Australia and Canada in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a long way from either Canada or Australia, but from 2001, fate conspired to bring the three countries together. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Australia and Canada joined the U.S. and other Western allies in attacking al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan.

Operation Enduring Freedom, an integrated military operation, began on October 4, 2001, and by mid-November the Afghan capital, Kabul, was back in the hands of the anti-Taliban forces that had been driven from the city in September 1996. Yet this was only the beginning of a much longer engagement in Afghanistan for both Canada and Australia, with a legacy much more ambiguous than the initial campaign had promised. One reason for this was that Afghanistan was no blank page on which a new history could be written. Rather, its population was haunted by the effects of over two decades of high-intensity conflict on political structures, communities, and patterns of social interaction within and among Afghan society.