title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: After nearly five years of shelter, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996 and arrived in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He had founded al-Qaeda in the late 1980s to continue jihad after the end of the Soviet–Afghan War. He moved al-Qaeda's operations to eastern Afghanistan and developed a close relationship with the Taliban. In 2000, however, Mullah Omar visited bin Laden and forbade him from attacking the United States while he was a guest of the Taliban. During the 1990s the CIA and Delta Force planned several operations to kill or capture bin Laden, but President Bill Clinton never ordered them to proceed.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: During the early years of the Clinton administration, the US had no clear policy toward Afghanistan. The 1998 US embassy bombings, however, masterminded by al-Qaeda, provoked President Clinton to order missile strikes on militant training camps in Afghanistan; bin Laden was indicted for his involvement in the bombings. In 1999 both the US and the United Nations enacted sanctions against the Taliban in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267, which demanded the Taliban surrender bin Laden for trial in the US and close all terrorist bases in Afghanistan. At the time, the only collaboration between Massoud and the US was an effort with the CIA to trace bin Laden. The US provided no support for Massoud's fight against the Taliban.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: A change in US policy was effected in early September 2001. The Bush administration agreed on a plan to start supporting Massoud. A September 10 meeting of top national security officials agreed that the Taliban would be presented with an ultimatum to hand over bin Laden and other al-Qaeda operatives. If the Taliban refused, the US would provide covert military aid to anti-Taliban groups to attempt to overthrow the Taliban.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On September 9, 2001, two al-Qaeda members posing as journalists killed Massoud by detonating a bomb hidden in their video camera during an interview. The assassination was a gift from bin Laden to the Taliban and left them poised to achieve total control over Afghanistan. Mohammed Fahim became the new leader of the Northern Alliance. The Alliance had 15,000–20,000 fighters distributed across five locations. On the Kabul front, Taliban and Northern Alliance forces faced each other from trenches across the Shomali Plain. The Takhar front extended from the Tajikistan border in the north to Parwan in the south, near Kabul. Dostum's forces were located south of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Hazaras under Muhammad Mohaqiq were in the central Hazarajat region, and Ismail Khan was near Herat.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The Taliban's military commander in the north was Mohammad Fazl. The Taliban military comprised approximately 45,000 Afghans and 2,700 foreign fighters, which included al-Qaeda's 055 Brigade. According to military analyst Ali Jalali, the 055 Brigade was only 400–600 strong, but its ties to bin Laden made it politically important. The foreign fighters included Arabs as well as Kashmiris, Chechens, Uzbeks, and Uyghurs. Several hundred officers from Pakistan's ISI were stationed in Afghanistan advising the Taliban. By mid-October, approximately 10,000 Pakistani volunteers crossed the border to augment the Taliban's forces. The volunteers were mostly "madrasa" students, some as young as 14.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Both sides primarily used Russian military equipment. The Northern Alliance had 14.5mm heavy machine guns, Russian artillery, T-72 tanks, and BMP-1 armored vehicles retrofitted with rocket pods from Soviet combat helicopters. Dostum's Uzbeks used horses for transportation. The Northern Alliance had 18 helicopters and three fixed-wing planes, used mostly for logistical purposes. The Taliban's equipment was similar to that of the Northern Alliance, and they also had Stinger missiles donated by the United States to the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. They relied on pickup trucks for mobility and operated as a "motorized light force." They had about 40 combat aircraft, operated by ex-PDPA pilots.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Both sides had a history of human rights abuses: Uzbeks and Hazaras had "massacred hundreds of Taliban prisoners and killed Pashtun villagers in the north and around Kabul", and the Taliban killed 5,000–8,000 civilians after they captured Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998. Afghanistan also faced a serious humanitarian crisis in 2001 due to drought; according to the United Nations, 5 million Afghans were in need of humanitarian aid that year and 3.8 million could not survive without UN food aid.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On the morning of September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda carried out four coordinated attacks on the United States, employing four hijacked jet airliners. The attacks killed almost 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others. By the early afternoon of September 11, the CIA had confirmed that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack. The Taliban condemned the attacks, but Mullah Omar issued a statement denying bin Laden's involvement. Although bin Laden eventually took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks in 2004, he initially denied having any involvement. One of bin Laden's strategic goals was to draw the US into a costly war in Afghanistan, so it could be defeated just as the Soviet Union had been.