5 Minute Guide: Fight for Afghanistan

What happened?

The battle for Afghanistan started in October 2001 as a direct response to the 9/11 attacks.

Dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, the military campaign was launched to destroy the al-Qaida terrorist network operating in the country. Unlike the later conflict in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan had international backing, with Nato in support.

The first wave of attacks was launched on 7 October, as cities throughout Afghanistan - a nation of 25 million people - came under fire from sea and air.

The barrage was greeted with anger in some Muslim countries, with protests in Pakistan and Lebanon.

By the end of the year, the Taliban had been ousted from power, culminating in the fall of Kabul on 12 November.

The Taliban claimed more than 1,500 civilians had been killed in the US-led raids and fled the city under the cover of darkness.

However, the bid to find the network's leader Osama bin Laden proved unsuccessful, as desperate searches of the Tora Bora network of caves in the east of the country yielded nothing.

In December 2001, major Afghan leaders and diaspora met in Bonn, Germany, and agreed on a plan for a new democratic government led by Hamid Karzai.

Despite being removed from power, the Taliban's influence remained, with many said to have found refuge in Pakistan.

The Taliban's growing strength led the US to consider an increase in troop numbers. The number of insurgent attacks has tripled since September 2006 and, like Iraq, there is a fear that the country is on the brink on anarchy.

The group's leader Mullar Omar is said to be hiding in Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Why did it happen?

The conflict in Afghanistan was a result of the 9/11 attacks, as the US embarked on its War on Terror and its quest to find bin Laden.

On the eve of the war, Bush told the US public: "The Afghan people ... are the victims of oppression, famine and misrule.

"Our enemy is not the people of any nation, even when their leaders harbour terrorists. Our enemy is the terrorists themselves, and the regimes that shelter and sustain them."

The US had long suspected Afghanistan of "sheltering" terrorists, and there is evidence that plans to attack the country were being prepared ahead of 9/11.

What happens next?

At the start of 2007, the next move in the "new Afghanistan" is unclear.

The Afghan government talks of reconstruction and investment but the Nato troops needed to secure such work are being drawn into bloody battles with the Taliban.

Increasing pressure is likely to fall on Pakistan to tighten up its borders with Afghanistan - a fluid realm which has allowed the Taliban to take refuge. Indeed, the Quetta in Pakistan is reported to be a hiding place for Mullah Omar.

Many fear the Taliban will continue to undermine the region's fragile framework and will simply wait until foreign governments tire of funding a draining conflict.

Infighting between local commanders over power and territory are a feature of the post-Taliban period and authorities in Kabul have been able to exert little control outside the capital.

Key players

Harmid Karzai
Karzai has been leader of Afghanistan's new government since December 2001.

Born in 1957 to a Pashtun family, he returned from exile in Pakistan when the Taliban regime crumbled.

His father - a former parliamentary deputy - was assassinated in 1999 in the Pakistani city of Quetta; the murder was widely attributed to the Taliban.

The assassination saw Mr Karzai, who has survived several assassination attempts himself, enshrined as the head of the influential Popalzai clan.

Mr Karzai, who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s, has been accused of being a US stooge.

But he was praised for persuading world leaders to give £4bn in aid to his country. He is, however, known as the Mayor of Kabul because of his relative impotence outside the capital city.

Taliban
Predominantly Pashtun, the Taliban is an Islamic fundamentalist movement which effectively ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001.

It emerged in 1994, led by Mullah Omar, whose target was the feuding warlords, or mujahideen, who had forced Soviet troops out of the country.

The Taliban's promise was to enforce Sharia or Islamic law once in power, and it was initially popular as it stamped out lawlessness and infighting.

In September 1996, it captured Kabul, the year when bin Laden is thought to have moved to Afghanistan. By the end of the 1990s, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan.

Its only significant opponent was the Northern Alliance, a military-political grouping of various Afghan factions.

Once in power, the Taliban banned television, music, cinema and carried out public executions of convicted murderers. Girls over 10 were forbidden from going to school and working women were ordered to stay at home.

By December 2001, the Taliban had begun to regroup as a guerrilla organisation in the hilly area along the border with Pakistan.

Nearly five years after losing power, it is making its presence felt by launching guerrilla operations against Nato forces, killing aid workers and kidnapping foreigners.

Mullar Omar
The reclusive leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Omar, an ethnic Pashtun and reportedly 6ft 6ins tall, has a $10m bounty on his head.

The son of a peasant farmer, Omar lost an eye when he fought as a guerrilla fighter with the anti-Soviet mujahideen.

He officially took control of the country in 1996, ruling from his Kandahar base, where he directed the imposition of Sharia law.

Since the Taliban's defeat in 2001, Omar has been hiding in unknown locations in the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan - possibly in Quetta.

In December 2006 he issued a statement promising that foreign forces would be driven out of Afghanistan.

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