The New Millennium: The First Two De cades 61against New York City and Washington, D.C. These attacks, directed by Osama bin
Laden, set into motion a U.S.- led global “war on terrorism.” Buoyed by an outpouring
of support from around the world and by the first- ever invocation of Article V of the
NATO Charter, which declares an attack on one NATO member to be an attack on
all, the United States undertook to lead an ad hoc co ali tion to combat terrorist organ-
izations with global reach. As discussed in Chapter 8, this new war on terrorism com-
bines many ele ments into multiple campaigns in dif er ent countries. Many countries
have arrested known terrorists and their supporters and frozen their monetary assets.
In October 2001, the United States launched a war in Af ghan i stan to oust the Taliban
regime, which was providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organ ization
and a base from which it freely planned, or ga nized, and trained operatives to carry out
a global terror campaign against the United States and its allies.
Following an initially successful campaign in Af ghan i stan in 2001 and 2002,
called Operation Enduring Freedom, that specifically targeted terrorists and their
supporters and paved the way for popu lar elections, the United States broke from its
allies. Convinced that Iraq maintained a clandestine weapons of mass destruction
( W MD) program and posed a continued threat by backing terrorist organ izations,
the United States attempted to build support in the United Nations for authorization
to remove Saddam Hussein forcibly from power and find the hidden WMD. When the
United Nations refused to back this request, the United States built its own co ali tion,
including key ally Great Britain. This co ali tion destroyed the Iraqi military and over-
threw Iraq’s government in 2003. No weapons of mass destruction were found, but
additional justifications for the invasion were ofered, including promoting democracy
for Iraq’s three main peoples— Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs— within a single
state. Fighting in Iraq continues today, although Hussein himself was executed in
2006 and U.S. combat forces have withdrawn. Iraq remains riven by sectarian con-
flict, and its U.S.- built and trained armed forces have sufered repeated defeats and
setbacks since the United States withdrew in 2011. Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon now face
a new and barbarous group calling itself the “Islamic State.” Sadly, then, Iraq’s future
stability and the fate of its long- sufering people remains unclear.
In an impor tant way, Operation Enduring Freedom set a very dangerous pre ce-
dent. If the United States and its allies could invade Af ghan i stan to punish or pre-
empt terrorism, why couldn’t it also invade any other state that hosted terrorists? After
the defeat of the Taliban in 2001, much of the Taliban’s leadership escaped across the
poorly controlled border between Af ghan i stan and Pakistan’s Northwest Territories.
But Pakistan was a formal U.S. ally, and extremely sensitive to any perceived slights
to its sovereignty. This situation created a dilemma that is not unique to U.S.– Pakistan
relations. If the United States is now to succeed in stabilizing Af ghan i stan, it must have
the help of Pakistan to eliminate the sanctuary it gives to groups the United States and
its allies consider terrorists. Yet Pakistan currently lacks both the capacity, and possiblyESSIR7_CH02_020_069_11P.indd 61 6/14/16 10:02 AM