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On the evening of September 11, President Bush stated the US would respond to the attacks and would "make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." On September 14, 2001, Congress passed legislation titled Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and its supporters. President Bush addressed Congress on September 20 and demanded the Taliban deliver bin Laden and al-Qaeda or face war.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On the same day, a grand council of 300 or 700 Muslim clerics across Afghanistan, who had convened to decide bin Laden's fate, issued a "fatwa" recommending that the Islamic Emirate ask bin Laden to leave their country. The "fatwa" went on to warn that should the United States invade Afghanistan, jihad would become obligatory until the invaders were expelled. On September 21, Mullah Omar rejected both Bush's demands and the advice of the council, again denying that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Simultaneously, Mullah Omar authorized his deputy Akhtar Mohammad Osmani to negotiate with Robert Grenier, the CIA's chief of station in Pakistan, to discuss giving up bin Laden. The two met in Quetta on September 15 and October 2 but failed to reach an agreement. On October 4 the British government released a document summarizing the evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks. That same day, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invoked Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty for the first time in its history; Article V states that an attack on one member of the alliance is to be considered an attack on all members. On October 7, as the US aerial bombing campaign began, President Bush stated, "Full warning has been given, and time is running out."


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In 2001, the Defense Department did not have a pre-existing plan for an invasion of Afghanistan. Therefore, the plan approved by Bush was devised by the CIA, reusing elements of the agency's previous contingency plans for collaboration with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Bush met with his cabinet at Camp David on September 15 for a war planning session. The military presented three options for military action in Afghanistan: The first was a cruise missile strike, the second was a combined cruise missile and bombing campaign lasting 3–10 days, and the third called for cruise missile and bomber strikes as well as ground forces operating inside Afghanistan. The CIA also presented its war plan, which involved inserting paramilitary teams to work with the Northern Alliance and, eventually, American Special Forces units. The planners wanted to minimize the use of American ground forces, to avoid provoking the Afghan population as the British and Russians had done. On September 17 Bush approved the CIA's plan and directed the military to develop a detailed war plan based on the third option from Camp David. Planning efforts were hindered because the Taliban had little physical infrastructure for the military to target. Early plans by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) included poisoning the Afghan food supply and raiding a fertilizer factory that JSOC believed could be used to make chemical weapons.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The military completed its war plan by September 21 and called it Operation Infinite Justice. This name was deemed culturally insensitive because Islamic theology only deems God's justice to be infinite, so Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld changed the name to Operation Enduring Freedom.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The US aimed to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime from power, but also sought to prevent the Northern Alliance from taking control of Afghanistan, believing the Alliance's rule would alienate the country's Pashtun majority. CIA director George Tenet argued that the US should target al-Qaeda but "hold off on the Taliban," since the Taliban were popular in Pakistan and attacking them could jeopardize relations with Pakistan.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: At the time of the invasion, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was dire, and the attacks in the United States caused thousands of Afghans attempting to flee fearing potential U.S. military action - this on top of millions that were already refugees in regional countries due to the continuous conflict already in place for 22 years. Food stock was running critically low and almost all aid workers had left the country after the attacks. Barry Bearak in a "New York Times" article described Afghanistan as a "post-apocalyptic place of felled cities, parched land and downtrodden people." Seventy percent of the population was undernourished in 2001, and the life expectancy was ranked two places from bottom in the world.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Fox News suggested on September 27 that "millions" of Afghans would possibly starve, amid the paralyzed relief network, closed border crossings, and the cold winter approaching. The U.N. refugee agency feared that the scale of the crisis could reach the peaks of that in Bosnia and Rwanda.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The invasion consisted of American, British, Canadian, and Australian forces, with other countries providing logistical support. General Tommy Franks of US Central Command (CENTCOM) was the overall commander for Operation Enduring Freedom. He led four task forces: the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF), Combined Joint Task Force Mountain (CJTF-Mountain), the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counterterrorism (JIATF-CT), and the Coalition Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force (CJCMOTF).


