title: Crusades

text: The Egyptians were unprepared for the large number of prisoners taken, comprising most of Louis' force. The infirm were executed immediately and several hundred were decapitated daily. Louis and his commanders were moved to Mansurah, and negotiations for their release commenced. The terms agreed to were harsh. Louis was to ransom himself by the surrender of Damietta and his army by the payment of a million bezants (later reduced to 800,000). Latin patriarch Robert of Nantes went under safe-conduct to complete the arrangements for the ransom. Arriving in Cairo, he found Turanshah dead, murdered in a coup instigated by his stepmother Shajar al-Durr. On 6 May, Geoffrey of Sergines handed Damietta over to the Moslem vanguard. Many wounded soldiers had been left behind at Damietta, and contrary to their promise, the Muslims massacred them all. In 1251, the Shepherds' Crusade, a popular crusade formed in 1251, with the objective to free Louis, engulfed France. After his release, Louis went to Acre where he remained until 1254. This is regarded as the end of the Seventh Crusade.


title: Crusades

text: After the defeat of the Crusaders in Egypt, Louis remained in Syria until 1254 to consolidate the crusader states. A brutal power struggle developed in Egypt between various Mamluk leaders and the remaining weak Ayyubid rulers. The threat presented by an invasion by the Mongols led to one of the competing Mamluk leaders, Qutuz, seizing the sultanate in 1259 and uniting with another faction led by Baibars to defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut. The Mamluks then quickly gained control of Damascus and Aleppo before Qutuz was assassinated and Baibers assumed control.


title: Crusades

text: Between 1265 and 1271, Baibars drove the Franks to a few small coastal outposts. Baibars had three key objectives: to prevent an alliance between the Latins and the Mongols, to cause dissension among the Mongols (particularly between the Golden Horde and the Persian Ilkhanate), and to maintain access to a supply of slave recruits from the Russian steppes. He supported Manfred of Sicily's failed resistance to the attack of Charles and the papacy. Dissension in the crusader states led to conflicts such as the War of Saint Sabas. Venice drove the Genoese from Acre to Tyre where they continued to trade with Egypt. Indeed, Baibars negotiated free passage for the Genoese with MichaelVIII Palaiologos, Emperor of Nicaea, the newly restored ruler of Constantinople. In 1270 Charles turned his brother King LouisIX's crusade, known as the Eighth Crusade, to his own advantage by persuading him to attack Tunis. The crusader army was devastated by disease, and Louis himself died at Tunis on 25August. The fleet returned to France. Prince Edward, the future king of England, and a small retinue arrived too late for the conflict but continued to the Holy Land in what is known as Lord Edward's Crusade. Edward survived an assassination attempt, negotiated a ten-year truce, and then returned to manage his affairs in England. This ended the last significant crusading effort in the eastern Mediterranean.


title: Crusades

text: The years 1272–1302 include numerous conflicts throughout the Levant as well as the Mediterranean and Western European regions, and many crusades were proposed to free the Holy Land from Mamluk control. These include ones of Gregory X, Charles I of Anjou and Nicholas IV, none of which came to fruition. The major players fighting the Muslims included the kings of England and France, the kingdoms of Cyprus and Sicily, the three Military Orders and Mongol Ilkhanate. The end of Western European presence in the Holy Land was sealed with the fall of Tripoli and their subsequent defeat at the siege of Acre in 1291. The Christian forces managed to survive until the final fall of Ruad in 1302.


title: Crusades

text: The Holy Land would no longer be the focus of the West even though various crusades were proposed in the early years of the fourteenth century. The Knights Hospitaller would conquer Rhodes from Byzantium, making it the center of their activity for a hundred years. The Knights Templar, the elite fighting force in the kingdom, would be disbanded and its knights imprisoned or executed. The Mongols converted to Islam, but disintegrated as a fighting force. The Mamluk sultanate would continue for another century. The Crusades to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land were over.


title: Crusades

text: The military expeditions undertaken by European Christians in the 11th, 12th, and 13thcenturies to recover the Holy Land from Muslims provided a template for warfare in other areas that also interested the Latin Church. These included the 12th and 13thcentury conquest of Muslim Al-Andalus by Spanish Christian kingdoms; 12th to 15thcentury German Northern Crusades expansion into the pagan Baltic region; the suppression of non-conformity, particularly in Languedoc during what has become called the Albigensian Crusade and for the Papacy's temporal advantage in Italy and Germany that are now known as political crusades. In the 13th and 14th centuries there were also unsanctioned, but related popular uprisings to recover Jerusalem known variously as Shepherds' or Children's crusades.


title: Crusades

text: Urban II equated the crusades for Jerusalem with the ongoing Catholic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula and crusades were preached in 1114 and 1118, but it was Pope Callixtus II who proposed dual fronts in Spain and the Middle East in 1122. In the spring of 1147, Eugene authorized the expansion of his mission into the Iberian peninsula, equating these campaigns against the Moors with the rest of the Second Crusade. The successful siege of Lisbon, from 1 July to 25 October 1147, was followed by the six-month siege of Tortosa, ending on 30 December 1148 with a defeat for the Moors. In the north, some Germans were reluctant to fight in the Holy Land while the pagan Wends were a more immediate problem. The resulting Wendish Crusade of 1147 was partially successful but failed to convert the pagans to Christianity. By the time of the Second Crusade the three Spanish kingdoms were powerful enough to conquer Islamic territoryCastile, Aragon, and Portugal. In 1212 the Spanish were victorious at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa with the support of foreign fighters responding to the preaching of Innocent III. Many of these deserted because of the Spanish tolerance of the defeated Muslims, for whom the Reconquista was a war of domination rather than extermination. In contrast the Christians formerly living under Muslim rule called Mozarabs had the Roman Rite relentlessly imposed on them and were absorbed into mainstream Catholicism. Al-Andalus, Islamic Spain, was completely suppressed in 1492 when the Emirate of Granada surrendered.


title: Crusades

text: In 1147, Pope Eugene III extended Calixtus's idea by authorising a crusade on the German north-eastern frontier against the pagan Wends from what was primarily economic conflict. From the early 13thcentury, there was significant involvement of military orders, such as the Livonian Brothers of the Sword and the Order of Dobrzyń. The Teutonic Knights diverted efforts from the Holy Land, absorbed these orders and established the State of the Teutonic Order. This evolved the Duchy of Prussia and Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in 1525 and 1562, respectively.


title: Crusades

text: By the beginning of the 13thcentury Papal reticence in applying crusades against the papacy's political opponents and those considered heretics. Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against Catharism that failed to suppress the heresy itself but ruined the culture the Languedoc. This set a precedent that was followed in 1212 with pressure exerted on the city of Milan for tolerating Catharism, in 1234 against the Stedinger peasants of north-western Germany, in 1234 and 1241 Hungarian crusades against Bosnian heretics. The historian Norman Housley notes the connection between heterodoxy and anti-papalism in Italy. Indulgence was offered to anti-heretical groups such as the Militia of Jesus Christ and the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Innocent III declared the first political crusade against Frederick II's regent, Markward von Annweiler, and when Frederick later threatened Rome in 1240, Gregory IX used crusading terminology to raise support against him. On Frederick II's death the focus moved to Sicily. In 1263, Pope Urban IV offered crusading indulgences to Charles of Anjou in return for Sicily's conquest. However, these wars had no clear objectives or limitations, making them unsuitable for crusading. The 1281 election of a French pope, MartinIV, brought the power of the papacy behind Charles. Charles's preparations for a crusade against Constantinople were foiled by the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, who instigated an uprising called the Sicilian Vespers. Instead, Peter III of Aragon was proclaimed king of Sicily, despite his excommunication and an unsuccessful Aragonese Crusade. Political crusading continued against Venice over Ferrara; Louis IV, King of Germany when he marched to Rome for his imperial coronation; and the free companies of mercenaries.


title: Crusades

text: The Latin states established were a fragile patchwork of petty realms threatened by Byzantine successor statesthe Despotate of Epirus, the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond. Thessaloniki fell to Epirus in 1224, and Constantinople to Nicaea in 1261. Achaea and Athens survived under the French after the Treaty of Viterbo. The Venetians endured a long-standing conflict with the Ottoman Empire until the final possessions were lost in the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War in the 18thcentury. This period of Greek history is known as the "Frankokratia" or "Latinokratia" ("Frankish or Latin rule") and designates a period when western European Catholics ruled Orthodox Byzantine Greeks.


title: Crusades

text: The threat of the expanding Ottoman Empire prompted further campaigns. In 1389, the Ottomans defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, won control of the Balkans from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth, in 1396 defeated French crusaders and King Sigismund of Hungary at the Nicopolis, in 1444 destroyed a crusading Polish and Hungarian force at Varna, four years later again defeated the Hungarians at Kosovo and in 1453 captured Constantinople. The 16thcentury saw growing rapprochement. The Habsburgs, French, Spanish and Venetians and Ottomans all signed treaties. Francis I of France allied with all quarters, including from German Protestant princes and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.


title: Crusades

text: Anti-Christian crusading declined in the 15thcentury, the exceptions were the six failed crusades against the religiously radical Hussites in Bohemia and attacks on the Waldensians in Savoy. Crusading became a financial exercise; precedence was given to the commercial and political objectives. The military threat presented by the Ottoman Turks diminished, making anti-Ottoman crusading obsolete in 1699 with the final Holy League.


title: Crusades

text: The First Crusade was an unexpected event for contemporary chroniclers, but historical analysis demonstrates it had its roots in developments earlier in the 11thcentury. Clerics and laity increasingly recognised Jerusalem as worthy of penitential pilgrimage. The desire of Christians for a more effective church was evident in increased piety. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land expanded after safer routes through Hungary developed from 1000. There was an increasingly articulate piety within the knighthood and the developing devotional and penitential practises of the aristocracy created a fertile ground for crusading appeals. The papacy's decline in power and influence had left it as little more than a localised bishopric, but its assertion grew under the influence of the Gregorian Reform in the period from the 1050s until the 1080s. The doctrine of papal supremacy conflicted with the view of the Eastern church that considered the pope as only one of the five patriarchs of the Christian Church, alongside the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem. In 1054 differences in custom, creed, and practice spurred Pope Leo IX to send a delegation to the Patriarch of Constantinople, which ended in mutual excommunication and an East–West Schism.


title: Crusades

text: The military orders were forms of a religious order first established early in the twelfth century with the function of defending Christians, as well as observing monastic vows. The Knights Hospitaller had a medical mission in Jerusalem since before the First Crusade, later becoming a formidable military force supporting the crusades in the Holy Land and Mediterranean. The Knights Templar were founded in 1119 by a band of knights who dedicated themselves to protecting pilgrims enroute to Jerusalem. The Teutonic Knights were formed in 1190 to protect pilgrims in both the Holy Land and Baltic region.


title: Crusades

text: The Hospitallers and the Templars became supranational organisations as papal support led to rich donations of land and revenue across Europe. This, in turn, led to a steady flow of new recruits and the wealth to maintain multiple fortifications in the crusader states. In time, they developed into autonomous powers in the region. After the fall of Acre the Hospitallers relocated to Cyprus, then ruled Rhodes until the island was taken by the Ottomans in 1522. While there was talk of merging the Templars and Hospitallers in by Clement V, but ultimately the Templars were charged with heresy and disbanded. The Teutonic Knights supported the later Prussian campaigns into the fifteenth century.


title: Crusades

text: According to the historian Joshua Prawer no major European poet, theologian, scholar or historian settled in the crusader states. Some went on pilgrimage, and this is seen in new imagery and ideas in western poetry. Although they did not migrate east themselves, their output often encouraged others to journey there on pilgrimage.


title: Crusades

text: Historians consider the crusader military architecture of the Middle East to demonstrate a synthesis of the European, Byzantine and Muslim traditions and to be the most original and impressive artistic achievement of the crusades. Castles were a tangible symbol of the dominance of a Latin Christian minority over a largely hostile majority population. They also acted as centres of administration. Modern historiography rejects the 19th-century consensus that Westerners learnt the basis of military architecture from the Near East, as Europe had already experienced rapid development in defensive technology before the First Crusade. Direct contact with Arab fortifications originally constructed by the Byzantines did influence developments in the east, but the lack of documentary evidence means that it remains difficult to differentiate between the importance of this design culture and the constraints of situation. The latter led to the inclusion of oriental design features such as large water reservoirs and the exclusion of occidental features such as moats.


title: Crusades

text: Typically, crusader church design was in the French Romanesque style. This can be seen in the 12th-century rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre. It retained some of the Byzantine details, but new arches and chapels were built to northern French, Aquitanian, and Provençal patterns. There is little trace of any surviving indigenous influence in sculpture, although in the Holy Sepulchre the column capitals of the south facade follow classical Syrian patterns.


title: Crusades

text: In contrast to architecture and sculpture, it is in the area of visual culture that the assimilated nature of the society was demonstrated. Throughout the 12thand 13thcenturies the influence of indigenous artists was demonstrated in the decoration of shrines, paintings and the production of illuminated manuscripts. Frankish practitioners borrowed methods from the Byzantines and indigenous artists and iconographical practice leading to a cultural synthesis, illustrated by the Church of the Nativity. Wall mosaics were unknown in the west but in widespread use in the crusader states. Whether this was by indigenous craftsmen or learnt by Frankish ones is unknown, but a distinctive original artistic style evolved.


title: Crusades

text: Manuscripts were produced and illustrated in workshops housing Italian, French, English and local craftsmen leading to a cross-fertilisation of ideas and techniques. An example of this is the Melisende Psalter, created by several hands in a workshop attached to the Holy Sepulchre. This style could have both reflected and influenced the taste of patrons of the arts. But what is seen is an increase in stylised, Byzantine-influenced content. This extended to the production of icons, unknown at the time to the Franks, sometimes in a Frankish style and even of western saints. This is seen as the origin of Italian panel painting. While it is difficult to track illumination of manuscripts and castle design back to their origins, textual sources are simpler. The translations made in Antioch are notable, but they are considered of secondary importance to the works emanating from Muslim Spain and from the hybrid culture of Sicily.


title: Crusades

text: Until the requirement was abolished by InnocentIII, married men needed to obtain their wives' consent before taking the cross, which was not always readily forthcoming. Muslim and Byzantine observers viewed with disdain the many women who joined the armed pilgrimages, including female fighters. Western chroniclers indicated that female crusaders were wives, merchants, servants and sex workers. Attempts were made to control the women's behaviour in ordinances of 1147 and 1190. Aristocratic women had a significant impact: Ida of Formbach-Ratelnberg led her own force in 1101; Eleanor of Aquitaine conducted her own political strategy; and Margaret of Provence negotiated her husband LouisIX's ransom with an opposing womanthe Egyptian sultana Shajar al-Durr. Misogyny meant that there was male disapproval; chroniclers tell of immorality and Jerome of Prague blamed the failure of the Second Crusade on the presence of women. Even though they often promoted crusading, preachers would typecast them as obstructing recruitment, despite their donations, legacies and vow redemptions. The wives of crusaders shared their plenary indulgences.


title: Crusades

text: Crusade finance and taxation left a legacy of social, financial, and legal institutions. Property became available while coinage and precious materials circulated more readily within Europe. Crusading expeditions created immense demands for food supplies, weapons, and shipping that benefited merchants and artisans. Levies for crusades contributed to the development of centralised financial administrations and the growth of papal and royal taxation. This aided development of representative bodies whose consent was required for many forms of taxation. The Crusades strengthened exchanges between oriental and occidental economic spheres. The transport of pilgrims and crusaders notably benefitted Italian maritime cities, such as the trio of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa. Having obtained commercial privileges in the fortified places of Syria, they became the favoured intermediaries for trade in goods such as silk, spices, as well as other raw alimentary goods and mineral products. Trade with the Muslim world was thus extended beyond existing limits. Merchants were further advantaged by technological improvements, and long-distance trade as a whole expanded. The increased volume of goods being traded through ports of the Latin Levant and the Muslim world made this the cornerstone of a wider middle-eastern economy, as manifested in important cities along the trade routes, such as Aleppo, Damascus and Acre. It became increasingly common for European merchants to venture further east, and business was conducted fairly despite religious differences, and continued even in times of political and military tensions.


title: Crusades

text: The Crusades created national mythologies, tales of heroism, and a few place names. Historical parallelism and the tradition of drawing inspiration from the Middle Ages have become keystones of political Islam encouraging ideas of a modern jihad and a centuries-long struggle against Christian states, while secular Arab nationalism highlights the role of western imperialism. Modern Muslim thinkers, politicians and historians have drawn parallels between the crusades and political developments such as the establishment of Israel in 1948. Right-wing circles in the western world have drawn opposing parallels, considering Christianity to be under an Islamic religious and demographic threat that is analogous to the situation at the time of the crusades. Crusader symbols and anti-Islamic rhetoric are presented as an appropriate response. These symbols and rhetoric are used to provide a religious justification and inspiration for a struggle against a religious enemy.


title: Crusades

text: The historiography of the Crusades is concerned with their "history of the histories" during the Crusader period. The subject is a complex one, with overviews provided in "Select Bibliography of the Crusades, Modern Historiography", and "Crusades (Bibliography and Sources"). The histories describing the Crusades are broadly of three types: (1) The primary sources of the Crusades, which include works written in the medieval period, generally by participants in the Crusade or written contemporaneously with the event, letters and documents in archives, and archaeological studies; (2) secondary sources, beginning with early consolidated works in the 16th century and continuing to modern times; and (3) tertiary sources, primarily encyclopedias, bibliographies and genealogies.


title: Crusades

text: Primary sources. The primary sources for the Crusades are generally presented in the individual articles on each Crusade and summarized in the list of sources for the Crusades. For the First Crusade, the original Latin chronicles, including the "Gesta Francorum", works by Albert of Aachen and Fulcher of Chartres, "The Alexiad" by Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, the "Complete Work of History" by Muslim historian Ali ibn al-Athir, and the "Chronicle" of Armenian historian Matthew of Edessa, provide for a starting point for the study of the Crusades' historiography. Many of these and related texts are found in the collections "Recueil des historiens des croisades" (RHC) and Crusade Texts in Translation. The work of William of Tyre, "Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum," and its continuations by later historians complete the foundational work of the traditional Crusade. Some of these works also provide insight into the later Crusades and Crusader states. Other works of note include:


title: Crusades

text: After the fall of Acre, the crusades continued in through the 16th century. Principal references on this subject are the Wisconsin Collaborative History of the Crusades and Norman Housley's "The Later Crusades, 1274-1580: From Lyons to Alcazar." Complete bibliographies are also given in these works.


title: Crusades

text: Secondary sources. The secondary sources of the Crusades began in the 16th century, with the first use of the term "crusades" was by 17th century French historian Louis Maimbourg in his "Histoire des Croisades pour la délivrance de la Terre Sainte." Notable works of the 18th century include Voltaire's "Histoire des Croisades", and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, excerpted as "The Crusades, A.D. 1095–1261" and published in 1870. This edition also includes an essay on chivalry by Sir Walter Scott, whose works helped popularize the Crusades. Early in the 19th century, the monumental "Histoire des Croisades" was published by the French historian Joseph François Michaud, a major new narrative based on original sources.


title: Crusades

text: These histories have provided evolving views of the Crusades as discussed in detail in the Historiography writeup in Crusading movement. Modern works that serve as secondary source material are listed in the Bibliography section below and need no further discussion here.


title: Crusades

text: Tertiary sources. Three such works are: Louis Bréhier's multiple works on the Crusades in the Catholic Encyclopedia; the works of Ernest Barker in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition), later expanded into a separate publication; and "The Crusades: An Encyclopedia" (2006), edited by historian Alan V. Murray.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at US$30.1 trillion as of February 2018. The average daily trading value was approximately 169 billion in 2013. The NYSE trading floor is at the New York Stock Exchange Building on 11 Wall Street and 18 Broad Street and is a National Historic Landmark. An additional trading room, at 30 Broad Street, was closed in February 2007.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The NYSE is owned by Intercontinental Exchange, an American holding company that it also lists (). Previously, it was part of NYSE Euronext (NYX), which was formed by the NYSE's 2007 merger with Euronext.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The earliest recorded organization of securities trading in New York among brokers directly dealing with each other can be traced to the Buttonwood Agreement. Previously, securities exchange had been intermediated by the auctioneers, who also conducted more mundane auctions of commodities such as wheat and tobacco. On May 17, 1792, twenty-four brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement, which set a floor commission rate charged to clients and bound the signers to give preference to the other signers in securities sales. The earliest securities traded were mostly governmental securities such as War Bonds from the Revolutionary War and First Bank of the United States stock, although Bank of New York stock was a non-governmental security traded in the early days. The Bank of North America, along with the First Bank of the United States and the Bank of New York, were the first shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In 1817, the stockbrokers of New York, operating under the Buttonwood Agreement, instituted new reforms and reorganized. After sending a delegation to Philadelphia to observe the organization of their board of brokers, restrictions on manipulative trading were adopted, as well as formal organs of governance. After re-forming as the New York Stock and Exchange Board, the broker organization began renting out space exclusively for securities trading, which previously had been taking place at the Tontine Coffee House. Several locations were used between 1817 and 1865, when the present location was adopted.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The invention of the electrical telegraph consolidated markets and New York's market rose to dominance over Philadelphia after weathering some market panics better than other alternatives. The Open Board of Stock Brokers was established in 1864 as a competitor to the NYSE. With 354 members, the Open Board of Stock Brokers rivaled the NYSE in membership (which had 533) "because it used a more modern, continuous trading system superior to the NYSE’s twice-daily call sessions". The Open Board of Stock Brokers merged with the NYSE in 1869. Robert Wright of "Bloomberg" writes that the merger increased the NYSE's members as well as trading volume, as "several dozen regional exchanges were also competing with the NYSE for customers. Buyers, sellers and dealers all wanted to complete transactions as quickly and cheaply as technologically possible and that meant finding the markets with the most trading, or the greatest liquidity in today’s parlance. Minimizing competition was essential to keep a large number of orders flowing, and the merger helped the NYSE maintain its reputation for providing superior liquidity." The Civil War greatly stimulated speculative securities trading in New York. By 1869, membership had to be capped, and has been sporadically increased since. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw rapid growth in securities trading.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Securities trade in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was prone to panics and crashes. Government regulation of securities trading was eventually seen as necessary, with arguably the most dramatic changes occurring in the 1930s after a major stock market crash precipitated the Great Depression. The NYSE has also imposed additional rules in response to shareholder protection controls, e.g. in 2012, the NYSE imposed rules restricting brokers from voting uninstructed shares.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The Stock Exchange Luncheon Club was situated on the seventh floor from 1898 until its closure in 2006.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On April 21, 2005, the NYSE announced its plans to merge with Archipelago in a deal intended to reorganize the NYSE as a publicly traded company. NYSE's governing board voted to merge with rival Archipelago on December 6, 2005, and became a for-profit, public company. It began trading under the name NYSE Group on March 8, 2006. On April 4, 2007, the NYSE Group completed its merger with Euronext, the European combined stock market, thus forming NYSE Euronext, the first transatlantic stock exchange.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Wall Street is the leading U.S. money center for international financial activities and the foremost U.S. location for the conduct of wholesale financial services. "It comprises a matrix of wholesale financial sectors, financial markets, financial institutions, and financial industry firms" (Robert, 2002). The principal sectors are securities industry, commercial banking, asset management, and insurance.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Prior to the acquisition of NYSE Euronext by the ICE in 2013, Marsh Carter was the Chairman of the NYSE and the CEO was Duncan Niederauer. Currently, the chairman is Jeffrey Sprecher. In 2016, NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. earned $419 million in listings-related revenues.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The exchange was closed shortly after the beginning of World War I (July 31, 1914), but it partially re-opened on November 28 of that year in order to help the war effort by trading bonds, and completely reopened for stock trading in mid-December.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On September 16, 1920, the Wall Street bombing occurred outside the building, killing thirty-eight people and injuring hundreds more.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The Black Thursday crash of the Exchange on October 24, 1929, and the sell-off panic which started on Black Tuesday, October 29, are often blamed for precipitating the Great Depression. In an effort to restore investor confidence, the Exchange unveiled a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public on October 31, 1938.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On October 1, 1934, the exchange was registered as a national securities exchange with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with a president and a thirty-three-member board. On February 18, 1971, the non-profit corporation was formed, and the number of board members was reduced to twenty-five.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: One of Abbie Hoffman's well-known publicity stunts took place in 1967, when he led members of the Yippie movement to the Exchange's gallery. The provocateurs hurled fistfuls of dollars toward the trading floor below. Some traders booed, and some laughed and waved. Three months later the stock exchange enclosed the gallery with bulletproof glass. Hoffman wrote a decade later, "We didn't call the press; at that time we really had no notion of anything called a media event."


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped 508 points, a 22.6% loss in a single day, the second-biggest one-day drop the exchange had experienced. Black Monday was followed by Terrible Tuesday, a day in which the Exchange's systems did not perform well and some people had difficulty completing their trades.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Subsequently, there was another major drop for the Dow on October 13, 1989—the Mini-Crash of 1989. The crash was apparently caused by a reaction to a news story of a $6.75 billion leveraged buyout deal for UAL Corporation, the parent company of United Airlines, which broke down. When the UAL deal fell through, it helped trigger the collapse of the junk bond market causing the Dow to fall 190.58 points, or 6.91 percent.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Similarly, there was a panic in the financial world during the year of 1997; the Asian Financial Crisis. Like the fall of many foreign markets, the Dow suffered a 7.18% drop in value (554.26 points) on October 27, 1997, in what later became known as the 1997 Mini-Crash but from which the DJIA recovered quickly. This was the first time that the "circuit breaker" rule had operated.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On January 26, 2000, an altercation during filming of the music video for Rage Against the Machine's "Sleep Now in the Fire", directed by Michael Moore, caused the doors of the exchange to be closed and the band to be escorted from the site by security after the members attempted to gain entry into the exchange.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the NYSE was closed for four trading sessions, resuming on Monday, September 17, one of the rare times the NYSE was closed for more than one session and only the third time since March 1933. On the first day, the NYSE suffered a 7.1% drop in value (684 points); after a week, it dropped by 14% (1,370 points). An estimated $1.4 trillion was lost within five days of trading. The NYSE was only 5 blocks from Ground Zero.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its largest intraday percentage drop since the crash on October 19, 1987, with a 998-point loss later being called the 2010 Flash Crash (as the drop occurred in minutes before rebounding). The SEC and CFTC published a report on the event, although it did not come to a conclusion as to the cause. The regulators found no evidence that the fall was caused by erroneous ("fat finger") orders.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On October 29, 2012, the stock exchange was shut down for two days due to Hurricane Sandy. The last time the stock exchange was closed due to weather for a full two days was on March 12 and 13, 1888.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On May 1, 2014, the stock exchange was fined $4.5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that it had violated market rules.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On August 14, 2014, Berkshire Hathaway's A Class shares, the highest priced shares on the NYSE, hit $200,000 a share for the first time.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On July 8, 2015, technical issues affected the stock exchange, halting trading at 11:32 am ET. The NYSE reassured stock traders that the outage was "not a result of a cyber breach", and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that there was "no sign of malicious activity". Trading eventually resumed at 3:10 pm ET the same day.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On May 25, 2018, Stacey Cunningham, the NYSE's chief operating officer, became the Big Board's 67th president, succeeding Thomas Farley. She is the first female leader in the exchange's 226-year history.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In March 2020, the NYSE announced plans to temporarily move to all-electronic trading on March 23, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with the PHLX and the BSE, the NYSE reopened on May 26, 2020.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The main New York Stock Exchange Building, built in 1903, is at 18 Broad Street, between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, and was designed in the Beaux Arts style by George B. Post. The adjacent structure at 11 Wall Street, completed in 1922, was designed in a similar style by Trowbridge & Livingston. The buildings were both designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978. 18 Broad Street is also a New York City designated landmark.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The New York Stock Exchange is closed on New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. When those holidays occur on a weekend, the holiday is observed on the closest weekday. In addition, the Stock Exchange closes early on the day before Independence Day, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve. The NYSE averages about 253 trading days per year.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The New York Stock Exchange (sometimes referred to as "The Big Board") provides a means for buyers and sellers to trade shares of stock in companies registered for public trading. The NYSE is open for trading Monday through Friday from 9:30 am – 4:00 pm ET, with the exception of holidays declared by the Exchange in advance.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The NYSE trades in a continuous auction format, where traders can execute stock transactions on behalf of investors. They will gather around the appropriate post where a specialist broker, who is employed by a NYSE member firm (that is, they are not an employee of the New York Stock Exchange), acts as an auctioneer in an open outcry auction market environment to bring buyers and sellers together and to manage the actual auction. They do on occasion (approximately 10% of the time) facilitate the trades by committing their own capital and as a matter of course disseminate information to the crowd that helps to bring buyers and sellers together. The auction process moved toward automation in 1995 through the use of wireless handheld computers (HHC). The system enabled traders to receive and execute orders electronically via wireless transmission. On September 25, 1995, NYSE member Michael Einersen, who designed and developed this system, executed 1000 shares of IBM through this HHC ending a 203-year process of paper transactions and ushering in an era of automated trading.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: As of January 24, 2007, all NYSE stocks can be traded via its electronic hybrid market (except for a small group of very high-priced stocks). Customers can now send orders for immediate electronic execution, or route orders to the floor for trade in the auction market. In the first three months of 2007, in excess of 82% of all order volume was delivered to the floor electronically. NYSE works with US regulators such as the SEC and CFTC to coordinate risk management measures in the electronic trading environment through the implementation of mechanisms like circuit breakers and liquidity replenishment points.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Until 2005, the right to directly trade shares on the exchange was conferred upon owners of the 1,366 "seats". The term comes from the fact that up until the 1870s NYSE members sat in chairs to trade. In 1868, the number of seats was fixed at 533, and this number was increased several times over the years. In 1953, the number of seats was set at 1,366. These seats were a sought-after commodity as they conferred the ability to directly trade stock on the NYSE, and seat holders were commonly referred to as members of the NYSE. The Barnes family is the only known lineage to have five generations of NYSE members: Winthrop H. Barnes (admitted 1894), Richard W.P. Barnes (admitted 1926), Richard S. Barnes (admitted 1951), Robert H. Barnes (admitted 1972), Derek J. Barnes (admitted 2003). Seat prices varied widely over the years, generally falling during recessions and rising during economic expansions. The most expensive inflation-adjusted seat was sold in 1929 for $625,000, which, today, would be over six million dollars. In recent times, seats have sold for as high as $4 million in the late 1990s and as low as $1 million in 2001. In 2005, seat prices shot up to $3.25 million as the exchange entered into an agreement to merge with Archipelago and became a for-profit, publicly traded company. Seat owners received $500,000 in cash per seat and 77,000 shares of the newly formed corporation. The NYSE now sells one-year licenses to trade directly on the exchange. Licenses for floor trading are available for $40,000 and a license for bond trading is available for as little as $1,000 as of 2010. Neither are resell-able, but may be transferable during a change of ownership of a corporation holding a trading license.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Following the Black Monday market crash in 1987, NYSE imposed trading curbs to reduce market volatility and massive panic sell-offs. Following the 2011 rule change, at the start of each trading day, the NYSE sets three circuit breaker levels at levels of 7% (Level 1), 13% (Level 2), and 20% (Level 3) of the average closing price of the S&P 500 for the preceding trading day. Level 1 and Level 2 declines result in a 15-minute trading halt unless they occur after 3:25 pm, when no trading halts apply. A Level 3 decline results in trading being suspended for the remainder of the day. (The biggest one-day decline in the S&P 500 since 1987 was the 11.98% drop on March 16, 2020.)


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In the mid-1960s, the NYSE Composite Index (NYSE: NYA) was created, with a base value of 50 points equal to the 1965 yearly close. This was done to reflect the value of all stocks trading at the exchange instead of just the 30 stocks included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. To raise the profile of the composite index, in 2003, the NYSE set its new base value of 5,000 points equal to the 2002 yearly close. Its close at the end of 2013 was 10,400.32.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In October 2008, NYSE Euronext completed acquisition of the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) for $260 million in stock.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On February 15, 2011, NYSE and Deutsche Börse announced their merger to form a new company, as yet unnamed, wherein Deutsche Börse shareholders would have 60% ownership of the new entity, and NYSE Euronext shareholders would have 40%.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: On February 1, 2012, the European Commission blocked the merger of NYSE with Deutsche Börse, after commissioner Joaquín Almunia stated that the merger "would have led to a near-monopoly in European financial derivatives worldwide". Instead, Deutsche Börse and NYSE would have to sell either their Eurex derivatives or LIFFE shares in order to not create a monopoly. On February 2, 2012, NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse agreed to scrap the merger.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In April 2011, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), an American futures exchange, and NASDAQ OMX Group had together made an unsolicited proposal to buy NYSE Euronext for approximately , a deal in which NASDAQ would have taken control of the stock exchanges. NYSE Euronext rejected this offer twice, but it was finally terminated after the United States Department of Justice indicated their intention to block the deal due to antitrust concerns.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In December 2012, ICE had proposed to buy NYSE Euronext in a stock swap with a valuation of $8 billion. NYSE Euronext shareholders would receive either $33.12 in cash, or $11.27 in cash and approximately a sixth of a share of ICE. Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman and CEO of ICE, will retain those positions, but four members of the NYSE board of directors will be added to the ICE board.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The NYSE's opening and closing bells mark the beginning and the end of each trading day. The opening bell is rung at 9:30 am ET to mark the start of the day's trading session. At 4 pm ET the closing bell is rung and trading for the day stops. There are bells located in each of the four main sections of the NYSE that all ring at the same time once a button is pressed. There are three buttons that control the bells, located on the control panel behind the podium which overlooks the trading floor. The main bell, which is rung at the beginning and end of the trading day, is controlled by a green button. The second button, colored orange, activates a single-stroke bell that is used to signal a moment of silence. A third, red button controls a backup bell which is used in case the main bell fails to ring.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: The signal to start and stop trading was not always a bell. The original signal was a gavel (which is still in use today along with the bell), but during the late 1800s, the NYSE decided to switch the gavel for a gong to signal the day's beginning and end. After the NYSE changed to its present location at 18 Broad Street in 1903, the gong was switched to the bell format that is currently being used.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: A common sight today is the highly publicized events in which a celebrity or executive from a corporation stands behind the NYSE podium and pushes the button that signals the bells to ring. Due to the amount of coverage that the opening/closing bells receive, many companies coordinate new product launches and other marketing-related events to start on the same day as when the company's representatives ring the bell. It was only in 1995 that the NYSE began having special guests ring the bells on a regular basis; prior to that, ringing the bells was usually the responsibility of the exchange's floor managers.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: Many of the people who ring the bell are business executives whose companies trade on the exchange. However, there have also been many famous people from outside the world of business that have rung the bell. Athletes such as Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees and Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps, entertainers such as rapper Snoop Dogg, members of ESPN’s College GameDay crew, singer and actress Liza Minnelli and members of the band Kiss, and politicians such as Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani and President of South Africa Nelson Mandela have all had the honor of ringing the bell. Two United Nations Secretaries General have also rung the bell. On April 27, 2006, Secretary-General Kofi Annan rang the opening bell to launch the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. On July 24, 2013, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rang the closing bell to celebrate the NYSE joining the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: In addition, there have been many bell-ringers who are famous for heroic deeds, such as members of the New York police and fire departments following the events of 9/11, members of the United States Armed Forces serving overseas, and participants in various charitable organizations.


