Operation Enduring Freedom, U.S. Army in Afghanistan: September 2001-March 2002 by Mark R. Folse

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Mark R. Folse, a historian now teaching at the Naval Academy, provides an interesting overview of the first years of the US and Allied actions in Afghanistan. Mark Folse is also a U.S. Marine infantry veteran (2002 – 2006) with service in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

He explains why the US had to intervene and describes the successes and disappointments of the first months as the US ousted the Taliban from Kabul, but failed to find and kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora.

While Folse does not go on to explain how the mission crept from evicting al-Qaeda from Afghanistan to nation-building in Afghanistan, he does show how, in the early months, the only goal was the defeat of al-Qaeda. He also mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense at the time, rejected any negotiations with the Taliban. Obviously, the anger of Americans about the tragedies of 9/11 might have made early negotiations unlikely, but it is an interesting what-if. Why did Donald Trump later have the political space to invite the Taliban to Camp David for negotiations, you might ask your students.

And Folse provides background about the people of Afghanistan.  He writes of the religious zeal of the Taliban, which helped them in “recruiting and fighting” in the years they controlled Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Folse also shows how the terrain of Afghanistan made US operations difficult in many areas. Landing and resupplying troops on the sides of mountains was dangerous and made control of the countryside hard to achieve, Folse writes.

The Council on Foreign Relations has a useful timeline which your students might enjoy before reading Folse’s book. It is at https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan.