kills several insurgents in
Kot District, Faryab Province, Afghanistan
during a search for a Taliban leader.
On Jan. 26 a car bomb in
Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
targeting NATO aid workers kills three and wounds 31.
On Jan. 30 Afghan authorities
announce
that after giving birth to a 3rd straight daughter and no sons, an Afghan woman
was killed by her husband and mother-in-law a week earlier.
On Feb. 1 Pakistan jets bomb militant positions in the Orakzai and Kurram Agency areas
near the Afghanistan border, killing 31.
On Feb. 1 the Times of London reports
that a secret NATO report claims that the Pakistan-backed Taliban is set to regain control over Afghanistan when coalition forces leave.
On Feb. 3 Taliban insurgents attack a Pakistani military outpost in
Shidano Dand, Kurram Agency, Pakistan
killing seven soldiers and 18 Taliban fighters; four Pakistani soldiers are captured.
On Feb. 5 an explosion in
Kandahar, Afghanistan kills 3+.
On Feb. 8 U.S. drones kill 10 in Spalga, North Waziristan;
another five are killed on Feb. 16.
On Feb. 22 U.S. soldiers burn Islamic religious materials at Bagram AFB
in Afghanistan, causing protests, causing U.S. Gen. John R. Allen to launch in inquiry, which only makes them madder, with protests continuing until Feb. 27; on Feb. 22 the U.S. embassy in Kabul
goes into lockdown; on Feb. 24 11+ are killed in more protests; on Feb. 25 two senior U.S. NATO officers are killed in the ministry of interior bldg. in Kabul, while four more are killed in
protests in Kunduz; on Feb. 27 a suicide car bomber at Jalalabad Airport
kills nine; on Mar. 2 the investigation reports that five U.S. service personnel were involved in an accidental Quran burning.
On Mar. 11 the Kandahar Massacre
sees amok U.S. soldier Staff Sgt. Robert Bales kill 16 civilians incl. 9 children in Panjawi District, Afghanistan near Kandahar, causing the Taliban to vow revenge, followed by
student protests on Mar. 13; on Mar. 13 Taliban militants fire on an Afghan govt. delegation visiting the massacre site; on Mar. 14 the soldier is moved to Kuwait while U.S. defense secy.
Leon Panetta arrives in Afghanistan to placate anger; the soldier's identity is withheld until Mar. 16.
On Mar. 12 German chancellor Angela Merkel makes an
unannounced visit
to Afghanistan to see German troops, questioning the planned pullout by the end of 2014.
On Mar. 16 a Turkish NATO heli crashes into a house on the outskirts of
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 14 incl. a woman and two children.
On Mar. 25 a roadside bomb in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan
kills six Afghan police, one U.S. soldier, and a translator in a joint Afghan-NATO convoy.
On Mar. 26 a green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan
sees an Afghan police officer kill two British soldiers before being killed.
On Mar. 27 Afghan authorities foil alleged suicide bombings in Kabul, Afghanistan,
arresting several people and seizing 11 suicide jackets.
On Apr. 4 a suicide bomber in Faryab Province, Afghanistan kills 12+.
On Apr. 6 a fuel tanker overturns in Panjwai, Afghanistan, killing seven civilians.
On Apr. 8 the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agrement
is signed, giving Afghanistan more control over night raids effective July 4.
On Apr. 11 two suicide bombers ram their vehicle into a govt. compound near
Herat, Afghanistan, killing 15.
On Apr. 15 Taliban militants launch multiple coordinated attacks in
Kabul, Afghanistan
and other cities to launch their spring offensive, killing two Afghan security personnel and 17 militants.
On Apr. 17 Australian PM Julia Gillard announces
that Australian troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Dec. 31, 2013, a year earlier than planned.
On May 26 British army capt. Stephen James "Steve" Healey (b. 1982)
is KIA by an IED in Helmand Province, Afghanistan; meanwhile CNN
announces
that the NATO death toll in Afghanistan has reached 3K.