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: CJSOTF consisted of three subordinate task forces: Joint Special Operations Task Force-North (JSOTF-North or Task Force Dagger), Joint Special Operations Task Force-South (JSOTF-South or Task Force K-Bar) and Task Force Sword (later renamed Task Force 11). Task Force Dagger was led by Colonel James Mulholland and was formed around his 5th Special Forces Group with helicopter support from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (160th SOAR). Dagger was assigned to the north of Afghanistan and Task Force K-Bar was assigned to southern Afghanistan. K-Bar was led by Navy SEAL Captain Robert Harward and formed around SEAL Teams 2, 3 and 8 and Green Berets from 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group. The task force principally conducted special reconnaissance and sensitive site exploitation missions. Most coalition contributions were arrayed under K-Bar, including New Zealand's Special Air Service, Canada's Joint Task Force 2, and Germany's "Kommando Spezialkräfte". Task Force Sword was the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) component of the mission. Task Force Sword's primary objective was capturing or killing senior leadership within al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Sword was structured around a two-squadron component of operators from Delta Force and SEAL Team Six was supported by a Ranger force protection team, an Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) signals intercept and surveillance team, and the 160th SOAR. The British Special Boat Service was integrated directly into Sword's structure.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Alongside the SOF task forces operated the largely conventional CJTF-Mountain. Mountain initially comprised three subordinate commands, but only one was a special operations force – Task Force 64, a special forces task group built around a sabre squadron from the Australian SAS. The US Marines contributed Task Force 58, consisting of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The JIATF-CT (also known as Task Force Bowie), led by Brigadier General Gary Harrell, was an intelligence integration and fusion activity composed of personnel from all participating units. Bowie numbered 36 military personnel and 57 from agencies such as the FBI, NSA, and CIA, as well as liaison officers from coalition SOF. Administratively embedded within Bowie was Advanced Force Operations (AFO). AFO was a 45-man reconnaissance unit made up of Delta Force reconnaissance specialists augmented by selected SEALs and supported by ISA's technical experts. AFO had been raised to support TF Sword and was tasked with intelligence preparation of the battlefield, working closely with the CIA and reporting directly to TF Sword. AFO conducted covert reconnaissance along the border with Pakistan. The AFO operators deployed observation posts to watch and report enemy movements and numbers and conduct environmental reconnaissance. The final task force supporting the invasion was CJCMOTF, which would manage civil affairs and humanitarian efforts.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On September 26, fifteen days after 9/11, the US covertly inserted (via CIA-piloted Mi-17 helicopter) 10 members of the CIA into the Panjshir Valley, Massoud's stronghold. The CIA mission was led by Gary Schroen and designated the Northern Afghanistan Liaison Team, known by the call-sign 'Jawbreaker'. In addition to specialized human assets, the team brought a metal case containing $3 million in $100 bills to buy support. Jawbreaker linked up with General Mohammed Fahim, commander of the Northern Alliance forces in the Panjshir Valley, and prepared the way for introduction of Army Special Forces. The Jawbreaker team brought satellite communications equipment, enabling its intelligence reports to be instantly available to CIA headquarters. The team also assessed potential targets for Operation Crescent Wind, provided "in-extremis" combat search and rescue (CSAR), and could provide bomb damage assessment for the air campaign. To allow fixed-wing aircraft to land in the area, the team refurbished an airstrip at Gulbahar built by the British in 1919.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On September 28, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw approved the deployment of MI6 officers to Afghanistan, utilizing people involved with the "mujahideen" in the 1980s, who had language skills and regional expertise. At month's end, a handful of MI6 officers landed in northeast Afghanistan and met with Fahim. They began working with other contacts in the north and south to build alliances, secure support, and bribe as many Taliban commanders as possible to change sides or leave the fight. Two more CIA teams soon arrived, operating near Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On October 7, the US began military operations in Afghanistan with air strikes on 31 targets across the country. Most of the Taliban's outdated SA-2 and SA-3 surface-to-air missiles, small fleet of MIG-21s and Su-22s, and radar and command units were destroyed on the first night. On the same night the CIA conducted the first-ever air strike with a Predator drone. The Predator was loitering over Mullah Omar's house