The flag came down in Kabul on Sunday, 28 December 2014. After 13 years, NATO officially closed its combat mission in Afghanistan, and General John F Campbell, who headed ISAF, told the ceremony: “Our Afghan partners can and will take the fight from here.” The record of how the alliance got to that moment, and what came after, is longer and messier than the ceremony suggested.
From Kabul to the whole country
NATO took the lead of ISAF on 11 August 2003. The force carried a United Nations mandate and a stated goal: help the Afghan government deliver security and build new Afghan forces, so the country could never again serve as a safe haven for terrorists. At first it worked in and around the capital. By the latter part of 2006 it covered the entire country.
That expansion into the east and south pulled ISAF into fighting a spreading insurgency through 2007 and 2008. A new counter-insurgency effort followed in 2009, with 40,000 extra troops. NATO puts the force’s peak strength above 130,000, with contingents from 51 allied and partner countries. The Guardian, reporting at the end of combat operations, put the 2011 peak at close to 150,000, so the count depends on the definition used.
Handing over the fight
From 2011 the emphasis changed. A gradual transition to Afghan responsibility began in July 2011, a plan agreed with Kabul at the Lisbon summit in 2010. The milestone came on 18 June 2013: Kabul announced the fifth and final batch of transition areas, putting Afghan forces in the lead everywhere. ISAF moved from combat toward training, advising and assisting, and its troops started going home.
The Afghan forces paid for taking over. The Guardian counted over 5,000 Afghan security personnel killed during 2014, the worst toll of the whole war. The international coalition had suffered 3,485 deaths since 2001. Coalition-built forces numbered 350,000, but they were still short of air support and intelligence capability. Afghan troops asked for air assistance about 400 times in the previous year and received it in 30 cases.
Resolute Support and the exit
Resolute Support, a smaller mission without a combat role, began on 1 January 2015. It rested on a Status of Forces Agreement dated 30 September 2014 and signed in Kabul and on UN Security Council Resolution 2189, adopted unanimously on 12 December 2014. At the start, about 12,000 troops belonged to it, with another 5,500 US soldiers in separate counterterrorism and logistics roles. After a defence ministers’ meeting in November 2017 the deployed force was raised to around 16,000 from around 13,000. Its operations ran through a central hub at Kabul and Bagram, supported by branches in Laghman, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.
The end was set outside NATO’s own councils. February 2020 brought a deal between Washington and the Taliban to pull international forces out by May 2021. On 14 April 2021, the allies concluded that there was no military solution to Afghanistan’s problems and decided to begin pulling out Resolute Support forces by 1 May. NATO says the mission was terminated in early September 2021.
Sources
- ISAF's mission in Afghanistan (2001-2014) (NATO)
- Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan (2015-2021) (NATO)
- Nato ends combat operations in Afghanistan (The Guardian)