On July 25 Taliban fighters in Kunar Province, Afghanistan
fire a new generation U.S.-made Stinger missile at a U.S. Army Chinook CH-47 heli, but they forget to arm it, and it lands safely and a U.S. gunship destroys the fighters;
the missile ID is traced to the CIA, who are keeping a cache in Qatar; U.S. ambassador
John Christopher "Chris" Stevens (1960-2012) is sent to Benghazi, Libya to retrieve
U.S. Stinger missiles supplied to Ansar al Sharia without Congressional permission that he brokered for Hillary Clinton through arms dealer Marc Turi?
On Feb. 10, 2013 U.S. Gen. John Allen is replaced by U.S. Marine Gen.
Joseph F. Dunford
as NATO cmdr. of the Internat. Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan
(until ?), with Allen uttering the soundbyte "We are winning."
On Feb. 12 (Lincoln's birthday) Pres. Obama delivers his
2013 State of the Union Address,
promising to withdraw 34K troops (out of 66K) from Afghanistan within a year.
On Feb. 24 Hamid Karzai gets uppity and
orders
U.S. special forces to leave Wardak Province within two weeks, claiming
allegations of disappearances and torture of Afghan.
On Feb. 24 3K Palestinians in Israeli jails stage a hunger strike in protest
of the death of Arafat Jaradat
(b. 1982).
On Feb. 24 Muslim U.S. Rep. (D-Minn.)
Keith Ellison
visits Somalia, becoming the first by a member of Congress since ?
On May 21 NATO begins
equipment withdrawal
from Afghanistan.
On June 18, 2013 NATO formally hands over command of security to Afghan forces; a suicide bomber attempts to kill Afghan Hazara politician
Ustad Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq
in W Kabul just before the ceremony (his 4th assassination attempt), killing three and injuring 20 incl. four guards; about 100K troops
incl. 68K from the U.S. are set to withdraw by Dec. 31; on June 19 after the U.S. announces that it will meet with the Taliban,
Afghan PM Hamid Karzai suspends
security talks with the U.S. when the Taliban office in Qatar refused to drop the title "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan".
On Aug. 7 Pres. Obama addresses Marines at Camp Pendleton, Calif.,
telling them that the Afghanistan War has entered its final chapter.
On Aug. 8 an explosion in a graveyard in Ghani Khel, Nangarhar, Afghanistan
kills 10+ women.
On Aug. 26 (6:30 a.m.) a Taliban suicide assault at the Afghan army base in Kapisa, Afghanistan
kills two Taliban fighters and injures 10.
On Aug. 29 an ambush by the Taliban in Farah Province, Afghanistan
kills 15 Afghan policemen.
On Aug. 30 a suicide bomber in a mosque in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan
kills 20 incl. district chief Sheikh Sadruddin.
On Sept. 2 militants attack a U.S. base in Torkham, Afghanistan
near the Pakistan border, shutting down a supply road while losing three militants.
On Sept. 4 Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai issues the soundbyte
that the Taliban defames Islam by killing Muslim scholars and damaging mosques; on Sept. 5 (a.m.)
the Shiite Shia Dashte Barche Mosque
in W Kabul is attacked by Taliban fighters wearing police uniforms.
On Sept. 8 the Taliban stages a car bomb and gun attack outside an Afghan intel office in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing four soldiers and wounding 80; meanwhile Afghan officials accuse NATO of killing
civilians in an airstrike in E Afghanistan that kills 10+.
Onu Sept. 9 Afghanistan declares the first
Massoud Day
in honor of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the martyred U.S. ally in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida.
On Sept. 12 (night) gunmen attack a NATO oil tanker convoy in
Soorab, Kalat, Pakistan,
killing a driver and torching eight vehicles.
On Sept. 13 (a.m.) a bomb at the U.S. consulate in
Herat, Afghanistan
kills three and injures 10.
On Sept. 13 Pakistani sen. Mushahid Hussain Sayed
announces
that the U.S. and NATO will keep 20K troops in Afghanistan in nine bases.
On Sept. 14 Turkish prosecutors in Adana
indict
six members of the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham for attempting to acquire sarin gas.
