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  • Overview
  • Timothy Garton Ash
  • 9/11
  • Afghanistan
  • Iraq

Endless War

My name is Matan Chorev, a graduate of both Tufts University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a member of the 2003 EPIIC colloquium, and co-founder of the Institute for Global Leadership’s New Initiative for Middle East Peace.

The human condition often requires us to construct order to contend with the world’s paralyzing complexity. This is why we speak of the “post-Cold War era” or the “Pre-Revolution” or, in true Orwellian fashion: the “inter-war” period.

In much the same way, “post-9/11” has come to define the world since 2001, especially for the United States. The photos in this room document, in bleak realism, the global cataclysms that have followed that day of infamy. On these walls the aphorisms of war fail to shroud its wounds. The brutality of the Long War is laid bare. The war in Afghanistan is in its ninth year and may well become the longest war in American history; the war in Iraq is ending its seventh.

Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley provides a microcosm of the incongruence between the neatness of the conceptual geography– winning hearts and minds, securing the population, extending governance – and the granular disorderliness of war. Whose ghosts are we chasing?

Winston Churchill once quipped: “history will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Indeed, the wars chronicled in this exhibition have been told almost exclusively through the eyes of its statesmen and warriors; the rolling thunder of blowback is muted; the voices of those impacted on a day-to-day basis ignored. In this exhibition, the VII photographers challenge us to confront these wars without filter, without our defenses.

Broad stroke portraits of arcs of instability and ungoverned spaces, failed states and radicalized bandwidths do not lend coherence or sense to the gas mask as toy or the footprints of the displaced. The depravity of our times, however, cannot be understood without these images, without these scars, without asking the questions for which no answer will comfort.

The end of the Cold War brought change that sent ripples around the world.
By Timothy Garton Ash
Op-ed Los Angeles Times

November 5, 2009

It was the biggest year in world history since 1945. In international politics, 1989 changed everything.

It led to the end of communism in Europe, of the Soviet Union, the Cold War and the short 20th century. It opened the door to German reunification, a historically unprecedented European Union stretching from Lisbon to Tallinn, the enlargement of NATO, two decades of American supremacy, globalization and the rise of Asia. The one thing it did not change was human nature.

In 1989, Europeans proposed a new model of nonviolent, velvet revolution, challenging the violent example of France in 1789, which for two centuries had been what most people thought of as "revolution." Instead of Jacobins and the guillotine, they offered people power and negotiations at a round table.

With Mikhail S. Gorbachev's breathtaking renunciation of the use of force (a luminous example of the importance of the individual in history), a nuclear-armed empire -- which had seemed to many Europeans as enduring and impregnable as the Alps, not least because it possessed those weapons of total annihilation -- just softly and suddenly vanished.

But then, as if this were all somehow too good to be true, 1989 also brought us Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie -- firing the starting gun for another long struggle in Europe, even before the last one was really over.

Such years come only once or twice in a long lifetime. Another big one, of course, was 2001, the year of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, above all because it transformed the priorities of the United States in the world. But it did not bring as much change as 1989 did. As the Cold War had affected even the smallest African state, making it a potential pawn in the great chess game between East and West, so the end of the Cold War affected everyone. And places like Afghanistan were forgotten, neglected by Washington because they no longer mattered in a global contest with the now ex-Soviet Union. The mujahid had done his work; the mujahid could go. Except that a mujahid called Osama bin Laden had other ideas.

The epicenter of 1989 was Europe between the Rhine and the Urals, and it's there that the most has changed. Every one of Poland's neighbors today is new, different from what they were in 1989. In fact, many of the states and quite a few of the frontiers in eastern Europe are more recent than those in Africa. And the lived experience of every man, woman and child has been transformed out of all recognition; nowhere more so than in the former German Democratic Republic, whose death warrant was written 20 years ago this Monday, with the breaching of the Berlin Wall.

So, closest to the ground, we have the stories of those individual human lives: of the young Czechs, Hungarians and East Germans, born in 1989, who are seizing and enjoying the chances of freedom, and of the many older, less well-placed people who have had a rough time since, and are angry and disillusioned.

At the other extreme, we have the global dance of old and new superpowers. Potentially, there are now three of them: the United States, China and the European Union.