and followed several men who left the house. CIA analysts believed that Omar was in the group, which drove first to the house of Omar's mother and then to a school west of Kandahar. The men stayed in the school for several hours and the CIA requested that the Air Force strike the school with a conventional bomb, but Franks denied the request, citing the risk of collateral damage and uncertainty over whether Omar was really there. The CIA fired the Predator's Hellfire missile at a truck outside to draw the men out; the men left the school, and Omar escaped. Predator drones had been in development since the early 1990s, had been used to search for bin Laden since 2000, and had even been proposed as a means of assassinating bin Laden before 9/11. The employment of armed Predators in Afghanistan marked the start of a new era of drone warfare.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: US aircraft bombed Taliban training camps and air defenses over the next several days, employing Apache helicopter gunships from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. US Navy cruisers, destroyers and Royal Navy submarines launched several Tomahawk cruise missiles. Within a few days, most Taliban training sites were severely damaged and air defenses destroyed. The campaign focused on command, control, and communications targets. The front facing the Northern Alliance held, and no battlefield successes were achieved there. The United States dropped 1500 munitions in the first week of bombing. They also began airdropping food and medical supplies to civilians in Northern Alliance-controlled territory. By the second week of the campaign most of the preplanned targets had been destroyed.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On October 19, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) teams 555 and 595, both 12-man Green Beret teams from the 5th Special Forces Group, plus Air Force Combat Controllers, were airlifted by helicopter from the Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan more than across the Hindu Kush mountains in zero-visibility conditions by MH-47E Chinook helicopters from 2nd Battalion 160th SOAR. ODA 555 went to the Panjshir Valley to link up with the NALT and Fahim, and ODA 595 went to the Darya Suf Valley, just south of Mazar-i-Sharif, to work with Dostum.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In mid-October, A and G squadron of the British 22nd SAS Regiment, reinforced by members of the Territorial SAS regiments, deployed to northwest Afghanistan in support of Enduring Freedom. They conducted largely uneventful reconnaissance under the code-name Operation Determine, none of which resulted in enemy contact. They traveled in Land Rover Desert Patrol Vehicles and modified all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). Both squadrons returned to their barracks in the UK after two weeks.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On the night of October 19, simultaneous with the Special Forces entering the country, 200 Rangers from the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, parachuted onto Objective Rhino—a landing strip south of Kandahar. The landing strip had been built as part of an Emirati hunting camp. Before the Rangers dropped, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and AC-130 gunships bombed and strafed the site, meeting the resistance of only one Taliban fighter. The Rangers provided security while a forward arming and refuelling point (FARP) was established using fuel bladders from MC-130s, to refuel aircraft flying to the next objective. The mission was filmed by combat cameramen and a P-3C Orion observation plane flying overhead. No US casualties were suffered in the operation itself (two Rangers received minor injuries in the jump), but two Rangers assigned to a CSAR element supporting the mission were killed when their MH-60L helicopter crashed at a temporary staging site in Dalbandin, Pakistan, due to a brownout.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Simultaneously, a squadron of Delta Force operatives supported by Rangers from Task Force Sword conducted an operation—designated Objective Gecko—outside Kandahar at Mullah Omar's residential compound. Four MH-47E helicopters took off from the USS Kitty Hawk (which was serving as a SOF base) in the Indian Ocean carrying 91 soldiers. The assault teams were drawn from Delta, while teams from the Rangers secured the perimeter and occupied blocking positions. Before the soldiers were inserted, the target area was softened by preparatory fire from AC-130s and MH-60L Direct Action Penetrators. The assaulters met no resistance and there was no sign of the Taliban leader, so they searched the target location for intelligence, while their helicopters refueled at the newly established FARP in Rhino. The next day, the Pentagon showed the video footage from Objective Rhino at a press conference and distributed it to news organizations. Intelligence prior to the missions had indicated that neither objective had any Taliban forces on it. According to former Delta Force officer Peter Blaber, the JSOC commander Dell Dailey "believed that if we raided empty targets in Afghanistan and filmed the raids for the world to see... we would have some kind of morale-breaking effect on the enemy."


