America's longest war, in pictures

The war in Afghanistan has seen trillions of dollars squandered in what has largely been deemed a failed nation-building project.

AFP  Published about 20 hours ago

America's longest war has all but ended.

Launched in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Afghans along with around 2,400 US soldiers, and seen trillions of dollars squandered in what has largely been deemed a failed nation-building project.

Although the Taliban's hardline regime fell within a matter of weeks after the United States unleashed a ferocious bombing campaign and incited tribal uprisings, the conflict festered.

The initial celebratory images of men shaving their beards and women re-entering the workforce gave way to suicide bombings, mounting civilian casualties, and the resurrection of a Taliban movement hell-bent on ejecting foreign forces from Afghanistan.

What began as a mission to dismantle Al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan evolved over the years into a full-scale war against their Taliban hosts, triggering an insurgency that the US military's enormous firepower was unable to quell.

 

 

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