On Sept. 15 9+ NATO fuel tankers headed for Afghanistan are destroyed by a blast in
Quetta, Pakistan.
On Sept. 18 (8:45 a.m.) two Taliban motorcycle gunmen kill senior Afghan election official
Mohammad Amanullah
then brag about it on Twitter.
On Oct. 11 the U.N. Security unanimously
votes
to extend the NATO-led force mandate through 2014, probably the last extension.
On Nov. 18 days before a meeting set by the country's elite to debate it, Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai
rejects
a key provision of the proposed U.S.-Afghan Security Pact, putting it in jeopardy; an Nov. 19 after
Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai demands it as a condition for support, U.S. nat. security adviser Susan Rice
announces
that Pres. Obama won't make a written apology to the Afghan people for "mistakes" made, as John Kerry puts it in a phone call to AP.
On Nov. 26 Afghan pres. Hamid Karzai gives an
interview
to Radio Free Europe, in which he claims that Pres. Obama told him:
"The Taliban are not our enemies and we don't want to fight them."
On Dec. 11 U.S. State Dept. and Pentagon experts
testify
before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stunning members with their lack of basic knowledge of the cost of the war or lives lost on the battlefield.
On Jan. 9, 2014 the Taliban assassinates Chaudhry Aslam Khan,
police chief of Karachi, Pakistan.
Anbar Province, Afghanistan.
On Jan. 10 (a.m.) three Americans (two troops and a civilian) aboard a U.S. military MC-12 plane are killed in a crash in
E Afghanistan; meanwhile U.S. Marines in
Helmand Province, Afghanistan mistakenly kill a 4-y.-o. Afghan boy.
On Mar. 1 (night) an Islamist car bomb prematurely explodes in
Logar Province, Aghanistan,
killing nine Islamists and four civilians.
On Apr. 15 the Washington Times reports
that secret U.S. State Dept. assessments show that the Afghan govt. is woefully unprepared to govern after the U.S. withdraws its troops, and is in danger of collapsing.
On Apr. 26 a British Army heli crash near Kandahar, Afghanistan
kills five U.S.-led troops; on Apr. 27 the Taliban claim to shoot down a USAF AC-130 gunship in
Logar Province, Afghanistan.
On May 1, 2014 a total of 19,793 U.S. service personnel have been
wounded
in the Afghanistan War since it began on Oct. 7, 2001, with 17,095 (86.4%) wounded on Pres. Obama's watch.
On May 17 members of the Afghan parliament accuse
Iran of "forcibly sending Afghan refugees to Syria" to fight for Pres. Bashar al-Assad.
On May 25 Pres. Obama makes a surprise visit
to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for Memorial Day weekend, telling troops that they'll be out of the country by the end of the year as their presence will be brought to
"a responsible end"; on May 27 he announces that he plans to keep 9.8K troops for training and to fight al-Qaida, pissing-off conservatives incl. Fox News
journalist Charles Krauthammer, who calls
it "an act of personal narcissism", retired USAF Gen. Michael Hayden, who utters the
soundbyte
that it's "fairy dangerous", and might lead to making Afghanistan look like Iraq, and
Ariz. Repub. Sen. John McCain, who on May 28 utters the
soundbyte
that Obama is sending a signal to the Taliban and al-Qaida that amounts to "Hang on, we're leaving."
On May 31 (10:30 a.m.) Sgt. Bowe Robert Bergdahl (1986-),
the only U.S. POW in Afghanistan (since June 2009) is handed over by the Taliban in exchange for
five Gitmo POWs sent to Qatar, pissing-off Congress at Pres. Obama for not consulting with them first and
observing a 30-day waiting period, esp. since they
already rejected
the idea in 2011 and 2012; on June 2 the Afghan govt.
protests
the deal, arguing that it violates internat. law; Bergdahl
converted
to Islam in captivity under the name Abdullah, and declared jihad?; Bergdahl's Pashto-speaking (Muslim?) father
Robert Bowe Berdahl, who grew a Taliban-style beard in sympathy for his son
issues
the Islamic war cry "Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim" (In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful"),
causing Pres. Obama to smile?; daddy also
tweeted
that he wants all Taliban POWs freed to pay for all the Afghan children killed by the U.S., with
the soundbyte: "God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen."