title: New York Stock Exchange

text: There have also been several fictional characters that have rung the bell, including Mickey Mouse, the Pink Panther, Mr. Potato Head, the Aflac Duck, Gene and Jailbreak of The Emoji Movie, and Darth Vader.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The War in Afghanistan was an armed conflict that began when an international military coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the internationally recognized Islamic Republic three years later. The conflict ultimately 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.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Following the September 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban immediately extradite al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to the United States; the Taliban refused and the U.S. declared Operation Enduring Freedom, as part of the earlier-declared War on Terror. Afghanistan was invaded and the Taliban and its allies were soon expelled from major population centers by the U.S.-led forces, supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance; however, bin Laden relocated to neighboring Pakistan. The U.S.-led coalition remained in Afghanistan, forming a security mission (ISAF)—sanctioned by the United Nations—with the goal of creating a new democratic authority in the country that would prevent the Taliban from returning to power. A new Afghan Interim Administration was established, and international rebuilding efforts were launched. By 2003, the Taliban had reorganized under their founder, Mullah Omar, and began a widespread insurgency against the new Afghan government and coalition forces. Insurgents from the Taliban and other Islamist groups waged Asymmetric warfare. Fighting with guerrilla warfare in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, and reprisals against perceived Afghan collaborators. By 2007, large parts of Afghanistan had been retaken by the Taliban. In response, the coalition sent a major influx of troops for counter-insurgency operations, with a "clear and hold" strategy for villages and towns; this influx peaked in 2011, when roughly 140,000 foreign troops were operating under ISAF command across Afghanistan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: A U.S. covert operation using Afghanistan bases led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and NATO leaders began planning an exit strategy. On 28 December 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan and officially transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government. Unable to eliminate the Taliban through military means, coalition forces (and separately, the Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani) turned to diplomacy to end the conflict. These efforts culminated in the US–Taliban deal in February 2020, which stipulated the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2021. In exchange, the Taliban pledged to prevent any militant group from staging attacks from Afghan territory against the U.S. and its allies. However, the Afghan government was not a party to the deal and rejected its terms. Coinciding with the withdrawal of troops, the Taliban launched a broad offensive throughout the summer of 2021, successfully reestablishing their control over Afghanistan, including the capital city of Kabul on 15 August. On the same day, the last president of the Islamic Republic, Ashraf Ghani, fled the country; the Taliban declared victory and the war was formally brought to a close. By 30 August, the last American military aircraft departed from Afghanistan, ending the protracted U.S.-led military presence in the country.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Overall, the war killed an estimated 176,000–212,000+ people, including 46,319 civilians. While more than 5.7 million former refugees returned to Afghanistan after the 2001 invasion, by the time the Taliban returned to power in 2021, 2.6 million Afghans remained refugees, while another 4 million were internally displaced.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The war is named the War in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 to distinguish it from other wars, notably the Soviet–Afghan War. From a western perspective, the war is divided between 2001 and 2014 (ISAF mission), when most combat operations were performed by coalition forces, and 2015 to 2021 (RS mission), when the Afghan Armed Forces bore most of the fighting. The war was codenamed by the US as Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001 to 2014 and as Operation Freedom's Sentinel from 2015 to 2021. Alternatively, it has been called the US War in Afghanistan in certain countries. In Afghanistan itself, the war is known as simply the "War in Afghanistan" ( "Jang dar Afghanestan", "Da Afganistan Jangra").


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Taliban emerged from religious students known as the "Talib" who sought to end warlordism in Afghanistan through stricter adherence to "Sharia". On 27 September 1996, the Taliban, with military support by Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia, seized Kabul and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban imposed their fundamentalist Deobandi interpretation of Islam in areas under their control, issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. According to the United Nations (UN), the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001, many of them targeting Shia Hazaras.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: By 2001, the Taliban controlled as much as 90% of Afghanistan, with the Northern Alliance confined to the country's northeast corner. Fighting alongside Taliban forces were some 28,000–30,000 Pakistanis (usually also Pashtun) and 2,000–3,000 Al-Qaeda militants.<ref name="Ahmed Rashid/The Telegraph"></ref>


