OBL Dead....Now What?

September 11, 2001 was a moments in one's life that everyone can remember exactly what they were doing that day.  For me, I was a Junior at Franklin High School going to my Zero Period which was Chemistry.  We were conducting an experiment where the faster we stirred a liquid, the colder it would get.  My Chem teacher, Mr. Jerry Monsey, was glued to the television.  He was a very stern man who would never do such a thing, so I knew something was wrong.  If you just turned on the television at that point, you might have thought it was a random accident.....Then the second plane hit and a new word came to every American's vocabulary.  TERRORIST.

Osama Bin Laden was the terrorist.  The US has hunted him for the better part of a decade, and on 1 MAY 11, a US team of Navy S.E.A.L.s sought him out in Pakistan and took custody of his body.  Americans everywhere rejoiced the death of the man who killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a single day and gave a rude awakening to the Intelligence Community.  Now that he is dead, the troops can go home from Afghanistan, right?

Wrong.  OBL was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, but he is not the reason we are still in Afghanistan.  At the time of the attacks, OBL was basing his International Terrorist organization, Al-Qaeda, out of Afghanistan.  Al-Qaeda had become the most dangerous terrorist group in the world and was making big waves during the late nineties.  This high profile needed a sanctuary for the planning of more horrendous acts of violence.  Enter Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was still in the wake of violence stemming from warlords that arose after the Soviet War in the eighties.   Muslims across the world took up arms (even OBL) to fight the Soviet aggression.  This war tore the country apart and left numerous warlords in place to vie for power.  This state of anarchy and power corrupted many of the mujahadeen heroes that defeated the Soviets.  Crimes against humanity soon enveloped the entire country.

A group of students of Islam decided that the madness must be stopped and took up arms and ousted or subdued many of the warlords by declaring a Jihad on them.  The students or seekers were known as the Taliban.  The students practiced a different type of Islam, and they soon instilled strict Sharia law over the population that they saved.  Some embraced the strict code because after nearly twenty plus years of war, the Afghan culture had been shattered and people needed some form of stability.

Some mujahadeen fighters that stayed out of corruption felt that the Afghan central government should return now that some sense of order had manifested.  They came to odds with the Taliban, and soon formed an Alliance to stop the harsh oppression.  One man stood in the way of the Taliban taking complete control of the country.  His name was Ahmad Shah Masood.  His part of the country could not be taken over by the Soviets and still could not be taken by the Taliban.  Enter Osama Bin Laden once more.

OBL promised the Taliban that he could kill Masood, if his group was granted safe haven in Afghanistan.  The Taliban agreed, and on September 9, 2001 Masood was severely wounded from an IED explosion during an interview.  He died a few days later.  The Taliban and Al-Qaeda now had their opportunity to take control of the country.

After 9/11, the US Military infiltrated Afghanistan in search of Bin Laden and concurrently drove the Taliban into hiding in Pakistan.   The stress of waging two wars with more focus on Iraq has allowed the remnants of the Taliban to re-enter Afghanistan nearly under the radar in the last few years.

Currently they are trying to get back the power that they once held.  This is why we must stay.

We cannot let this country fall apart again so that it can become a haven for terrorists again.  We must help this civilization get back on its feet and shake off the dust and crumble from nearly thirty-eight years of constant fighting.  The Afghans do not know what a real life is anymore.  The majority of the population was born into war and knows nothing else.

So OBL is dead.  Our job isn't done yet.  Afghanistan is still OUR war.  If not, then we might as well open our doors to terror again.