On July 8, 2014 a Taliban suicide bomb attack near a school in ?, Afghanistan
kills 18 incl. 11 students and four U.S. soldiers who were giving out pens and exercise books; another suicide
attack in Parwan Province, Afghanistan
kills 16 incl. four Czech soldiers, injuring one.
On July 10 a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan-Pakistan
kills six al-Qaida militants.
On Aug. 5, 2014 an Afghan soldier being trained to take over for the U.S. opens fire at
Camp Qargha
W of Kabul, Afghanistan, killing U.S. 2-star gen. Harold J. "Harry" Greene (b. 1959),
who becomes the highest-ranking U.S. officer killed in the Afghanistan War (begun 2001), and highest-ranking since the Vietnam War; 15 are injured incl. U.S. troops
and a German brig. gen.; Greene was working for the British-run Marshall Fahim Nat. Defense U., whose first class graduates at the end of Aug.
On Aug. 30 a Taliban suicide assault at the Nat. Directorate of Security in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
kills four intel service members and two civilians.
On Sept. 4-5 the Wales NATO Summit
sees the 28 members acknowledge that their formal role in Afghanistan is coming to an end
with an official declaration,
and pledge to spend at least 2% of their GDPs on defense, approving a rapid response team to counter the Russian threat.
On Sept. 5 an Afghan coalition chartered plane en route from Bagram Air Base to Dubai is forced to land in
Bandar Abbas, Iran.
On Sept. 9 the U.S. House votes by 249-163 (incl. 11 Dems.) to officially condemn
Pres. Obama for releasing five Taliban POWs in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl without Congressional notification.
On Sept. 10 Pakistani planes strike five Taliban hideouts in North Waziristan, Pakistan
near the Afghan border, killing 65.
On Sept. 10 U.S. Rep. (D-Tex.) Beto O'Rourke tells
the Homeland Security Committee that the U.S. is already at war with Iraq.
On Sept. 11 Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Taliban splinter group releases
a graphic celebrating al-Qaida's big V on 9/11/2001.
On Sept. 14 (a.m.) a Taliban bomb in Kabul, Afghanistan kills 1+.
On Sept. 15 hundreds of Taliban fighters storm
Ajristan District
in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, capturing several villages and beheading civilians.
On Sept. 30 new (since Sept. 29) Afghan pres. Ashraf Ghani signs the bilateral
U.S.-Afghan Security Agreement,
which continues past the end of the year, allowing 10K U.S. troops to remain.
On Oct. 26 (Sun.) the U.S. and British
close
their last bases in Afghanistan, Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion.
On Dec. 8 the U.S.-NATO Internat. Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Command
lowers
its flag for the last time in Afghanistan after 13 years; the ISAF mission officially ends on
Dec. 31, and will be replaced on Jan. 1 by Resolute Support, a narrow-mandate mission to train,
advise, and assist the Afghan Nat. Security Forces.
On Dec. 28 as a ceremony is held in Kabul, Pres. Obama issues a
statement
marking the end of the U.S. Afghanistan war, touching a 90% troop reduction on his watch,
with the soundbyte:
"For more than 13 years, ever since nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken from us on 9/11, our
nation has been at war in Afghanistan Now, thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men
and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American
history is coming to a responsible conclusion."
On Jan. 1, 2015 the first day of the Afghan security takeover is marred by an Afghan army rocket attack
on a wedding party in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan,
which kills 28 incl. many women and children; the Afghan govt. launches an investigation.
On Jan. 5 a suicide car bomber hits an EU police vehicle in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing one passerby.
On Jan. 25 (6 a.m.) a truck bombing in
Kabul, Afghanistan
injures two.
On Jan. 26 the 5K-man anti-Taliban anti-ISIS Marg
(Dari for death) army in Balkh Province, N Afghanistan announces its formation, visiting the provincial council and offering its services.