The United States is still the only genuine, three-dimensional superpower. When former presidents Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush got together with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Berlin last week, Bush paid fulsome tribute to his friend "Mikhail." He could afford to be generous; after all, America won. More accurately, the United States emerged the winner, thanks partly to its own policies but also to the work of others.

But it would be hard to argue that the U.S. has used its subsequent two decades of supremacy very well, least of all, under Bush, son of Bush. The country has lived high on the hog, running up a pile of both household and national debt. It has not created a durable new international order. It now has a wonderful president who wills that end, but probably no longer has the means.

China is the most unexpected winner. Remember that when Gorbachev visited Beijing in 1989, he had to be smuggled into the Great Hall of the People through a back entrance because so many protesters were filling Tiananmen Square. China seemed to be on the brink of some kind of a velvet revolution of its own. But then came the June 4 massacre.

A shudder reverberated across Eurasia, from Beijing to Berlin. China and Europe dramatically parted ways.

Traumatized both by the Tiananmen protests and by the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, China's Communist Party leaders systematically learned the lessons in order to avoid their European comrades' fate. Seizing the economic opportunities offered by globalization, which itself was decisively catalyzed by the end of European communism, they marched further down the road on which Deng Xiaoping (an individual to rank with Gorbachev in his impact on history) had launched them.

The result: a hybrid that can crudely be summarized as Leninist capitalism, something we simply did not imagine in 1989. And an emerging superpower with $2 trillion of reserves, holding the U.S. in a financial half-nelson. This is a fragile superpower, to be sure, with many internal tensions and contradictions, and too little freedom, but still a formidable competitor for Western-style liberal democratic capitalism. Far more formidable, incidentally, than backward-looking, militant Islamism, which is a real threat but not a serious ideological competitor.

And then there is old Europe, where it all began. I have suggested elsewhere in an essay that 1989 was the best year in European history. That's a bold claim; readers are invited to point to a better year. But two decades later, and in my darker moments, 1989 sometimes seems to me like the last, late flowering of a very aged rose.

To be sure, we have done some big things since. We have enlarged the EU. We (or at least, some of us) have a single European currency. We have the largest economy in the world. On paper, Europe looks good. But the political reality is very different.

This is not the big-hearted Europe of which visionaries like Vaclav Havel dreamed in 1989. It is the Europe of the other Vaclav, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, signing the Lisbon Treaty to revamp the European Union with gnashing teeth, after exacting some small, provincial concessions. It is the Europe of Britain's Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who, in the defensive, national narrowness of his European vision, is actually a rather representative contemporary European. (Churchill! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: Europe hath need of thee.) Sunk in the narcissism of minor difference, only half awake to the world of giants emerging around them, your average politician in France, Germany or Poland is little better.

So, 20 years on, the question before us Europeans is this: Can we recapture some of the strategic boldness and historical imagination of 1989? Or shall we now leave it to others to shape the world, while we snuggle down, Hobbit-like, in our national holes, and pretend there are no giants yomping overhead?

Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of European studies at Oxford University.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

TIMELINE:

1980s: Osama bin Laden runs a front organization for the mujaheddin—Islamic freedom fighters rebelling against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The CIA secretly backs the mujaheddin. Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, understanding the ferocity of Islamic extremism, tells then President George H.W. Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein." [MSNBC, 8/24/98, Newsweek, 10/1/01]

1996: The Saudi Arabian government is financially supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. After 9/11, the Bush Administration chooses not to confront the Saudi leadership over its support of terror organizations and its refusal to help in the investigation. [New Yorker, 10/22/01]

Aug 1998: Within minutes of each other, truck bombs blow up the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing more than 220. [Newsweek, 10/1/01]

September 11, 2001:

8:46:40: American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99.

8:49:34: The first network television and radio reports of an explosion or incident at the World Trade Center. The CNN screen subtitle first reads "World Trade Center disaster.” Carol Lin, a CNN anchor, says: "This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center."

8:55 (approx.): Announcements are made over the building-wide PA-system by officials in the still-undamaged South Tower of the World Trade Center, reporting that the building is "secure" and that people should return to their offices. Some do not hear it; others ignore it and evacuate anyway; others congregate in common areas like the 78th floor sky lobby.