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The Green Berets of ODA 595 split into two elements, Alpha and Bravo. Alpha rode on horseback with General Dostum to his headquarters to plan an assault on Mazar-i-Sharif. Bravo was tasked with clearing the Darya Suf Valley of Taliban and to travel into the Alma Tak Mountains to conduct reconnaissance. Dostum and General Mohammad Atta had been fighting the Taliban in the Darya Suf Valley throughout the summer and had gradually lost ground. The valley ran north to south and Dostum had established his headquarters near the village of Dehi—60 miles south of Mazar-i-Sharif—because the rugged terrain prevented Taliban tanks from moving that far into the valley.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On October 21, the Alpha element of ODA 595 guided in the first Joint Direct Attack Munition bomb from a B-52, impressing Dostum. As part of its operations, the Americans beamed in radio broadcasts in both Pashto and Dari calling al-Qaeda and the Taliban criminals and promising US$25 million to anyone who would provide information leading to bin Laden's whereabouts.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On October 23, the anti-Taliban Pashtun leader Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan with about 20 supporters and tried to raise a revolt against the Taliban in Nangarhar. Haq was among the most famous commanders of the anti-Soviet jihad, during which he had been wounded sixteen times and lost a foot. The Taliban captured and executed him.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On October 25, ODA 585 infiltrated an area near Kunduz to work alongside warlord Burillah Khan. The same night, three Delta Force operators flew into the Panjshir and began working with the CIA Jawbreaker team to plan an important hostage rescue mission. In early August 2001 the Taliban had imprisoned eight employees of a Christian aid organization named Shelter Now, on charges of proselytizing. Held in Kabul, the prisoners included two Americans, Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry. They faced the death penalty if convicted. Since their arrival in Afghanistan, the CIA team had been using Northern Alliance intermediaries to contact Taliban officials and attempted to bribe them to release the prisoners, without success. Delta Force specialized in hostage rescue and began planning to infiltrate Kabul with 50–60 operators, disguised as an al-Qaeda convoy, to extract the prisoners. Planning and rehearsal for the mission, which also included an element from Seal Team Six, continued for the next three weeks, but execution was delayed because the Taliban frequently moved the Shelter Now employees between two prisons in Kabul.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: At the beginning of November, US aircraft shifted from attacking strategic targets to striking the Taliban front lines. On November 2, ODA 553 inserted into Bamyan and linked up with General Karim Khalili's forces; ODA 534 was also inserted into the Balkh River Valley after being delayed by weather for several nights, near Dostum and ODA 595. Its role was to support General Atta in a drive on Mazar-i-Sharif, coordinated with Dostum. Bravo team of ODA 595 conducted airstrikes in the Darya Suf Valley, cutting off and destroying Taliban reinforcements and frustrating Taliban attempts to relieve their embattled forces in the north. Cumulatively, the near constant airstrikes had begun to have a decisive effect and the Taliban began to withdraw toward Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum's forces and Alpha team of ODA 595 followed, working their way north through the valley. On November 5, Dostum and Atta began a coordinated assault on the village of Baluch. Dostum prepared his men to follow a bombing run from a B-52 with a cavalry charge, but one of Dostum's lieutenants misunderstood an order and sent 400 Uzbek horsemen charging toward the Taliban lines as the bomber made its final approach. The bomb landed just in time on the Taliban positions and the cavalry charge succeeded in breaking the Taliban defenses. Dostum and Atta then entered the Balkh Valley and continued towards Mazar-i-Sharif.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On the Shomali Plain, ODA 555 and the CIA Jawbreaker team attached to Fahim Khan's forces began calling airstrikes on entrenched Taliban positions at the southeastern end of the former Soviet air base at Bagram Airfield. The Green Berets set up an observation post in a disused air traffic control tower and guided in two BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bombs, which caused heavy Taliban casualties. On November 8, ODAs 586 and 594 infiltrated into Afghanistan in MH-47s and picked up on the Afghan–Tajik border by CIA-flown MI-17s. ODA 586 deployed to Kunduz with the forces of General Daoud Khan and ODA 594 deployed into the Panjshir to assist the men of ODA 555.