US war in Afghanistan
America's longest war ends with the Taliban back in power
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On 7 October 2001, after the 9/11 attacks and the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the US and its allies began strikes on Afghanistan; by December the Taliban regime had fallen. But an insurgency dragged on for twenty years. Under a 2020 deal the US began withdrawing, and on 15 August 2021, before the pullout was complete, the Taliban entered Kabul. The Costs of War project estimates over 170,000 deaths in Afghanistan.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 21 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 20 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 7 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 12 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 12 years earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 10 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 9 years earlier
- 2002 Euro notes and coins — 1 year later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 21 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 16 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 15 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 12 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 10 years earlier
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 22 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 21 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 11 years earlier
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 8 years earlier
- 2011–2024 Syrian civil war — 10 years later
Africa
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 18 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 7 years earlier
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 3 years earlier
Americas
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 18 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — same year
- 2003 Human genome sequenced — 2 years later
- 2007 Apple unveils the iPhone — 6 years later
- 2010 Haiti earthquake — 9 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 9 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 83)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 71)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 90)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 82)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 77)
- Fidel Castro (aged 75)
- Elizabeth II (aged 75)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 74)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (aged 70)
- Boris Yeltsin (aged 70)