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.

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.

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.

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.

Explores the multistranded of the Strategic Distribution program, discussing why a significant change was needed in Defense distribution, how Strategic Distribution sought to transform the system, and how well that system met the challenge of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Written by a reserve officer who spent a tour in the Philippines producing a classified history for US Special Operations Command, this first-ever publicly available history of OEF-P provides both a detailed accounting of the operation's successes and a model for trainers and advisers providing assistance to host-nation security forces around the globe. Stentiford emphasizes that what made OEF-P a success was an adherence to time-honored principles of counterinsurgency: insisting that host-nation forces take the lead and conducting operations with a minimal footprint that bought the essential time for the mission to succeed. Success in the Shadows is both a fitting tribute to the operators who performed this vital mission and a primer for those who will be called upon to do so in the future.

Success in war ultimately depends upon the consolidation of political order. Consolidating the new political order is not separate from war, rather Nadia Schadlow argues that governance operations are an essential component of victory. Despite learning this the hard way in past conflicts from the Mexican War through Iraq and Afghanistan, US policymakers and the military have failed to institutionalize lessons about post-conflict governance and political order for future conflicts. War and the Art of Governance distills lessons from fifteen historical cases of US Army military intervention and governance operations from the Mexican War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improving outcomes in the future will require US policymakers and military leaders to accept that the political dimension is indispensable across the full spectrum of war. Plans, timelines, and resources must be shaped to reflect this reality before intervening in a conflict, not after things start to go wrong. The American historical experience suggests that the country's military will be sent abroad again to topple a regime and install a new government. Schadlow provides clear lessons that must be heeded before next time.

From Kabul to Baghdad and Back provides insight into the key strategic decisions of the Afghan and Iraq campaigns as the United States attempted to wage both simultaneously against al-Qaeda and its supporting affiliates. It also evaluates the strategic execution of those military campaigns to identify how well the two operations were conducted in light of their political objectives. The book identifies the elements that made the 2001 military operation to oust the Taliban successful, then with combat operations in Iraq as a standard of comparison, the authors analyze the remainder of the Afghan campaign and the essential problems that plagued that effort, from the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2002, through the ill-fated transition to NATO lead in Afghanistan in 2006, the dismissal of Generals McKiernan and McChrystal, the eventual decision by President Obama to make the Afghan campaign the main effort in the war on extremism, and the final development of drawdown plans following the end of the war in Iraq. No other book successfully compares and contrasts the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan from a national strategic perspective, analyzing the impact of fighting the Iraq War on the success of the United States campaign in Afghanistan. It is also the first book to specifically question several key operational decisions in Afghanistan including: the decision to give NATO the lead in Afghanistan, the decisions to fire Generals McKiernan and McChrystal and the decision to conduct an Iraq War-style surge in Afghanistan. It also compares the Afghan campaigns fought by the Soviet Union and the United States, the counterinsurgency campaigns styles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the leadership of senior American officials in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the final chapter, the key lessons of the two campaigns are outlined, including the importance of effective strategic decision-making, the utility of population focused counterinsurgency practices, the challenges of building partner capacity during combat, and the mindset required to prosecute modern war.