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Summary:
The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until its collapse in December 2001 at the hands of the U.S. and Afghan opposition military campaign. During its rule, the Taliban was opposed primarily by the Northern Alliance, a coalition of minority ethnic groups. From 1998 until its rule ended, the Taliban was under increasing international pressure to cease hosting of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda organization, the prime suspect in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including bin Laden. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghan citizens are enjoying new personal freedoms that were forbidden under the Taliban, about 2 million Afghan refugees have returned, and women are returning to schools and their jobs and participating in politics. Although the Northern Alliance emerged from the war as the dominant force in the country, the United States and United Nations mediators persuaded the Alliance to share power with Pashtun representatives in a broad-based interim government. On December 5, 2001, major Afghan factions, meeting under U.N. auspices in Bonn, signed an agreement to form an interim government that ran Afghanistan until a traditional national assembly ("loya jirga") was held June 11-19, 2002. The meeting selected a new government to run Afghanistan for the next 18 months, and approved Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, to continue as leader for that time. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security. The United States has reopened its embassy in Kabul and allowed the Afghan administration to reopen Afghanistan's embassy in Washington. To help foster development, the United Nations and the Bush Administration are in the process of lifting U.N. and international sanctions imposed on Afghanistan since the Soviet occupation.
