For those of you who haven’t had a chance to keep up with the United States occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, blackcollegeview.com thought we’d provide this timeline of events. Though every battle was not included, there is enough to get the general idea of what happened in 2001 through 2003.
2001
September 11: Taliban attacks Twin Towers
September 15: Bush declares war; viewing Osama Bin Laden as the main enemy.
October 7: United States begins military strike in Kabul
October 24: 107th Congress passes USA Patriot Act
According to the Department of Justice website, under the Patriot Act, 372 individuals have been criminally charged in the United States in terrorism investigations; 194 have been convicted or have pled guilty in the United States, including shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Over 515 individuals linked to the September 11th investigation have been removed from the United States
October 27: United States jets bombard Taliban front line
October 29: US bombs Bin Laden hide-outs
November 1: Bin Laden calls Pakistanis to arms
November 8: Japanese Navy joins coalition
November 12: Alliance moves in abandoned Kabul; Taliban have withdrawn
November 19: Four journalists killed
The four journalists were identified as Maria Grazia Cutuli, of Corriere della Sera, a Milan newspaper; Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman, Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer, which the Reuters news agency identified as two of its employees and Julio Fuentes for El Mundo of Madrid, Spain.
November 24: Top Taliban commander surrenders
November 28: CIA officer killed
December 6: Kandahar fell causing the Taliban to lose a last major stronghold
December 26: New Bin Laden broadcast by Jazeera
2002
January 3: Taliban prisoners are released from Kabul prison
January 11: Afghan captives start detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
February 6: American Taliban indicted
John Walker Lindh has been formally indicted on 10 charges of conspiring with the Taliban to kill Americans. “It is extraordinary for the United States to have to charge one of its own citizens with aiding and conspiring with international terrorist groups whose agenda is to kill Americans,” John Ashcroft, Attorney General said in a press conference.
February 8: Taliban foreign minister surrenders
March 7: Battle for al-Qaeda stronghold
May 16: Daniel Pearl’s Body is Found
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in April on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist leader in Pakistan, and was killed by his abductors. The Wall Street Journal called his murder an “act of barbarism.”
July 3: Saddam Hussein’s stepson is arrested in Florida
July 15: John Walker Lindh pleaded guilty to two charges
July 31: Senate debates Iraq war fears
September 12: Bush says U.S. will move on Iraq if U.N. does not
September 13: Ramzi Binalshibh is arrested in Pakistan for allegedly planning 9/11 attacks
October 4: John Walker Lindh sentenced to 20 years
October 8: U.S. Marines are attacked at Kuwait
November 8: Interpol warns that Bin Laden is still alive and that al Qaeda is preparing simultaneous attacks in several countries
2003
March 1: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is arrested; Mohammed is believed to be a key planner of the 9/11 and several al Qaeda attacks in the last 10 years.
March 19: U.S. troops launch a terrorist-seeking raid in Afghanistan villages
On March 19th President George Bush said in a television address that “the United States and its allies had launched a campaign to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq and ‘free its people.’”
July 18: Guantanamo detainees return home
August 31: American soldiers killed on combat mission
November 10: 16 Afghan war detainees claim that they were being held illegally; Guantanamo cases go to top court
November 21: US issues fresh al-Qaeda warning
December 15: Saddam Caught
CNN reports: Across the Tigris River from his opulent palaces, Saddam Hussein shuttered himself at the bottom of a narrow, dark hole beneath a two-room mud shack on a sheep farm, a U.S. military official said.