9:03:04: Flight 175 crashes at about 590 mph into the south face of the South Tower (2 WTC) of the World Trade Center, banked between floors 78 and 85.

9:03: President Bush enters a classroom as part of his school visit to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

9:05: After brief introductions to the Booker elementary students, President Bush is about to begin reading The Pet Goat with the students when Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupts to notify the President that the second tower was struck. The president stated later that he decided to continue the lesson rather than alarm the students.

9:37:46: Flight 77 crashes into the western side of the Pentagon.

9:45: United States airspace is shut down.

9:59:04: The South Tower of the World Trade Center begins to collapse, 55 minutes 53 seconds after the impact of Flight 175. Its destruction is viewed and heard by a vast television and radio audience.

10:03:11: United Airlines Flight 93 is crashed by its hijackers and passengers, due to fighting in the cockpit. Later reports indicate that passengers had learned about the World Trade Center and Pentagon crashes and at least three were planning on resisting the hijackers; the resistance was confirmed by Flight 93's cockpit voice recording, on which the hijackers are heard making their decision to down the plane before the passengers succeed in breaching the cockpit door. The 9/11 Commission believed that Flight 93's target was either the United States Capitol building or the White House in Washington, D.C.

10:28:25: The North Tower of the World Trade Center begins to collapse 1 hour 41 minutes 45 seconds after the impact of Flight 11. The second collapse is also viewed live on television and heard on radio. The North Tower collapses.

6:00: Explosions and tracer fire are reported in Kabul, Afghanistan, by CNN and the BBC. The Northern Alliance, involved in a civil war with the Taliban government, is later reported to have attacked Kabul's airport with helicopter gunships.

8:30: President Bush addresses the nation from the White House.[18] Among his statements: "Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts," "Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve," and "The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts...we will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

11:30: Before sleeping, Bush enters into his journal: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today...We think it's Osama bin Laden."[19]

Sept 13-19, 2001: Members of bin Laden's family are driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington, where they leave the country on a private plane when most flights were still grounded. Top White House officials personally approve these evacuations. [New York Times, 9/4/03, Boston Globe, 9/20/01, New York Times, 9/30/01, more]

Weeks following the attacks: There was a surge in incidents of harassment and hate crimes against American Muslims (CAIR: http://sun.cair.com). 762 mainly Muslim suspects were rounded up the United States. None of those rounded up and detained were ever charged with terrorism. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html?_r=1)

Oct 2, 2001: The Patriot Act is introduced in Congress. [Patriot Act]. Following the attacks, 80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants were fingerprinted and registered under the Alien Registration Act of 1940. 8,000 Arab and Muslim men were interviewed, and 5,000 foreign nationals were detained under Joint Congressional Resolution 107-40 authorizing the use of military force "to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States." (http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html)

October 7, 2001: The US military’s Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is launched; the war in Afghanistan begins.

Early 2002: Prisoners captured in Afghanistan are started to be moved to Guantanamo Bay detention center after the Justice Department advised that it could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction.

Sept 11, 2002: On the first anniversary of 9/11, New York Times writes, "One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic." The former police commissioner of Philadelphia says: "You can hardly point to a cataclysmic event in our history when a blue-ribbon panel did not set out to establish the facts and suggest reforms. That has not happened here." [New York Times, 9/11/02]

Nov. 25, 2002: The Homeland Security Act is signed into law, creating the Department of Homeland Security.

March 20, 2003: the invasion of Iraq began.

July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission Report is published.

March 9 and 10, 2006: The Patriot Act 2 is signed into law.

9/11 Overview
Elizabeth Herman

Before it became known as 9/11 – as the ‘day that changed everything’ – September 11th, 2001 was scheduled as the first United Nations’ International Day Of Peace.

The observance was moved to the 21st, however, after four planes were hijacked that morning, with the first two flown into the World Trade Towers in New York, the third into the Pentagon, and the fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, diverted by passengers onboard from its original target, the Presidential Retreat at Camp David. Nearly 3,000 people died that day.