On Jan. 29 (eve.) a Taliban member dressed in an Afghan military uniform stages an attack at the
internat. airport in Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing three U.S. contractors and injuring Afghan police cmdr. Maj. Gen. Haq Nawaz Haqyar;
2nd green-on-blue attack on Apr. 8.
On Feb. 24 Afghan-born Am. Muslim Sohiel Omar Kabir and Philippine Muslim convert Ralph Deleon are
sentenced
to 25 years in prison for a plot to go on jihad and kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan et al.
On Mar. 18 a suicide bomber wearing a burqa detonates in
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing pro-Coalition Uruzgan Province police chief Matiullah Khan.
On Mar. 19 27-y.-o. Afghan woman Farkhunda Malikzada (b. 1987)
is stoned, beaten, and murdered by an angry mob for allegedly burning a Quran; all she really
did was denounce the custodians of Shah-do Shamshira Shrine for selling amulets?
On Mar. 24 Pres. Obama
announces
that 9.8K U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through the end of 2015.
On Apr. 8 an Afghan soldier stages a green-on-blue attack on U.S. troops in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan,
injuring three before being killed; meanwhile U.S. Army Specialist
John M. Dawson (b. 1992)
becomes the first U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan after the U.S. mission ended.
On Apr. 10 (a.m.) a suicide car bombing in
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
injures several Afghans and U.S. troops.
On Apr. 18 an ISIS suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacks a crowd gathered outside the
new Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad, Afghanistan,
killing 35 and injuring 125, after which the Taliban denies responsibility and Afghan pres. Ashraf Ghani blames ISIS.
On May 4 a Taliban attack on checkpoints in Badakhshan, Afghanistan kills 16 policemen.
On May 18 Pakistani army spokesman Asim Bajwa announces
an intel-sharing pact between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Afghanistan's Nat. Directorate of Security (NDS) to train NDS officials et al.
On June 8 Krissie K. Davis (b. 1961)
of Ala. becomes the 3rd U.S. military member to die in Afghanistan after the U.S. combat mission ended during an indirect fire attack at Bagram AFB.
On June 12 (night) the Taliban ambushes police checkpoints in
Musa Qala, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
killing 20 and injuring 10 police officers.
On June 22 (a.m.) explosions hit the Afghan Parliament
as defense minister Massoom Stanekzai is being sworn-in, followed by several Taliban fighters, who fight it out with army special forces.
On June 30 a Pentagon Report on Afghani Forces
reveals a 59% increase in battlefield casualties in the last 6 mo. compared to 2014, and concludes that the 300K-man force is inadequate to fight the Taliban or hold recaptured territory.
On July 12, 2015 a suicide car bomber outside a U.S. base in Khost, Afghanistan
kills 25+ incl. seven CIA operatives and injures 15.
On July 24, 2015 U.S. defense secy. Ashton Carter announces
that senior al-Qaida cmdr. Abu Khalil Al-Sudani, head of suicide operations was killed along with two others on July 11 in E Afghanistan by a U.S. air strike.
On July 29, 2015 the Taliban overruns Now Zad, Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
On July 29, 2015 the Afghan govt. announces
that Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed 2 mo. earlier, causing the Taliban to appoint Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour
as its new leader, with Sirajuddin Haqqani as #2.
On Aug. 22, 2015 a suicide car bomb attack on NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan,
kills 12 incl. three U.S. contractors, and injures dozens.
On Oct. 3, 2015 a U.S. air strike by an AC-130 gunship in
Kunduz, Afghanistan
accidentally hits a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing 22 incl. by burning alive, causing them to call it a war crime, and the
U.S. govt. to launch an investigation despite U.S. Afghanistan cmdr. Gen. John F. Campbell uttering the
soundbyte
that Afghan forces requested the air strike; on Oct. 6 Pres. Obama
apologizes for the bombing.
On Oct. 6 U.S. top Afghanistan cmdr. Army Gen. John F. Campbell
recommends
to Pres. Obama that U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan past the Dec. 2016 deadline.
