NATO Ends 13-Year Afghan War Amid Rising Taliban Insurgency

By Eltaf Najafizada

Photographer: Shah Marai/AFP via Getty Images

International Security Assistance Force Commander General John Campbell opens the flag... Read More

NATO-led forces and U.S. military personnel formally ended a 13-year war in Afghanistan today amid an escalating insurgency that threatens to undermine the nation’s second elected government.
“Our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement from Honolulu, where he is on vacation with his family.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will switch its focus starting Jan. 1 to training and assisting Afghan forces, International Security Assistance Force Commander General John Campbell said today after a flag-changing ceremony in Kabul.
“We are not walking away,” Campbell said. Mission “Resolute Support will serve as the bedrock of an enduring partnership” between NATO and the war-torn country, he said.
The announcement comes as Taliban and other militants step up attacks across the nation in an attempt to overthrow the government led by President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, who t
ook office in September. The violence has killed and wounded about 10,000 civilians this this year, according to the United Nations.
“The 13-year Afghan war of NATO failed to completely root out the Taliban and other militants from the country,” Ahmad Saeed, a former Afghan diplomat to Pakistan, said today by phone. “The increased violence could threaten to overthrow some more remote districts of the government as a few districts are already under control of Taliban.”

Security Agreements

The Afghan government signed bilateral security agreements with the U.S. and NATO a day after President Ghani’s Sept. 29 inauguration, allowing their troops to stay beyond this year. The Taliban responded by vowing to increase attacks on Afghanistan and international military and civilian organizations.
“These past 13 years have tested our nation and our military,” Obama said in the statement. “But compared to the nearly 180,000 American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan when I took office, we now have fewer than 15,000 in those countries. Some 90 percent of our troops are home.”
American soldiers will continue to conduct some counter-terrorism operations, Brian Tribus, director of public affairs at ISAF, told reporters today. About 13,500 international troops will stay in the nation starting next year, of which about 10,600 are Americans, he said.
ISAF, made up of 50 countries, was created soon after U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime. Their presence peaked at 140,000 troops in 2010 after Obama ordered the so-called surge to make decisive gains against the Taliban in their southern stronghold.
More than 3,500 international troops died in Afghanistan, most of them Americans.