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Mazar-i-Sharif was important as the home of the sacred Muslim site of the Shrine of Ali, and as a transportation hub, with two major airports and a bridge into Uzbekistan. Taking the city would enable humanitarian aid to alleviate a looming food crisis, which threatened more than six million people with starvation. Many of those in most urgent need lived in rural areas to the south and west of Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum and Atta fought their way up the Balkh Valley and on November 8 reached the Tanghi Pass, the gateway between the valley and Mazar-i-Sharif. The pass was heavily defended, but the Northern Alliance seized it on November 9, triggering a Taliban retreat from Mazar-i-Sharif. The Northern Alliance entered the city on November 10.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The fall of the city was a "major shock"; the US Central Command originally believed it would remain in Taliban hands well into the following year. US Army Civil Affairs Teams from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, and Tactical Psychological Operations Teams from the 4th Psychological Operations Group, were immediately deployed to begin reconstruction in Mazar-i-Sharif.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 10, operators from C squadron Special Boat Service, inserted via two C-130s into the recently captured Bagram Airfield, caused a political quandary with the Northern Alliance leadership, who claimed the British had failed to consult them on the deployment. The Northern Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah considered the uninvited arrival to be a violation of sovereignty, and complained to the head of the CIA field office, threatening to resign if the British did not withdraw. The British government had alerted the deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan that they were deploying troops to Bagram, albeit on short notice. Arriving on the first flight, Brigadier Graeme Lamb—the Director Special Forces at that time—simply ignored Abdullah and drove to the Panjshir Valley, where he paid his respects to Ahmad Shah Massoud's grave and held talks with Northern Alliance leaders. The British Foreign Secretary tried to reassure the Northern Alliance that the deployment was not a vanguard of a British peacekeeping army, but Northern Alliance leaders did not believe them; with the threat of the Northern Alliance opening fire on incoming troop transports, the deployment was put on hold.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 11, in the central north of Afghanistan, ODA 586 was advising General Daoud Khan outside the city of Taloqan and coordinating a batch of preparatory airstrikes, when the General surprised the Americans by launching an impromptu mass infantry assault on the Taliban holding the city. The city fell before the first bomb could be dropped.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 12, the US tracked and killed al-Qaeda's number three, Mohammed Atef, with an air strike in Kabul. That day the Taliban abandoned Kabul and decided to regroup in Jalalabad and Kandahar. Taliban forces evacuated by the end of November 13, and Northern Alliance forces (supported by ODA 555) arrived took control of the city the following afternoon. During their retreat, the Taliban took the Shelter Now prisoners with them, but abandoned them in a prison in Ghazni on November 13. Anti-Taliban Afghans freed the prisoners, who had found a satellite phone and used it to call the American embassy in Pakistan. SEAL Team Six used Chinook helicopters to extract the prisoners from Ghazni on the night of November 14 and take them to Pakistan.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The fall of Kabul started a cascading collapse of Taliban positions. Within 24 hours, all Afghan provinces along the Iranian border had fallen, including Herat. Local Pashtun commanders and warlords had took over throughout northeastern Afghanistan, including Jalalabad; Taliban holdouts in the north fell back to the city of Kunduz, while others retreated to their heartland in southeastern Afghanistan, around Kandahar.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In the midst of the retreat, Delta Force conducted a high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) jump northeast of Kandahar to call in airstrikes on targets retreating from Kabul, the first combat HALO jump conducted at night by the United States since the Vietnam War. By November 13, al-Qaeda and Taliban forces—possibly including bin Laden—were concentrating in Tora Bora, southwest of Jalalabad. Nearly 2,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters fortified themselves within bunkers and caves. On November 16 the US began bombing the mountain redoubt. Around the same time, CIA and Special Forces operatives worked in the area, enlisting local warlords and planning an attack.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 13, the 75th Ranger Regiment carried out its second combat parachute drop into Afghanistan. A platoon-sized Ranger security element, including a team from the Ranger Reconnaissance Detachment and accompanied by eight Air Force Special Tactical operators, parachuted into a dry lake bed southwest of Kandahar and secured the area. A pair of MC-130 cargo planes then landed in the lake bed and deposited four AH-6J Little Bird helicopters from the 160th SOAR. The Little Birds flew to a Taliban compound near Kandahar codenamed Objective Wolverine and destroyed it. They returned to the lake bed to rearm and refuel, then launched another strike against a second site called Objective Raptor. After the second strike they went back to the lake bed, loaded onto the MC-130s and flew back to Oman. Several nights later, beginning on November 16, a series of missions codenamed Operation Relentless Strike took place. On the first night, the Rangers drove modified HMMWVs and Land Rovers to secure a remote desert airstrip. The Little Birds then flew in on MC-130s and conducted a search and destroy mission along Highway 1. The Little Birds conducted similar search and destroy missions over the next several nights.