On Oct. 15 Pres. Obama announces
that he plans to keep 9.8K troops in Afghanistan through most of 2016, keeping 5.5K when he leaves office in Jan. 2017,
reneging on his campaign promise to end the war during his presidency, calling it a "modest but meaningful" extension
of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan; his generals
recommended
11K not 5.5K.
On Oct. 16 The New York Times pub. a map
showing that the Taliban controls 35 and contests another 35 of Afghanistan's 398 districts.
On Nov. 11, 2015 thousands of protesters in Kabul, Afghanisan
storm the pres. palace carrying the coffins of seven minority Hazara Shiite civilians beheaded by ISIS, accusing Pres. Ashraf Ghani of incompetence and shouting "Death to the Taliban",
"Death to the Islamid State", "Death to Pakistan", and "Down with the Government".
On Dec. 26, 2015 a 6.2 earthquake strikes NW Afghanistan
near the Pakistan-Tajikistan bordfer.
On Jan. 10, 2016 Afghan peace process talks
are held in Islamabad, Pakistan by reps from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the U.S., and China, focusing on the need for talks with the Taliban.
On Jan. 11 coordinated Taliban suicide attacks in Jalalabad, Afghanistan
are foiled by Afghan security forces; meanwhile a
secret NATO report
is leaked to Der Spiegel, revealing that the Afghan army is incapable of fighting the Taliban, with only
1 of 101 infantry battalions ready for battle, and 38 with "massive problems", incl. 10 with 600 soldiers each
"not operational at all".
On Jan. 29 the U.S. Special Inspector Gen. for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGFAR) releases a
report
that claims that Afghanistan is "even more dangerous than it was a year ago."
On Feb. 11 Fox News
reveals
that a battalion of 500 U.S. Army infantrymen are being sent to the Helmand Province of S Afghanistan to fight the Taliban,
becoming the first since the late 2014 pullout.
On Mar. 2 U.S. Army Gen. John W. "Mick" Nicholson
takes command
of U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan from U.S. Army Gen. John F. Campbell.
On May 18 the Afghan govt. signs a
draft peace accord
with Hizb-e-Islami, led by Gulbudding Hekmatyar, #2 militant group after the Taliban.
On July 6 after citing the Taliban's threat, Pres. Obama
announces
a slowdown of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving about 8.5K troops at the end of the year after reducing the current force by 9.8K.
On Feb. 9, 2017 U.S. Gen. John Nicholson, cmdr. of U.S. forces in Afghanistan
tells
Senate Armed Services Committee chmn. Sen. John McCain "I believe we're in a stalemate" in Afghanistan.
On Mar. 8, 2017 an ISIS attack on the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital for wounded soldiers in
Kabul, Afghanistan
kills 30+ and injures 50+.
On Mar. 19 a U.S. air strike in
Paktika Province, Afghanistan
kills al-Qaida leader Qari Yasin.
The Trump admin. fires the first 21st cent. shot heard around the world, but not quite on Friday the 13th?
On Apr. 13, 2017 (7:00 p.m. local time) (Thur.) the U.S. drops its 21.6K-lb. GBU-43/B MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Bomb) (Mother of All Bombs) (largest non-nuclear bomb
in its arsenal) in Nangarhar Province, Achin District, E Afghanistan
on an ISIS tunnel and cave complex, becoming the first use in combat, killing 94 ISIS fighters incl. four cmdrs.; the U.S. had already decimated ISIS forces
in Afghanistan by 80% to about 600; U.S. Gen. John Nicholson made the decision to drop the big bomb, not Pres. Trump.
On Apr. 23 10 Taliban fighters dressed as Afghan army soldiers attack the
Mazar-i-Sharif Army Base,
killing 160+ troops, becoming the biggest defeat for the Afghan army since 2001; nine Taliban are KIA, and one captured.
On Apr. 27 U.S. Special Forces kill
Abdul Hasib,
head of ISIS in Afghanistan in a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in Nangarhar Province.