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The 9/11 Commission in the US found that under the Taliban, al-Qaeda was able to use Afghanistan as a place to train and indoctrinate fighters, import weapons, coordinate with other jihadists, and plot terrorist actions. While al-Qaeda maintained its own camps in Afghanistan, it also supported training camps of other organizations. An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 men passed through these facilities before 9/11, most of whom were sent to fight for the Taliban against the United Front. A smaller number were inducted into al-Qaeda.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: After the August 1998 United States embassy bombings were linked to bin Laden, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on militant training camps in Afghanistan. US officials pressed the Taliban to surrender bin Laden. In 1999, the international community imposed sanctions on the Taliban, calling for bin Laden to be surrendered. The Taliban repeatedly rebuffed these demands. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Special Activities Division paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama bin Laden. These teams planned several operations but did not receive the order to proceed from President Clinton. Their efforts built relationships with Afghan leaders that proved essential in the 2001 invasion.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On the morning of 11 September 2001, a total of 19 Arab men—15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia—carried out four coordinated attacks in the United States. Four commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and more than 2,000 people in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours from damage related to the crashes, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C., to target the White House, or the US Capitol. No one aboard the flights survived. The death toll among responders including firefighters and police was 836 as of 2009. Total deaths were 2,996, including the 19 hijackers.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Osama Bin Laden planned and coordinated the attacks, and the US desire to hold him accountable became the c"asus belli" for invasion. Historian Carter Malkasian writes that "seldom in history has one man so singlehandedly provoked a war." Bin Laden sought, successfully, to draw the US into an extended war similar to that fought against the Soviets. The Taliban publicly condemned the 11 September attacks. They also greatly underestimated the US's willingness to go to war. The US was mistaken in its belief that the Taliban and al-Qaeda were almost inseparable when, in fact, they had very different goals and leaders.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the United States National Security Council agreed that military action would probably have to be taken against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. However, Bush decided to issue an ultimatum to the Taliban first. President Bush issued an ultimatum to the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, "close immediately every terrorist training camp, hand over every terrorist and their supporters, and give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection." The same day, religious scholars met in Kabul, deciding that bin Laden should be surrendered, however, Mullah Omar decided that "turning over Osama would only be a disgrace for us and Islamic thought and belief would be a weakness", and that the US would continue making demands after surrendering bin Laden, who he claimed was innocent. The Taliban refused the ultimatum, saying that Osama bin Laden was protected by the traditional Pashtun laws of hospitality.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In the weeks ahead and at the beginning of the US and NATO invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban demanded evidence of bin Laden's guilt but subsequently offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country if the US stopped its bombing and provided evidence of bin Laden's guilt. A Bush administration official later stated that their demands were "not subject to negotiation" and that it was "time for the Taliban to act now." Covert US military action began soon after, and the War started officially on 7 October 2001.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The War contained two main factions: the Coalition, which included the US and its allies (eventually supporting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan); fighting against the Taliban, its allies, and its militias. Complicating the fight was Taliban splinter groups and other more radical religious groups such as al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State. These radical groups sometimes fought for the Taliban, sometimes fought for their own goals, and sometimes fought against both the Taliban and the Government.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Afghanistan is a rural country. In 2020, some 80% of its 33 million people lived in the countryside. This predisposes warfare to rural areas, and provides ample hiding spots for guerrilla fighters. The country also has harsh winters, which favors spring or summertime military offensives after winter lulls in fighting. 99.7% of Afghanistan is Muslim, which affected the ideology of both the Taliban and the Afghan government. Islam has historically allowed Afghan leaders to overcome tribal differences and conflict, and provided a sense of unity, especially against foreigners and non-believers. Centuries of foreign invasion by non-Muslims cemented the religious nature of resisting outsiders and the Afghan identity. The impact of local religious leaders ("mullahs") is important in Afghanistan, and they could influence the population as much as the government. Mullahs have traditionally been important in prescribing resistance to outsiders through calls for holy war or jihad.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Afghanistan is a largely tribal society, and this significantly influences Afghan society and politics. Tribalism is largely a source of division, unlike Islam. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising between 38% and 50% of the population. Pashtunwali, the traditional way of life for the Pashtuns, guided most tribal decision making. Tribal unity was often weak as well due to Pashtunwali's method of dealing with feuds. Traditionally, Afghan leaders have depended on tribes to keep order in rural areas because without their cooperation the state was often ineffective and weak. Afghans were more loyal to their own community and tribe, not the state, which meant that tribes would align with either the Taliban or the Government as was most beneficial.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The significant difference in power between high-tech Coalition militaries and the guerrilla Taliban led to asymmetric warfare. Owing to their roots in the anti-Soviet Mujahideen, the Taliban carried on the guerrilla tactics developed in the 1980s. The Mujihdeen operated in small cadres of 10 to 50 men, armed with a combination of outdated and (usually looted) modern weapons. The Taliban increasingly used guerrilla tactics such as suicide, car and roadside bombs (IEDs), and targeted assassinations. By 2009, IEDs had become the Taliban's weapon of choice. The Taliban also used insider attacks as the war drew on, by planting personnel in the Afghan military and police forces.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Though the US officially invaded on 7 October 2001 by launching Operation Enduring Freedom, covert operations had begun several weeks earlier. Fifteen days after the 9/11 attack, the US covertly inserted members of the CIA's Special Activities Division into Afghanistan, forming the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team. They linked up with the Northern Alliance in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. In October, 12-man Special Forces teams began arriving in Afghanistan to work with the CIA and Northern Alliance. Within a few weeks the Northern Alliance, with assistance from the US ground and air forces, captured several key cities from the Taliban. The Taliban retreated throughout the country, holding steady only in Kunduz Province, outmatched by US air support. By November, the Taliban had lost control of most of the country.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The US did not invade alone: it began with assistance from the UK, and eventually over a dozen more countries. The US and its allies drove the Taliban from power and built military bases near major cities across the country. Most al-Qaeda and Taliban were not captured, escaping to neighboring Pakistan or retreating to rural or remote mountainous regions. On 20 December 2001, the United Nations authorized an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), with a mandate to help the Afghans maintain security in Kabul and surrounding areas. Its mandate did not extend beyond the Kabul area for the first few years. Eighteen countries were contributing to the force in February 2002.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Who would lead the country became an acute political question. At the Bonn Conference in December 2001, Hamid Karzai was selected to head the Afghan Interim Administration, which after a 2002 "loya jirga" (grand assembly) in Kabul became the Afghan Transitional Administration. The agreement provided steps that would lead to democracy for the country.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Shortly after the elevation of Karzai to the president on 5 December, the Taliban may have tried to seek a conditional surrender to Karzai. There are two conflicting accounts. The first is that an agreement, possibly signed by Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, was reached wherein the Taliban would surrender in exchange for immunity. The second is that the agreement was more narrowly focused on surrendering Kandahar. Taliban sources, on the other hand, say that Omar was not part of the deal and was not going to surrender Kandahar. Whatever the case, the US vetoed any sort of negotiation, in what historian Malkasian calls "one of the greatest mistakes" of the war. Omar disappeared, leaving either for another part of Afghanistan or Pakistan. The Taliban subsequently went into hiding, or fled to Pakistan, though many gave up arms as well. Most leaders and thousands of fighters went to Pakistan. Whether the Taliban had decided on an insurgency at this time is unknown. Taliban fighters remained in hiding in the rural regions of four southern provinces: Kandahar, Zabul, Helmand and Uruzgan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: By late November, bin Laden was at a fortified training camp in Tora Bora. The battle of Tora Bora began on 6 December. CIA teams working with tribal militias followed bin Laden there and began to call in airstrikes to clear out the mountainous camp, with special forces soon arriving in support. While the tribal militia numbered 1,000, it was not fighting eagerly during Ramadan. While the CIA requested that United States Army Rangers be sent and Marines were ready to deploy, they were declined. Bin Laden was eventually able to escape at some point in December to Pakistan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The invasion was a striking military success for the Coalition. Fewer than 12 US soldiers died between October and March, compared to some 15,000 Taliban killed or taken prisoner. Special forces teams and their Afghan allies had done most of the work and relatively few soldiers had been required. Karzai was a respected, legitimate, and charismatic leader. Still, according to Malkasian, the failure to capture bin Laden or negotiate with the Taliban, or include them in any way in the new government, set the course for the long war that bin Laden had dreamed of getting the US into.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: After initial success, the US lacked an obvious goal in Afghanistan beyond the counter-terrorism objectives of finding senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. Nation-building was initially opposed by the Bush administration, but as the US stayed, it slowly crept into the rationale for staying. In April 2002, Bush made a speech expressing a desire to rebuild Afghanistan. The US also sought to instill democracy and women's rights as a moral matter. The international community contributed to the development effort in Afghanistan, which focused on aid and creating institutions to run the country. US reconstruction efforts also focused on improving education, health care, and community development. The US also supported and funded the creation of an Afghan army in early 2002. However, the army was built slowly due to competing interests and a US belief that the Taliban were no longer a strong threat. Some in the Bush administration preferred to use the Northern Alliance and warlords as the military instead of creating a new military. The army became an afterthought and was poorly trained and equipped, which further enabled the Taliban.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Some members of the Taliban reached out to Karzai to open negotiations several times between 2002 and 2004, but the US was adamantly against this and ensured that all top Taliban leaders were blacklisted, such that the Afghan Government could not negotiate with them. Historian Malkasian argues that negotiations with the Taliban would have been low cost but highly effective at this stage and chocks it up to US overconfidence and hubris, and notes that all the information that the Taliban could resurge was available but ignored. Some Taliban leaders considered joining the political process, with meetings on the issue until 2004, though these did not result in a decision to do so.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The first attempt at a larger organization of Taliban groups after the invasion occurred in April 2002 in the country's south. A "shura" was established by former mid-level Taliban officials in Gardi Jangal a refugee camp near the Helmand border. It operated in the core southern provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan. It was composed of 23 groups of about 50 individuals each, for a total of around 1,200. In the North Waziristan District of Pakistan, Jalaluddin Haqqani had started organizing the Haqqani network after exiling there in 2001. In early 2002 their manpower was estimated at 1,400 and had a presence in Paktia Province and Khost Province in the second half of 2002 with limited activity. They were joined by members of Al-Qaeda. Operation Jacana & Operation Condor, among others, tried to flush out the Taliban with varying results.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: From 2002 to 2005, the Taliban reorganized and planned a resurgence. Pressure on Coalition forces to hunt down terrorists led to excesses and generated some popular support for the Taliban. Coalition troops would go on missions with questionable intelligence, at one point falling prey to a false tip provided by a target's political opponents. Few high-level Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders were caught. Those captured were predominantly low-level Taliban operatives who had little information on al-Qaeda. Numerous civilians were killed in operations, including a wedding which was misinterpreted as a Taliban gathering. Repeated errors by Coalition forces drove Taliban recruitment. Many Taliban leaders who had given up arms to leave peacefully, especially after being promised amnesty by President Karzai, were increasingly harassed by the US and elements of the Afghan government. By 2004, most Taliban leaders in Afghanistan had fled back to Pakistan, where the remnants of the Taliban were hiding. Malkasian argues that the US provided significant momentum to the Taliban by its own missteps, especially by focusing on aggressive counter-terrorism and vengeance for 9/11. He further argues that these actions alone did not restart the conflict because the Taliban would have re-emerged regardless because of leaders like Mullah Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani who had never put down arms.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Taliban undertook relatively few actions until 2005. Pamphlets by Taliban and other groups turned up strewn in towns and the countryside in early 2003, urging Islamic faithful to rise up against US forces and other foreign soldiers in a holy war. On 27 January 2003, during Operation Mongoose, US forces cleared out the Adi Ghar cave complex north of Spin Boldak. In May 2003, the Taliban Supreme Court's chief justice, Abdul Salam, proclaimed that the Taliban were back, regrouped, rearmed, and ready for guerrilla war to expel US forces from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, American attention was diverted from Afghanistan when US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Privately, the Taliban were preparing a grand offensive against the Coalition. It was to be several years in the making so that enough strength could be gathered. Mullah Dadullah was put in charge of the offensive. Dadullah was effective but cruel. He was responsible for introducing suicide bombing into wide use around 2004, as previously the Taliban had not been enamored by suicide or taking civilian lives; that had been an al-Qaeda tactic. A network of madrassas in Pakistan catering to Afghan refugees provided a steady stream of extremist recruits willing to die.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: As the summer of 2003 continued, Taliban attacks gradually increased in frequency. Dozens of Afghan government soldiers, NGO humanitarian workers, and several US soldiers died in the raids, ambushes, and rocket attacks. Besides guerrilla attacks, Taliban fighters began building up forces in the district of Dey Chopan District in Zabul Province. The Taliban decided to make a stand there. Over the course of the summer, up to 1,000 guerrillas moved there. Over 220 people, including several dozen Afghan police, were killed in August 2003. On 11 August 2003, NATO assumed control of ISAF.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Taliban leader Mullah Omar reorganized the movement, and in 2003 launched an insurgency against the government and ISAF. From the second half of 2003 and through 2004 operations started intensifying, with night letters followed by kidnappings and assassinations of government officials and collaborating village elders by 2005, with the former leaving villages in fear. Government schools and clinics were also burned down.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Operation Asbury Park cleared out Taliban forces in the Dey Chopan District during the summer of 2004. In late 2004, the then hidden Taliban leader Mohammed Omar announced an insurgency against "America and its puppets" (referring to transitional Afghan government forces) to "regain the sovereignty of our country." The 2004 Afghan presidential election was a major target of Taliban, though only 20 districts and 200 villages elsewhere were claimed to have been successfully prevented from voting. Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: From late June through mid-July 2005, United States Navy Seals carried out Operation Red Wings as a joint military operation in Kunar Province. The mission intended to disrupt local Taliban led by Ahmad Shah, hopefully bringing stability and facilitating the Afghan Parliament elections scheduled for September 2005. The operation was a pyrrhic victory for the Coalition, with only one survivor (dramatized in the 2013 film "Lone Survivor") and 19 dead. Operation Whalers would finish the job several weeks later. Taliban activity dropped significantly and Shah was seriously wounded. Shah was not able to undertake any significant operations subsequent to Operation Whalers in Kunar or neighboring provinces.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Taliban regained control over several villages in the south by the end of 2005, mostly because the villages were fed up with the lack of help from the government and hoped life would be better under the Taliban. Years of planning were coming to fruition for the Taliban. By comparison, the Government was in a very weak position. The police were deeply underfunded, and the average district had only 50 officers. Some districts had no Government presence at all. Most of the country's militias (with a strength of ~100,000) had been demobilized due to international pressure to create an army. But the army was still woefully understrength. Combined with an increase in tribal feuding, the conditions were perfect for a Taliban comeback.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: As insurgent attacks in the country reportedly grew fourfold between 2002 and 2006, by late 2007 Afghanistan was said to be in "serious danger" of falling into Taliban control despite the presence of 40,000 ISAF troops.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: From January 2006, a multinational ISAF contingent started to replace US troops in southern Afghanistan. The UK formed the core of the force, along with Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Estonia. In January 2006, NATO's focus in southern Afghanistan was to form Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Local Taliban figures pledged to resist. Since Canada wanted to deploy in Kandahar, the UK got Helmand province. Helmand was a center of poppy production, so it seemed a good region for the anti-narcotic focused UK. In hindsight, the UK were a poor choice. Pashtun Helmandis had never forgotten the 1880 Battle of Maiwand near Helmand province; a popular rumour was that the British sought to avenge their loss in that battle. The British had long since forgotten the war, but it proved a source of significant resistance from the Afghan population.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Local intelligence suggested that the Taliban were going to wage a brutal campaign in the summer of 2006. Coalition generals sent this info up the chain of command, but decision-makers ignored warnings. The US was distracted in Iraq, and Secretary of State Rumsfeld was more interested in making the Afghan army affordable than effective. Of the 70,000 soldiers the Afghan army was supposed to have, only 26,000 had been trained and retained.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Spring and summer action in 2006 by the Coalition included Operation Mountain Thrust, Operation Medusa, a Dutch/Australian offensive, the Battle of Panjwaii, Operation Mountain Fury and Operation Falcon Summit. The Coalition achieved tactical victories and area denial, but the Taliban were not completely defeated.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 29 May 2006, a US military truck that was part of a convoy in Kabul lost control and plowed into civilian vehicles, killing one person and injuring six. The surrounding crowd got angry and a riot arose, lasting all day ending with 20 dead and 160 injured. When stone-throwing and gunfire had come from a crowd of some 400 men, the US troops had used their weapons "to defend themselves" while leaving the scene, a US military spokesman said. A correspondent for the Financial Times in Kabul suggested that this was the outbreak of "a ground swell of resentment" and "growing hostility to foreigners" that had been growing and building since 2004.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: UK actions in early 2007 included Operation Volcano, Operation Achilles, and Operation Lastay Kulang. The UK Ministry of Defence also announced its intention to bring British troop levels in the country up to 7,700.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 4 March 2007, US Marines killed at least 12 civilians and injured 33 in Shinwar district, Nangarhar, in a response to a bomb ambush. The event became known as the "Shinwar massacre". The 120 member Marine unit responsible for the attack were ordered to leave the country because the incident damaged the unit's relations with the local population.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: During the summer, NATO forces achieved tactical victories at the Battle of Chora in Orūzgān, where Dutch and Australian ISAF forces were deployed.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Battle of Musa Qala took place in December. Afghan units were the principal fighting force, supported by British forces. Taliban forces were forced out of the town.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 13 June 2008, Taliban fighters demonstrated their ongoing strength, liberating all prisoners in Kandahar jail. The operation freed 1200 prisoners, 400 of whom were Taliban, causing a major embarrassment for NATO. By the end of 2008, the Taliban apparently had severed remaining ties with al-Qaeda. According to senior US military intelligence officials, perhaps fewer than 100 members of al-Qaeda remained in Afghanistan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: June 2009 brought Operation Strike of the Sword in Helmand. It followed a British-led operation named Operation Panther's Claw in the same region, which was aimed to secure various canal and river crossings to establish a long-term ISAF presence.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 4 September 2009, during the Kunduz Province Campaign a devastating NATO air raid was conducted 7 kilometers southwest of Kunduz where Taliban fighters had hijacked civilian supply trucks, killing up to 179 people, including over 100 civilians.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In December 2009, an attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman, used by the CIA to gather information and to coordinate drone attacks against Taliban leaders, killed eight working for the CIA.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In March 2007, the US deployed some 3,500 more troops, though the pace of deployment was slow due to American priorities in Iraq. In the first five months of 2008, the number of US troops in Afghanistan increased by over 80% with a surge of 21,643 more troops, bringing the total from 26,607 in January to 48,250 in June. In September 2008, President Bush announced the withdrawal of over 8,000 from Iraq and a further increase of up to 4,500 in Afghanistan. The same month, the UK lost its 100th serviceperson.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: January 2009 brought a change in American leadership, with the election of President Barack Obama. That month US soldiers, alongside Afghan Federal Guards, moved into the provinces of Logar, Wardak, and Kunar. The troops were the first wave of an expected surge of reinforcements originally ordered by President Bush and increased by President Obama. In mid-February 2009, it was announced that 17,000 additional troops would be deployed in two brigades and support troops; the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade of about 3,500 and the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker Brigade with about 4,000. ISAF commander General David McKiernan had called for as many as 30,000 additional troops, effectively doubling the number of troops. On 23 September, a classified assessment by General McChrystal included his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy would require 500,000 troops and five years.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 1 December 2009, Obama announced that the US would send 30,000 more troops. Antiwar organizations in the US responded quickly, and cities throughout the US saw protests on 2 December. Many protesters compared the decision to deploy more troops in Afghanistan to the expansion of the Vietnam War under the Johnson administration.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In the early years of the war, Pakistan had been seen as a firm ally, and little concern had been given to its support of the Taliban. Pakistan had also helped capture numerous top al-Qaeda leaders, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But internally, Pakistan was providing significant funding, access to safe houses, and political support to the Taliban. Public opinion in Pakistan heavily favored the Taliban, and the US invasion was viewed very negatively. The government was in no position to expel the Taliban, lest it starts a conflict within its already fragile country. Thus the Taliban continued to use Pakistan as a base of operations and a safe haven to rebuild their strength.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The US had been using drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, starting along the Federal Tribal Areas against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In the summer of 2008, President Bush issued an order authorizing raids against militants in Pakistan. Pakistan said it would not allow foreign forces onto its territory and that it would vigorously protect its sovereignty. In September, the Pakistan military stated that it had issued orders to "open fire" on US soldiers who crossed the border in pursuit of militant forces.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 3 September 2008, US commandos landed by helicopter and attacked three houses close to a known enemy stronghold in Pakistan. Pakistan condemned the attack, calling the incursion "a gross violation of Pakistan's territory". On 6 September, in an apparent reaction, Pakistan announced an indefinite disconnection of supply lines to NATO forces. A further split occurred when Pakistani soldiers fired on Nato aircraft which had crossed the border on 25 September. However, despite tensions, the US increased the use of remotely piloted drone aircraft in Pakistan's border regions, in particular the Federal Tribal Areas and Balochistan; by 2009, drone attacks were up 183% since 2006.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Pakistani drone strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants increased substantially under President Obama. Some in the media have referred to the attacks as a "drone war". In August 2009, Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan was killed in a drone strike.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: After Karzai's alleged win of 54 percent, which would prevent a runoff, over 400,000 Karzai votes had to be disallowed after accusations of fraud. Some nations criticized the elections as "free but not fair".