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 14, ODA 574 and Hamid Karzai inserted into Uruzgan Province via 4 MH-60K helicopters with a small force of guerrillas. Karzai was the leader of the Pashtun Popalzai tribe and had been an enemy of the Taliban since they assassinated his father in 1999. He had entered Afghanistan with three other men on October 9, but was almost killed by the Taliban, and was extracted by the CIA on November 4. Once he returned he began to move towards the town of Tarinkot. Responding to the approach of Karzai's forces, the inhabitants of the town of Tarinkot revolted and expelled their Taliban administrators. Karzai traveled to Tarinkot to meet with the town elders. While he was there, the Taliban marshaled a force of 300–500 men to retake the town. Karzai's small force, plus the American contingent, deployed in the town's front to block the Taliban's advance. Relying heavily on close air support, the American and Afghan force managed to drive the Taliban away from the town.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The defeat of the Taliban at Tarinkot was an important victory for Karzai, who used it to recruit more men to his fledgling guerrilla band. His force would grow in size to a peak of around 800 men. Soon afterwards, they left Tarinkot and began advancing on Kandahar.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Task Force Dagger's attention focused on the last northern Taliban stronghold, Kunduz. As the bombardment at Tora Bora grew, the Siege of Kunduz continued. General Daoud and ODA 586 had initiated massive coalition airstrikes to demoralize the Taliban defenders. After 11 days of fighting and bombardment, Taliban fighters surrendered to Northern Alliance forces on November 23. Shortly before the surrender, Pakistani aircraft arrived to evacuate intelligence and military personnel who had been aiding the Taliban's fight against the Northern Alliance, including Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. The details of the airlift are disputed. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh alleged that up to five thousand people were evacuated, while Karzai stated that, "even the Americans did not know who got away." The United States government denied that the airlift occurred, with Secretary Rumsfeld saying, "neither Pakistan nor any other country flew any planes into Afghanistan to evacuate anybody."


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The SAS played a small role in the early stages of the war because American SOF commanders guarded targets for their own units. It took political intercession from Prime Minister Tony Blair for the SAS to be given a direct-action task – the destruction of an al-Qaeda-linked opium production facility. The facility was located southwest of Kandahar and defended by between 80–100 foreign fighters, with a defense of trench lines and several makeshift bunkers. The SAS were ordered to assault the facility in full daylight because CENTCOM would not provide air support for a night raid. The timing meant that the squadrons could not carry out a detailed reconnaissance prior to the assault. Despite these factors, the commanding officer of 22 SAS accepted the mission. The target was a low priority for the US and probably would have been destroyed from the air if the British had not argued for a larger role in Afghanistan.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The mission began in November 2001, with an 8-man patrol from G Squadron's Air Troop performing the regiments first wartime HALO parachute jump. The patrol landed at a desert location in Registan to assess its suitability as an improvised airstrip for the landing of the main assault force in C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft. The Air Troop advance team confirmed the site was suitable and later that day the C-130s landed and disembarked the SAS in their vehicles. The assault force was composed of operators from A and G Squadrons driving 38 Land Rover Desert Patrol Vehicles, two logistics vehicles, and eight Kawasaki dirt bikes. The assault force drove to a release point and split into two elements. A squadron was the assault force and G Squadron provided fire support.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The assault began with a preparatory airstrike, after which A Squadron dismounted from their vehicles and closed in on the target on foot. G Squadron provided covering fire with heavy weapons, and air support flew sorties until running out of munitions. On a final pass, a US Navy F-18 Hornet strafed a bunker with its 20mm cannon, which narrowly missed several members of G Squadron. When the A Squadron assault force reached the objective, they cleared the HQ building and gathered all intelligence materials they could find. The mission lasted four hours and four SAS operators were wounded; the operation was the largest British SAS operation in history.