On June 18, 2017 a Taliban suicide team attacks the provincial police HQ in
Gardez, Paktia Province, Afghanistan,
killing six policemen before being killed.
On June 22 a car bomb outside a bank in Helmand Province, Afghanistan
kills 34 and injures 58.
On July 24, 2017 a Taliban suicide car bomber detonates near the house of deputy govt. chief exec Mohammad Mohaqiq in W Kaboom, er,
W Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 35 and injuring 40.
On Aug. 2, 2017 a suicide bomber attacks a NATO-led convoy of internat. troops in
Kandahar, Afghanistan.
On Aug. 21 (eve.) Pres. Trump gives a Speech on Afghanistan,
starting out saying that it his gut instinct to pull out now, but that his generals talked him into staying, but that they don't have a blank check; in accordance with his
criticism of Pres. Obama for announcing moves in advance, he keeps his plans close to the vest; U.S. secy. of state Rex Tillerson utters the
soundbyte:
"I think the president was clear, this entire effort is intended to put pressure on the Taliban to have the Taliban understand you will not win a
battlefield victory. We may not win one, but neither will you, so, at some point, we have to come to the negotiating table and find a way bring this to an end."
On Sept. 6, 2017 (5:38 p.m.local time) hours after U.S. Maj. Gen. James Linder apologizes for dropping leaflets containing images of a dog holding a Taliban flag that
the local yokel Muslims find offensive, a suicide bombing attack in
Bagram Air Base
near Kabul, Afghanistan.
On Sept. 26 the Taliban tries to kill U.S. defense secy. James Mattis during a visit to
Kabul, Afghanistan,
but attacks too late after he already left.
On Oct. 12, 2017 after a tip from the U.S. allows them to make a rescue, Pakistan
frees Canadian Joshua Boyle and his U.S. wife Caitlan Coleman,
who were kidnapped by the Afghan Taliban while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012.
On Dec. 17, 2017 a Taliban attack in Helmand Province, Afghanistan
kills 11 Afghan police.
On Jan. 20, 2018 (9:00 p.m. local time) six Taliban militants begin a siege at the
Intercontinental Hotel
in Kabul, Afghanistan, which ends after 13 hours with 18 dead incl. 14 foreigners after 150 guests shimmying down bedsheets to escape.
On Jan. 27 a Taliban suicide bomber in an ambulance detonates at a police checkpoint in Kaboom, er,
Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 103 and injuring 235.
On Mar. 13, 2018 U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Votel
testifies before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, telling them that the Taliban is transitioning from an ideologically-inspired group to a narco-terror group.
On Apr. 2, 2018 Afghan security forces bomb a religious seminary harboring senior Taliban forces in
Kunduz Province, injuring 100+, admitting on Apr. 3 that civilians are among the casualties.
On Apr. 12, 2018 Taliban insurgents overrun the govt. HQ in Khwaja, Umari District, SE Afghanistan,
killing a district govt, the chief of security, and nine others incl. five police officers, injuring 10 other officers; in response the Fghan air force bombs Taliban positions, killing 30.
On Apr. 22, 2018 an ISIS suicide bomber at a voter registration center for nat. ID cards in
Kabul, Afghanistan
kills 57 incl. 22 women and eight children and injures 119 incl. 52 women and 17 children.
On Apr. 30 a series of suicide bombs in Kaboom, er, Kabul, Afghanistan
kill 31 incl. nine journalists.
On July 15, 2015 (4:30 p.m. local time) a suicide attack at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in
Kabul, Afghanistan
kills seven and injures 15+; meanwhile the U.N. pub. a report giving the number of Afghan civilians killed in the first half of the year as 1.7K, highest in 10 years.
On Sept. 5, 2018 two bombs explode in the heavily Shiite Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kaboom, er, Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 20 and injuring 70, incl. medics and journalists; ISIS claims responsibility.
On Sept. 6, 2018 an Afghan policeman in Takhar Province, NE Afghanistan
shoots and kills 8+ fellow officers, burns their bodies and takes their weapons to his Taliban buddies, becoming the 2nd American killed in an insider attack in Afghanistan this year.