The events led bush to declare an international ‘war on terror’, two major American-led invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a redefinition of priorities in the political world. Yet for such a paradigm-shifting event, we are too often fed iconic images and trite descriptions. James Nachtwey’s images in “Questions Without Answers” call on us to re-examine the way we remember the day, enabling us to move closer than is allowed by the all-too-familiar images of the burning towers. He brings us within the wreckage and captures the humanity affected on 9/11, rather than simply shattering steel and glass. And in doing so, he helps us take back our memories.

The timeline and list of resources below hope to allow you to continue to engage in this investigation, examining the line of events leading up to 9/11 and the way things unfolded after it.

RESOURCES:

Rebecca Solnit, “9/11’s Living Monuments:

Rebecca Solnit speaks about the importance of narratives in remembering that day.

“Eight years ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story. The al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers did not defeat New Yorkers. It destroyed the buildings, contaminated the region, killed thousands, and disrupted the global economy, but it most assuredly did not conquer the citizenry. They were only defeated when their resilience was stolen from them by clichés, by the invisibility of what they accomplished that extraordinary morning, and by the very word "terrorism," which suggests that they, or we, were all terrified. The distortion, even obliteration, of what actually happened was a necessary precursor to launching the obscene response that culminated in a war on Iraq, a war we lost (even if some of us don't know that yet), and the loss of civil liberties and democratic principles that went with it.”

New York Times’ “Documenting the Decade”

In this New York Times feature entitled “Documenting the Decade,” readers were asked to “send photos that helped illustrate what you considered important moments from the decade in news, politics, culture, entertainment, business, sports and technology.” In this interactive exhibit we can see what a great emphasis Americans place on 9/11 and its significance in the modern era; of 885 of the images selected, a full fifty, or 5% of the photographs of the decade were taken on September 11th, 2001 and the days immediately following.

NPR’s “Rewriting History Textbooks Post-Sept. 11”

The Nation’s “Teaching 9/11”:

BLOG:

Camped out in the dusty stacks of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany, I leafed textbook after textbook, scanning the pages for recognizable signs. I was collecting materials for my senior thesis on how 9/11 is being portrayed in high school history textbooks from countries around the world, and as I spoke painfully few of the dozens of languages I was browsing, I was keeping my eyes peeled for clues - dates, names, catch words - to tip me off about the mention of the event! But more often than not, it would be the images that caught my attention. Occasionally, textbooks would throw in an atypical shot, like this one of smoke from the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, which appears in the third edition of Created Equal, an American textbook which toes the counter-culture line:

But more often than not, the exact image that appears is this:

Walking home at the end of the day, I felt shaken up. It struck me that I've become so desensitized to these images, which I've seen over and over again for years, that I view them and pass them by with little thought. I remember watching them unfold the day of, transfixed to the television in my eighth grade English class, thinking this cannot possibly be real. It's been said again and again, but it does look like something out of a movie, something staged and detached from the real world.

But now with these images seared, fixed in my mind as I rifled through thousands of pages of high school history textbooks, I found myself becoming slowly 'un-desensitized'. Experiencing them as if for the first time again.

It's so easy to only see the metal, the fire, the smoke in these photographs. The non-human elements. Which is exactly why it's so important to note that this is the image selected - sometimes the only one - to represent 9/11 in textbooks. Important to recognize that for an event that has changed so many lives, there is not an image of people. But instead one of shattering glass and explosions.

It is the images we remember that define the memories we keep. By allowing this to be the image that defines 9/11 - this angry, harsh, fiery shot - we forget the sadness and broken hearts, the need to heal and rebuild that came with that day. Focusing on the anger is how we got into the mess that we're in today - the need for revenge and retaliation that led us into Afghanistan and Iraq.

By questioning the images that represent 9/11, and exploring more fully the background and repercussions of the attack, we can begin to take back our memories.

Afghanistan

Today’s war in Afghanistan finds its roots deep within the now-yellowing pages of dense tomes of history. From conflict with British Imperialists to Afghani embroilment in Cold War conflict, the country has known little peace throughout its existence.  President Obama’s recent commitment to expand US troop levels in the region has sent a clear message that war is hardly gone in this mountainous graveyard of empires.