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Taliban's claim that the over 135 violent incidents disrupted elections was largely disputed. However, the media was asked to not report any violent incidents. In southern Afghanistan where the Taliban held the most power, voter turnout was low and sporadic violence was directed at voters and security personnel. The Taliban released a video days after the elections, filming on the road between Kabul and Kandahar, stopping vehicles and asking to see their fingers (voters were marked by dipping their fingers in ink so they could not double vote). The video went showed ten men who had voted, listening to a Taliban militant. The Taliban pardoned the voters because of Ramadan. The Taliban attacked towns with rockets and other indirect fire. Amid claims of widespread fraud, both top contenders, Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, claimed victory. Reports suggested that turnout was lower than in the prior election.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 26 November 2009, Karzai made a public plea for direct negotiations with the Taliban leadership. Karzai said there is an "urgent need" for negotiations and made it clear that the Obama administration had opposed such talks. There was no formal US response.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In 2007, after more than 5 years of war, Western officials and analysts estimated the strength of Taliban forces at about 10,000 fighters fielded at any given time. Of that number, only 2,000 to 3,000 were highly motivated, full-time insurgents. The rest were volunteer units, made up of young Afghans, angered by deaths of Afghan civilians in military airstrikes and American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged. In 2007, more foreign fighters came into Afghanistan than ever before, according to officials. Approximately 100 to 300 full-time combatants were foreigners, many from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps even Turkey and western China. They were reportedly more violent, uncontrollable and extreme, often bringing superior video-production or bomb making expertise. By 2010 the Taliban had as many as 25,000 dedicated soldiers, almost as many as before 9/11.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: General McChrystal, newly appointed as US commander in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban had gained the upper hand. In a continuation of the Taliban's usual strategy of summer offensives, the militants aggressively spread their influence into north and west Afghanistan and stepped up their attack in an attempt to disrupt presidential polls. Calling the Taliban a "very aggressive enemy", he added that the US strategy was to stop their momentum and focus on protecting and safeguarding Afghan civilians, calling it "hard work".


