The Taliban insurgency began after the group's fall from power during the 2001 War in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces fought against the Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, and later by President Ashraf Ghani, and against a US-led coalition of forces that has included all members of NATO; the 2021 Taliban offensive resulted in the collapse of the government of Ashraf Ghani. The private sector in Pakistan extends financial aid to the Taliban, contributing to their financial sustenance.
Baitullah Mehsud was one of the founders and a leading member of the TTP in Waziristan, Pakistan, and the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He formed the TTP from an alliance of about five militant groups in December 2007. He is thought by U.S. military analysts to have commanded up to 5,000 fighters and to have been behind numerous attacks in Pakistan including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto which he and others have denied.
Jalaluddin Haqqani was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group who fought in guerilla warfare against US-led NATO forces and the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan government that they supported.
Events from the year 2007 in Afghanistan.
The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also known as the War in North-West Pakistan or Pakistan's war on terror, is an ongoing armed conflict involving Pakistan and Islamist militant groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jundallah, Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), TNSM, al-Qaeda, and their Central Asian allies such as the ISIL–Khorasan (ISIL), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkistan Movement, Emirate of Caucasus, and elements of organized crime. Formerly a war, it is now a low-level insurgency as of 2017.
The Baghar China UAV strike happened in the evening on 17 September 2008, when four missiles fired from a United States Air Force drone aircraft hit the village of Baghar China in the mountains of South Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, about 4 kilometres from the Afghan border and 55 kilometres west of Wana, the main town in the region and close to Angur Ada, the village that was raided by US commandos on 3 September. The missiles hit a militant training camp, killing five and injuring at least six people.
The border skirmishes between the United States and Pakistan were the military engagements and confrontations between Pakistan and the United States that took place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border from late 2008 to late 2012 resulting in the deaths of 55 Pakistani personnel with a unknown number of U.S. casualties. These incidents involved the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Command and ISAF forces, who had been present in Afghanistan fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgency, and the unified Western military command of the Pakistan Armed Forces against one another in a series of skirmishes that ceased shortly after the 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan. The two sides ultimately made peace and continued collaboration operations against insurgent groups in Pakistan following an official, however brief, apology from then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 3 July 2012 over the loss of life suffered by the Pakistani military.
The War in Afghanistan was an armed conflict that took place from 2001 to 2021. Launched as a direct response to the September 11 attacks, the war began when an international military coalition led by the United States invaded Afghanistan, declaring Operation Enduring Freedom as part of the earlier-declared war on terror, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate, and establishing the Islamic Republic three years later. The Taliban and its allies were expelled from major population centers by US-led forces supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance; Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, relocated to neighboring Pakistan. The conflict officially ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which overthrew the Islamic Republic, and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States, surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately six months.
Between 2004 and 2018, the United States government attacked thousands of targets in northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. Most of these attacks were on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in northwest Pakistan. These strikes began during the administration of United States President George W. Bush, and increased substantially under his successor Barack Obama. Some in the media referred to the attacks as a "drone war". The George W. Bush administration officially denied the extent of its policy; in May 2013, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time that four US citizens had been killed in the strikes. In December 2013, the National Assembly of Pakistan unanimously approved a resolution against US drone strikes in Pakistan, calling them a violation of "the charter of the United Nations, international laws and humanitarian norms."
Maulvi Nazir was a leading militant of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan. Nazir's operations were based in Wana.
Events from the year 2008 in Afghanistan.
Operation Zarb-e-Azb was a joint military offensive conducted by the Pakistan Armed Forces against various militant groups, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, al-Qaeda, Jundallah and Lashkar-e-Islam. The operation was launched on 15 June 2014 in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a renewed effort against militancy in the wake of the 8 June attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, for which the TTP and the IMU claimed responsibility. As of 14 July 2014, the operation internally displaced about 929,859 people belonging to 80,302 families from North Waziristan.
The following lists events that happened during 2015 in Afghanistan.
The following lists events that happened during 2016 in Afghanistan.
Events in the year 2017 in Afghanistan.
Events in the year 2018 in Afghanistan.
This article summarizes the history of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).
The Islamic State–Taliban conflict is an ongoing insurgency by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-KP) against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The conflict initially began when both operated as rival insurgent groups in Nangarhar; since the rise of the Taliban's state in 2021, IS-KP have targeted and assassinated Taliban members using hit-and-run tactics. The group have also caused incidents and attacks across the border in Pakistan.
Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, also known as Abu Mansoor Asim, is a Pakistani Islamic scholar, cleric and jurist who is the 4th emir of the Pakistani Taliban. On 22 June 2018, Mehsud was appointed as the emir of TTP after the assassination of former emir Mullah Fazlullah in a US drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan.