The photographs of Endless War depict the tragic human consequence of the region’s eternal conflict.  Ranging from deeply personal to tragically visceral, the works of Seamus Murphy, Benjamin Lowy, Balazs Gardi, Stephanie Sinclair, and Alexandra Boulat highlight the many facets of a lengthy conflict.  Complex and moving both as photographs and as testaments to the missions of VII and Tufts’ Institute for Global Leadership, these images provide a comprehensive and honest view of the ongoing war.

The following timeline seeks to provide a historical and cultural context through which we can better understand the powerful content of the work presented in “Questions Without Answers.”  With the understanding that these deeply moving images will remain with viewers as they leave the gallery space, we have also included a series of resources that may be explored after departing the exhibition. 

TIMELINE

Soviet intervention and Taliban Emergence 

1979
A power struggle between leftist leaders Hafizullah Amin and Nur Mohammed Taraki in Kabul leads to revolts in the countryside.  Amin is victorious, but the Afghan army faces collapse. The Soviet Union finally sends in troops to help remove Amin, who is executed.

1980
Babrak Karmal, leader of the People's Democratic Party Parcham faction, is installed as ruler, backed by Soviet troops. Anti-regime resistance intensifies with various mujahedeen groups fighting Soviet forces. US, Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia supply money and arms.  

1986
US begins supplying mujahedeen with Stinger missiles, enabling them to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. Babrak Karmal is replaced by Najibullah as head of Soviet-backed regime.

1988
Afghanistan, USSR, the US and Pakistan sign peace accords and Soviet Union begins pulling out troops.

1996
The Taliban seize control of Kabul and introduce a hard-line version of Islam, banning women from work, and introducing Islamic punishments, which include stoning to death and amputations. Rabbani flees to join anti-Taliban northern alliance.

1998
US launches missile strikes at suspected bases of militant Osama bin Laden, accused of bombing US embassies in Africa.  

1999
UN imposes an air embargo and financial sanctions to force Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial.  

2001 January
UN imposes further sanctions on the Taliban to force them to hand over Osama bin Laden.

2001 October
The US and Britain launch air strikes against Afghanistan after Taliban refuse to hand over Osama bin Laden, held responsible for the September 11 attacks on America.

2001 November
Opposition forces seize Mazar-e Sharif and within days march into Kabul and other key cities as the Taliban flee to the mountainous Tora Bora region. Taleban falls

2001 5 December
Afghan groups agree to a deal in Germany for interim government.

2001 22 December
Pashtun royalist Hamid Karzai is sworn in as head of a 30-member interim power-sharing government.

2002 May
Allied forces continue their military campaign to find remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the south-east, but US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares major combat over.

2002 June
The Loya Jirga, or grand council, elects Hamid Karzai as interim head of state. Karzai picks members of his administration which is to serve until 2004.

2002 December
President Karzai and Pakistani, Turkmen leaders sign deal to build gas pipeline through Afghanistan, carrying Turkmen gas to Pakistan.

2003 August
NATO takes control of security in Kabul, its first-ever operational commitment outside Europe.  New constitution, New Parliament, and NATO Takeover

2004 January
The Grand council - or Loya Jirga - adopts new constitution which provides for strong presidency and sets elections for the following year.

2004 March
Afghanistan secures $8.2B in aid over three years.

2004 October-November
Presidential elections: Hamid Karzai is declared the winner, with 55% of the vote. He is sworn in, amid tight security, in December.

2005 September
First parliamentary and provincial elections in more than 30 years.

2005 December
US officials say they will reduce troop levels from about 18,000 to 16,000 in early 2006. 

2006 July onwards
NATO troops take over the leadership of military operations in the south. Fierce fighting ensues as the forces try to extend government control in areas where Taliban influence is strong.  

2006 October
NATO assumes responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan, taking command in the east from a US-led coalition force.

Taliban Resurgence 

2007
Taliban attacks increase six fold as fighters regain territory and lost ground.

2007 May
Afghan and Pakistani troops clash on the border in the worst violence in decades in a simmering border dispute.

2007 August
Afghani opium production thrives.  A UN report indicates that 93% of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan.