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Deployment of additional US troops continued in early 2010, with 9,000 of the planned 30,000 in place before the end of March and another 18,000 expected by June. The surge in troops supported a sixfold increase in Special Forces operations. The surge of American personnel that began in late 2009 ended by September 2012. 700 airstrikes occurred in September 2010 alone versus 257 in all of 2009.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Due to increased use of IEDs by insurgents, the number of injured Coalition soldiers, mainly Americans, significantly increased. Beginning in May 2010 NATO special forces began to concentrate on operations to capture or kill specific Taliban leaders. As of March 2011, the US military claimed that the effort had resulted in the capture or killing of more than 900 low- to mid-level Taliban commanders. Overall, 2010 saw the most insurgent attacks of any year since the war began, peaking in September at more than 1,500.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The CIA created Counter-terrorism Pursuit Teams staffed by Afghans at the war's beginning. This force grew to over 3,000 by 2010 and was considered one of the "best Afghan fighting forces". These units were not only effective in operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, but also expanded their operations into Pakistan.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In February 2010, Coalition and Afghan forces began highly visible plans for an offensive, codenamed Operation Moshtarak, on the Taliban stronghold near the village of Marjah. It was the first operation where Afghan forces led the coalition. The offensive involved 15,000 Coalition and Afghan troops.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Battle of Kandahar (2011) was part of an offensive that followed a 30 April announcement that the Taliban would launch their spring offensive. On 7 May the Taliban launched a major offensive on government buildings in Kandahar. The Taliban said their goal was to take control of the city. At least eight locations were attacked: the governor's compound, the mayor's office, the NDS headquarters, three police stations and two high schools. The battle continued onto a second day. The BBC called it "the worst attack in Kandahar province since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, and an embarrassment for the Western-backed Afghan government."


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: By 2009 there was broad agreement in Afghanistan that the war should end, but how it should happen was a major issue for the candidates of the 2009 Afghan presidential election that re-elected Karzai. In a televised speech after being elected, Karzai called on "our Taliban brothers to come home and embrace their land" and laid plans to launch a "loya jirga". Efforts were undermined by the Obama administration's increase of American troops in the country. Karzai reiterated at a London conference in January 2010 that he wanted to reach out to the Taliban to lay down arms. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cautiously supported the proposal. The "Peace Jirga" was held in Kabul, attended by 1,600 delegates, in June 2010. However, the Taliban and the Hezb-i Islami Gulbuddin, who were both invited by Karzai as a gesture of goodwill did not attend the conference.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: The Taliban's co-founder and then-second-in-command, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was one of the leading Taliban members who favored talks with the US and Afghan governments. Karzai's administration reportedly held talks with Baradar in February 2010; however, later that month, Baradar was captured in a joint US-Pakistani raid in the city of Karachi in Pakistan. The arrest infuriated Karzai and invoked suspicions that he was seized because the Pakistani intelligence community was opposed to Afghan peace talks. Karzai started peace talks with Haqqani network groups in March 2010.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: A mindset change and strategy occurred within the Obama administration in 2010 to allow possible political negotiations to solve the war. The Taliban themselves had refused to speak to the Afghan government, portraying them as an American "puppet". Sporadic efforts for peace talks between the US and the Taliban occurred afterward, and it was reported in October 2010 that Taliban leadership commanders (the "Quetta Shura") had left their haven in Pakistan and been safely escorted to Kabul by NATO aircraft for talks, with the assurance that NATO staff would not apprehend them. After the talks concluded, it emerged that the leader of this delegation, who claimed to be Akhtar Mansour, the second-in-command of the Taliban, was actually an imposter who had duped NATO officials.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Karzai confirmed in June 2011 that secret talks were taking place between the US and the Taliban, but these collapsed by August 2011. Further attempts to resume talks were canceled in March 2012, and June 2013 following a dispute between the Afghan government and the Taliban regarding the latter's opening of a political office in Qatar. President Karzai accused the Taliban of portraying themselves as a government in exile. In July 2015, Pakistan hosted the first official peace talks between Taliban representatives and the Afghan government. U.S. and China attended the talks brokered by Pakistan in Murree as two observers. In January 2016, Pakistan hosted a round of four-way talks with Afghan, Chinese and American officials, but the Taliban did not attend. The Taliban did hold informal talks with the Afghan government in 2016.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 25 July 2010, the release of 91,731 classified documents from the WikiLeaks organization was made public. The documents cover US military incident and intelligence reports from January 2004 to December 2009. Some of these documents included sanitized, and "covered up", accounts of civilian casualties caused by Coalition Forces. The reports included many references to other incidents involving civilian casualties like the Kunduz airstrike and Nangar Khel incident. The leaked documents also contain reports of Pakistan collusion with the Taliban. According to "Der Spiegel", "the documents clearly show that the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (usually known as the ISI) is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan."


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Beginning in January 2012, incidents involving US troops occurred that were described by "The Sydney Morning Herald" as "a series of damaging incidents and disclosures involving US troops in Afghanistan." These incidents created fractures in the partnership between Afghanistan and ISAF, raised the question whether discipline within US troops was breaking down, undermined "the image of foreign forces in a country where there is already deep resentment owing to civilian deaths and a perception among many Afghans that US troops lack respect for Afghan culture and people" and strained the relations between Afghanistan and the United States. Besides an incident involving US troops who posed with body parts of dead insurgents and a video apparently showing a US helicopter crew singing "bye-bye Miss American Pie" before blasting a group of Afghan men with a Hellfire missile these "high-profile US military incidents in Afghanistan" also included the 2012 Afghanistan Quran burning protests and the Panjwai shooting spree.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Tensions between Pakistan and the US were heightened in late September after several Pakistan Frontier Corps soldiers were killed and wounded. The troops were attacked by a US piloted aircraft that was pursuing Taliban forces near the Afghan-Pakistan border, but for unknown reasons opened fire on two Pakistan border posts. In retaliation for the strike, Pakistan closed the Torkham ground border crossing to NATO supply convoys for an unspecified period. This incident followed the release of a video allegedly showing uniformed Pakistan soldiers executing unarmed civilians. After the Torkham border closing, Pakistani Taliban attacked NATO convoys, killing several drivers and destroying around 100 tankers.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: ISAF forces skirmished Pakistan's armed forces on 26 November, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. Each side claimed the other shot first. Pakistan blocked NATO supply lines and ordered Americans to leave Shamsi Airfield.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 2 May 2011, US officials announced that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in Operation Neptune Spear, conducted by the US Navy SEALs, in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Pakistan came under intense international scrutiny after the raid. The Pakistani government denied that it had sheltered bin Laden, and said it had shared information with the CIA and other intelligence agencies about the compound since 2009.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 22 June President Obama announced that 10,000 troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2011 and an additional 23,000 troops would return by the summer of 2012. After the withdrawal of 10,000 US troops, only 80,000 remained. In July 2011 Canada withdrew its combat troops, transitioning to a training role. Following suit, other NATO countries announced troop reductions.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In January 2012, the National Front of Afghanistan (NFA) raised concerns about the possibility of a secret deal between the US, Pakistan and the Taliban during a widely publicized meeting in Berlin.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: Karzai visited the US in January 2012. At the time the US Government stated its openness to withdrawing all of its troops by the end of 2014. On 11 January 2012 Karzai and Obama agreed to transfer combat operations from NATO to Afghan forces by spring 2013 rather than summer 2013. "What's going to happen this spring is that Afghans will be in the lead throughout the country", Obama said. "They [ISAF forces] will still be fighting alongside Afghan troops...we will be in a training, assisting, advising role." He also stated the reason of the withdrawals that "We achieved our central goal, or have come very close...which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can't attack us again." He added that any US mission beyond 2014 would focus solely on counterterrorism operations and training.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 2 May 2012, Presidents Karzai and Obama signed a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries, after the US president had arrived unannounced in Kabul. On 7 July, as part of the agreement, the US designated Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally after Karzai and Clinton met in Kabul. Both leaders agreed that the United States would transfer Afghan prisoners and prisons to the Afghan government and withdraw troops from Afghan villages in spring 2013.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: In 2012 the leaders of NATO-member countries endorsed an exit strategy during the NATO Summit. ISAF Forces would transfer command of all combat missions to Afghan forces by the middle of 2013, while shifting from combat to advising, training and assisting Afghan security forces. Most of the 130,000 ISAF troops would depart by the end of December 2014. A new NATO mission would then assume the support role.


title: War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)

text: On 18 June 2013 the transfer of security responsibilities from NATO to Afghan forces was completed. ISAF remained slated to end its mission by the end of 2014. Some 100,000 ISAF forces remained in the country.