On Sept. 11, 2018 a suicide bomber at a protest gathering in Nangarhar Province, E Afghanistan
kills 68 and injures 165.
On Oct. 15, 2018 the Taliban attack checkpoints in Samangan Province, N Afghanistan,
killing seven Afghan security forces incl. a deputy provincial police chief.
On Oct. 18, 2018 the Taliban attacks a meeting between Afghan officials and the top
U.S. military cmdr. in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin S. Miller, killing three Afghan officials and wounding some Americans; U.S. spokesman Col. David Butler calls it an
"Afghan on Afghan incident" - proof that the Afghanistan War is over and the U.S. lost?
On Oct. 20, 2018 (Sat.) 2018 Afghan parliamentary elections
see a suicide bomber detonate at a polling station in Kabul, Afghanistan,
killing 13+, while poll-related violence kills or wounds 130+ across Afghanistan.
On Dec. 30, 2018 reps of the Taliban meet
with Iranian officials in Tehran to advance peace talks with the Afghan govt.
On Mar. 1, 2019 the New York Times announces
a secret U.S. peace proposal to the Taliban, offering to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in the next 3-5 years.
On Dec. 9, 2019 the Washington Post pub. The Afghanistan Papers,
an expose in the style of "The Pentagon Papers", revealing that U.S. officials knew all along that the Afghanistan War was unwinnable, along with the pipe dream of turning it into a satellite of
Washington, D.C. complete with a statue of George Washington, i.e., a U.S.-style federalist democracy with free market economy, causing all the U.S. presidents from Bush Jr. to Trump to regularly lie
to the Am. people about military progress.
On Feb. 21, 2020 the U.S. and the Taliban reach an agreement
for a ceasefire that is touted as promising to end the 19-year Afghanistan War; it is signed on Feb. 29.
On May 1, 2021 the 2021 Taliban Offensivebegins as U.S. and allied troops begin withdrawing from Afghanistan, with Afghan govt. troops throwing
down their weapons and running as the Taliban increases the number of districts it controls from 73 to 223 in three mo., launching an assault on the provincial capitals on Aug. 6, capturing all except Bazarak
after almost no resistance; on Aug. 15 Afghan pres. Ashraf Ghani flees Afghanistan as the Taliban captures Kabul, and Pres. Biden has much 'splaining to do.
On July 2, 2021 the U.S. hands over Bagram Airfield in Kabul to the Afghans.
On Aug. 26, 2023 (17:50 local time) a jihadist suicide bomber at the Abbey Gate entrance to the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan kills
13 U.S. service members plus 170 Afghan civilians, becoming the first U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan since Feb. 2020; the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-KP) claims reponsibility;
the Taliban, who was supposed to be guarding the entrance is suspected of complicity; on Aug. 27 after ISIS-K claims responsibility, Pres. Biden issues the soundbyte that the U.S. was "not going to forget
and would not forgive. We will hunt you down and make you pay"; on Aug. 28 as U.S. troops begin leaving Kabul Airport after two weeks of evacuating citizens and at-risk Afghans, Pres. Biden warns
that another jihadist attack is likely; on Sept. 7, 2023 former USMC sniper
Tyler Vargas-Andrews
announces that he and two others spotted and reported the Abbey Gate suicide bomber, and that U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth Frank McKenzie covered it up.
On Aug. 29, 2021 a cross-border U.S. drone strike in Kaboom, Afghanistan
kills 10, which is announced as a hit on an ISIS-K-Khorasan suicide bomber, but on Sept. 17 U.S. defense secy. Lloyd Austin admits that they goofed and killed 10 civilians incl. seven children.
On Aug. 30, 2021 the Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (begun Feb. 29)
ends in chaos, with the U.S. Islamic Repub. of Afghanistan overthrown by the Taliban, with Pres. Biden relying on his archenemies to guarantee the safety of Americans and others trying to escape,
causing his popularity to tank.
United States military casualties in the War in Afghanistan