2008 February
Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, is pulled out of Afghanistan after serving 10 weeks in action in Helmand province.  Troop numbers boosted and a New US Approach 

2008 September
President Bush sends an extra 4,500 US troops to Afghanistan, in a move he described as a "quiet surge".

2008 November
Taliban militants reject an offer of peace talks from President Karzai, saying there can be no negotiations until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.  

2009 March
President Barack Obama unveils a new US strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to combat what he calls an increasingly perilous situation. An extra 4,000 US personnel will train and bolster the Afghan army and police, and there will also be support for civilian development. 

2009 May
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates replaces commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen David McKiernan, with Gen Stanley McChrystal, saying the battle against the Taliban needs "new thinking".

2009 July
US army launches major offensive against the Taliban's heartland in southern Helmand province, involving about 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan soldiers.

Elections

2009 August
Presidential and provincial elections are held, but are marred by widespread Taliban attacks, patchy turnout and claims of serious fraud.

2009 November
Hamid Karzai is sworn in for a second term as president after his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, withdraws from the election before a run-off is conducted.

2009 December
President Barack Obama decides to boost US troop numbers in Afghanistan by 30,000, bringing total to 100,000. He also says the United States will begin withdrawing its forces by 2011. An Al-Qaeda double agent kills seven CIA agents in a suicide attack on a US base in Khost, in what is the most lethal attack on US intelligence officials since the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut.  

This timeline, compiled by Benjamin Ross, is adapted from CNN’s “Year-by-year highlights of war in Afghanistan” and the BBC’s “Afghanistan – Timeline.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/afghanistan.war.timeline/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1162108.stm 

RESOURCES
 
“Afghanistan and the War on Terror” Interactive Map
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/asia/afghanistan/map_flash.html
This map, produced by the PBS News Hour, shows geographic and ethnic divisions within the country and explains how each has played a role in the ongoing “War on Terror.” 
 
“The Taliban’s Opium War” by Jon Lee Anderson
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/09/070709fa_fact_anderson?currentPage=1
This piece, first published in The New Yorker magazine in July of 2007, lays out in thorough detail the difficulties and setbacks posed by thriving opium poppy growth in rural Afghanistan.  Anderson delves deep into the US effort to eradicate Afghan opium production and describes in harrowing detail his experiences in the Uruzgan province. 

Operation Enduring Freedom Casualties
http://icasualties.org/oef/
iCasualties.org keeps track of U.S. fatalities in major conflicts.  This page, dedicated to “Operation Enduring Freedom,” shows all US fatalities by year since 2001, IED deaths, and coalition deaths.

Afghanistan: On the Brink
By Ahmed Rashid
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19098
This article in the New York Review of Books provides a unique an insightful view on the contemporary conflict.

Links to VII Photo Essays:

Iraq War Overview:

On March 19th, 2003, US President George W. Bush ordered missiles fired at a bunker Bagdad under the pretense of Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, beginning a seven year American occupation of the country.  The initial invasion unleashed a wave of celebration, then chaos, looting, violence, and ultimately a Sunni-led insurgency against the Shiite majority.    In February 2006, the bombing of the Askariya Mosque in Samarra, one of the most revered Shiite shrines, set off a convulsion of sectarian violence against both Sunnis and Shiites that amounted to a civil war, upping the body count to 100 civilians per day.  In 2007, General David H. Petraeus and President Bush responded to deteriorating conditions by increasing troop levels to 168,000. 

The destabilizing effects of the Iraq war reached across the Middle East, emboldening majority Shiite Iran and alarming Sunni Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, as well as the international community.  The persistent outpouring of Iraqi refugees continued to strain the Middle East, with an estimated 2 million refugees fleeing to Jordan alone. As of 2009, an estimated 100,000 civilians and 4,287 American military personnel have died due to the conflict.  After six years of war, American forces withdrew from Iraqi cities, meeting a deadline set for their withdrawal under an agreement that took effect Jan. 1, 2009. Declaring a national holiday to mark the occasion, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki positioned himself as a proud leader of a country independent at last, looking ahead to the next milestone of parliamentary elections in March 2010.  The Obama administration plans to withdraw all combat troops by December 2011. 

Links to VII Photo Essays:

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