Herāt is an oasis city and the third-largest city in Afghanistan. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 574,276, and serves as the capital of Herat Province, situated south of the Paropamisus Mountains in the fertile valley of the Hari River in the western part of the country. An ancient civilization on the Silk Road between West, Central and South Asia, it serves as a regional hub in the country's west.
Mohammad Ismail Khan is an Afghan former politician who served as Minister of Energy and Water from 2005 to 2013 and before that served as the governor of Herat Province. Originally a captain in the Afghan Army, he is widely known as a former warlord as he controlled a large mujahideen force, mainly his fellow Tajiks from western Afghanistan, during the Soviet–Afghan War.
The Islamic National Army, also referred to as the Islamic Emirate Army and the Afghan Army, is the land force branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The roots of an army in Afghanistan can be traced back to the early 18th century when the Hotak dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power. It was reorganized in 1880 during Emir Abdur Rahman Khan's reign. Afghanistan remained neutral during the First and Second World Wars. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the Afghan Army was equipped by the Soviet Union.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between early 1992 and 2001 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At that time, many non-Pashtun Northerners originally with the Republic of Afghanistan led by Mohammad Najibullah became disaffected with Pashtun Khalqist Afghan Army officers holding control over non-Pashtun militias in the North. Defectors such as Rashid Dostum and Abdul Momim allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ali Mazari forming the Northern Alliance. The alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif and more importantly the supplies kept there crippled the Afghan military and began the end of Najibullah's government. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government the Alliance would fall with a Second Civil War breaking out however following the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's (Taliban) takeover of Kabul, The United Front was reassembled.
Yahya "Rahim" Safavi is an Iranian military commander who served as the chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. U.S. Army's Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemeni Houthis, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. According to Michael Wigginton et al., the Al-Quds Force is "a classic example of state-sponsored terrorism."
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the United States declared the beginning of the war on terror and subsequently led a multinational invasion of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The stated goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the attacks under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, and to deny Islamist militants a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by toppling the Taliban government. The United Kingdom was a key ally of the United States, offering support for military action from the start of the invasion preparations. The American military presence in Afghanistan greatly bolstered the Northern Alliance, which had been locked in a losing fight with the Taliban during the Afghan Civil War. Prior to the beginning of the United States' war effort, the Taliban had seized around 85% of Afghanistan's territory as well as the capital city of Kabul, effectively confining the Northern Alliance to Badakhshan Province and smaller surrounding areas. The American-led invasion on October 7, 2001, marked the first phase of what would become the 20-year-long War in Afghanistan and was the technical start of the War on Terror.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Third Afghan Civil War, took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
The fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in November 2001 resulted from the first major offensive of the Afghanistan War after American intervention. A push into the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh Province by the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, combined with U.S. Army Special Forces aerial bombardment, resulted in the withdrawal of Taliban forces who had held the city since 1998. After the fall of outlying villages, and an intensive bombardment, the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces withdrew from the city. Several hundred pro-Taliban fighters were killed. Approximately 500 were captured, and approximately 1,000 reportedly defected. The capture of Mazar-i-Sharif was the first major defeat for the Taliban.
The following items form a partial timeline of the War in Afghanistan. For events prior to October 7, 2001, see 2001 in Afghanistan.
The following lists events that happened during 2002 in Afghanistan.
Relations between Afghanistan and modern Iran were officially established in 1935 during Kingdom's Zahir Shah's reign and the Pahlavi dynasty's Reza Shah Pahlavi, though ties between the two countries have existed for millennia. As a result, many Afghans speak Persian, as Dari is one of the official languages of Afghanistan, and many in Afghanistan also celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination by the United States in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and played a key role in the Syrian Civil War through securing Russian intervention. He was described as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East" and a "genius of asymmetric warfare," and former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said Soleimani's strategies had "personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck." In his later years, he was considered by some analysts to be the right-hand man of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and the second-most powerful person in Iran behind Khamenei.
The siege of Kunduz occurred during the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on 9 November, the focus of the Northern Alliance advance shifted towards the city of Kunduz, which was the last remaining Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan.
The Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif were a part of the Afghan Civil War and took place in 1997 and 1998 between the forces of Abdul Malik Pahlawan and his Hazara allies, Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan, and the Taliban.
The Herat uprising, locally known as the Uprising of 24th Hūt was an insurrection that took place in and around the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, across several days in March 1979. It included both a popular uprising and a mutiny of ethnic Tajik Afghan Army troops against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). The communist regime at first appealed to its Soviet allies for help, but the Soviet leadership declined to intervene. After the insurgents seized and held the city for about a week, the regime was able to retake it with its own forces, and the subsequent aerial bombardment and recapture of Herat left 3,000 to 25,000 of its inhabitants dead. It was the worst outbreak of armed violence in the country in 50 years, and was the deadliest incident in the 1978-1979 period following the Saur Revolution and before the start of the Soviet occupation.
The 207th 'Zafar' (Victory) Corps was a corps of the Afghan National Army. It was headquartered at Camp Zafar, Herat, in Herat Province in the west of Afghanistan.
Esmail Qaani is an Iranian brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and commander of its Quds Force — a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial terror and clandestine operations. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, appointed Qaani to succeed Qasem Soleimani as Commander of the Quds Force.
The Fall of Herat was a battle and subsequent capture of Herat by Taliban fighters. The attack on the city started around 28 July 2021, and ended in Taliban victory by 13 August of the same year. Several of the surrounding districts fell to the Taliban from June to mid-July, leaving only the city and two other districts in government hands by 10 July. The border crossings in Herat Province were captured by the Taliban on 9 July, raising prices of goods inside the city. Ismail Khan, former governor and warlord, led a public uprising force to assist the Afghan National Security Forces in defending the city.
The 2021 Afghanistan–Iran clashes took place between the Islamic Emirate Armed Forces and the Iranian Border Guard Command along checkpoints on the Afghanistan–Iran border. The clashes occurred on the 1st of December, the cross-border fighting saw troops of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan capture several checkpoints on the Iranian side of the international border. The clashes ended later that day, after the two sides promptly came to an agreement that saw the Taliban force withdraw from all captured Iranian territory. Iran and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan subsequently referred to the incident as a "misunderstanding" and denied suffering any casualties, while various media reports reported casualties on both sides.
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan 
al-Qaeda 
Northern Alliance 
United States 
Iran 
Hazara Militia 
Mohammad Mohaqiq