Nearly 1.9 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001. Many service members and veterans face serious challenges in readjusting to normal life after returning home. This initial book presents findings on the most critical challenges, and lays out the blueprint for the second phase of the study to determine how best to meet the needs of returning troops and their families.

Based on hundreds of oral interviews and unclassified documents, this study offers a comprehensive chronological narrative of the first four years of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The United States Army in Afghanistan is a powerful story of the first military efforts to strike back at the terrorist organization al Qaeda in the aftermath of its 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, believed he and his followers living and training under the protection of the Taliban regime in the far-off mountains of Afghanistan were beyond the reach of American arms. Richard W. Stewart in his penetrating essay on the early critical months of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM proves that bin Laden was wrong, chronicling how American, coalition, and allied Afghan units in a matter of months overthrew the Taliban regime and drove the al Qaeda into worldwide flight. His well-balanced story of American resolve, of danger and hardship, and of ultimate victory during the opening days of the Global War on Terrorism is worthy of study, providing critical perspective on how conventional and unconventional forces not only complemented each other's strengths but also compensated for each other's weaknesses.

“Michael Walling has honored the American men and women who served in Operation Enduring Freedom by helping them tell their own stories. This is the war in Afghanistan as experienced by the people who fought it.” - General Tommy R. Franks, Ret. The war in Afghanistan has seen men and women thrown into America's longest sustained combat operation. For over 13 years, US military personnel have been embroiled in a conflict unlike any other, in a hostile country where danger and death lurk at every turn. The nature of the fighting has transformed not only the entire structure of the US military, but the lives of every soldier, sailor, marine, coast guardsman, and airman who served there. There have been many tales told of this most recent Afghan war, but until now no single work has combined the strategic view of high-level commanders with the perspective of soldiers on the ground. This book places the first-hand accounts of serving men and women into the context of the military operations. Drawing on gripping oral histories from theater commanders, Special Forces troops, reconstruction teams, and everyday soldiers, Michael G. Walling analyzes operations as they were experienced by individuals, from those immediately following 9/11 through to those in 2014 as US troops prepared to withdraw. He also charts the evolution of US military structure as it was forced to adapt to cope with the non-conventional, but nonetheless deadly threats of asymmetric warfare, as well as detailing covert ops, infrastructure rebuilding, and the training of Afghan forces. Resonating across gender, age, nationality, and ethnicity, this book is not just a document of US fortunes in a far-flung conflict. It is a tribute to the determination, heroism, sacrifice, and the strength of the human spirit.

First comprehensive study of the U.S. Army's experience in Afghanistan during the first four years of Operation enduring Freedom (OEF). Focuses on Army operations in the larger Joint and Coalition campaign that evolved between October 2001 and September 2005. Sheds light on the overall course of OEF.

Background : "Operation Enduring Freedom" -- Violations by U.S. forces -- International legal context -- Conclusions -- Recommendations -- Appendix : U.S. criticisms of mistreatment and torture practices -- Acknowledgments.