Tuesday this week commemorates 13 years since the start of the Afghan War — America's longest running campaign of its kind — yet an end to the operation is hardly on the horizon.
Under the terms of the Bilateral Security Agreement, the pact
signed last week by representatives for both
the United States and Afghanistan, the US will significantly
reduce the number of soldiers involved in its post-9/11 Operation
Enduring Freedom at the end of this year. Troop numbers will
shrink to 10,000, signaling indeed a major step towards ending
the war in Afghanistan — a campaign promise made by US President
Barack Obama during the lead-up to his re-election in 2012. With
this week's anniversary, however, the costs incurred already
appear more evident than ever, and the length of the operation
may be endless.
Combined with the only recently concluded war in Iraq, the
financial toll of the Afghan war on Uncle Sam's pocketbook could
range in $4 trillion to $6 trillion, according to research published last year out of Harvard
University. Additionally, the iCasualties
website claims the US military has suffered 2,349 deaths during
Operation Enduring Freedom — including 48 this year, or as many
lives lost in that war in 2003 when it was still relatively new.
Of that tally, Breitbart News recently reported, 1,649 deaths or
about 75 percent, have occurred since the start
Pres. Obama's first term in early 2009.
Even with last week's agreement, however, the Afghan War will
only end in name, if at all. Under the terms of the pact, the
roughly 9,800 US troops that will remain in Afghanistan past the
end of this year will be cut in half by the end of the next, with
a full-scale withdrawal tentatively slated for the end of 2016.
By keeping US troops overseas for now, the State Department said
recently, Afghanistan, the US and international community at
large will “maintain the partnership we've established to ensure
Afghanistan maintains and extends the gains of the past decade."
Once the last of the US forces leave, the Afghan army will again
be tasked with preserving national security, and for the first
time without American troops since 2001.
When those troops actually will exit Afghan for good, however,
remains up in the air. Under the terms of the BSA, US and NATO
troops have already been cleared to stay “until the end of 2024 and beyond,” suggesting
Operation Enduring Freedom could extend for another decade even
after already being America's longest running war.
Thirteen years ago this Tuesday, George W Bush, then the
president of the United States, said the Pentagon had officially begun a mission “designed to
disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations
and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.”
“This military action is a part of our campaign against
terrorism, another front in a war that has already been joined
through diplomacy, intelligence, the freezing of financial assets
and the arrests of known terrorists by law enforcement agents in
38 countries,” Bush said from the White House. “Given
the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict by
the patient accumulation of successes, by meeting a series of
challenges with determination and will and purpose.”
That patience is still at play today, however, and has led
Operation Enduring Freedom into the record books of being the
longest-running US war ever. Now despite campaign promises made
by Obama, even Bush's successor might not see the end of a war in
Afghanistan anytime soon: 13 years after Bush announced the start
of a military operation against terrorists, the US and its allies
are now in the midst of conducting aerial campaign against the
so-called Islamic State, a terrorist organization that even
Al-Qaeda has distanced itself from over concerns involving the
group's violent practices. According to new research published
last month by USA Today, Washington is investing roughly
$10 million a day on fighting a campaign against that group. If
the Pentagon's numbers don't change drastically over time, than
the cost of fighting that war could come to over $3 billion
annually — a fraction of the $77.7 billion spent during the last
fiscal year on Operation Enduring Freedom, but costly
nonetheless.