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On November 25, as Taliban prisoners were moved into Qala-i-Jangi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, a few Taliban attacked their Northern Alliance guards. This incident triggered a revolt by 600 prisoners, who soon seized the southern half of the fortress, including an armory stocked with AK-47s, RPGs and crew-served weapons. Johnny Micheal Spann, one of two CIA SAD operatives at the fortress who had been interrogating prisoners, was killed, marking America's first combat death.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The other CIA operator, Dave Olson, managed to make contact with CENTCOM, which relayed his request for assistance to SOF troops at a TF Dagger safe house in Mazar-i-Sharif. The safe house housed members of Delta Force, some Green Berets and a small team from M squadron SBS. A quick reaction force was immediately formed from whoever was in the safe house at the time: a headquarters element from 3rd Battalion, 5th SFG, a pair of USAF liaison officers, a handful of CIA SAD operators and the SBS team. The 8-man SBS team arrived in Land Rovers and the Green Berets and CIA operatives arrived in minivans and began engaging the prisoners, fighting a pitched battle to suppress the uprising, letting Olson escape. The operators then turned their attention to recovering Spann's body. Over the course of four days the battle continued, with Green Berets calling in multiple airstrikes on the Taliban prisoners. During one CAS mission a Joint Direct Attack Munition was misdirected and hit the ground close to the Coalition and Northern Alliance positions, wounding five Green Berets and four SBS operators.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: AC-130 gunships kept up aerial bombardments throughout the night. The following day (November 27) the siege was broken when Northern Alliance T-55 tanks were brought into the central courtyard to fire shells into several block houses containing Taliban fighters. Fighting continued sporadically throughout the week, and the Taliban were finished by Dostrum's Northern Alliance forces. The combined Green Beret–SBS team recovered Spann's body on November 26.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The revolt ended on December 1 after seven days of fighting. 86 Taliban survived out of 1,000 that had been in the prison, and around 50 Northern Alliance soldiers were killed.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: ODA 574 and Hamid Karzai began moving on Kandahar, gathering fighters from friendly local Pashtun tribes. At the strategic Sayd-Aum-Kalay Bridge they fought for two days with the Taliban, eventually seizing it with the help of US airpower, opening the road to Kandahar.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: ODA 583 had infiltrated the Shin-Narai Valley southeast of Kandahar to support Gul Agha Sherzai, the former governor of Kandahar. The ODA established covert observation posts by November 24, allowing them to call in fire on Taliban positions. By the end of November, Kandahar was the Taliban's last stronghold, and was coming under increasing pressure. Nearly 3,000 tribal fighters under Karzai and 350 under Sherzai pressured Taliban forces from the east and cut off northern supply lines to Kandahar.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 US Marines ferried in by CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters and C-130s set up a Forward Operating Base known as Camp Rhino in the desert south of Kandahar on November 25 (Camp Rhino was located at Objective Rhino, the same airstrip seized by the Rangers on October 19). On November 26, 15 Taliban armored vehicles approached the base and were attacked by helicopter gunships, destroying many of them.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On December 5, a GPS-guided bomb landed among the Green Berets from ODA 574, killing 3 members and wounding the rest of the team. Over 20 of Karzai's militia were also killed and Karzai himself was slightly wounded. A Delta Force unit that had been operating nearby on a classified reconnaissance mission arrived in their Pinzgauers and secured the site, while Delta medics treated the wounded Green Berets.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On December 6, Karzai was informed that he would be the next president of Afghanistan. He also negotiated the successful surrender of both the remaining Taliban forces and the city of Kandahar. Karzai's militia began their final push to clear the city. The US government rejected amnesty for Omar or any Taliban leaders. On December 7, Sherzai's forces seized Kandahar airport and moved into the city. Omar departed Kandahar and disappeared; he may have gone to Zabul, Helmand, or Pakistan. Other Taliban leaders fled to Pakistan through the remote passes of Paktia and Paktika.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In early December, as the US invasion was almost over, 7,500 Taliban prisoners were transported from Kunduz to Sheberghan prison by Junbish-i Milli, a group led by Dostum. Hundreds to 3,000 of the Taliban prisoners suffocated in the overcrowded metal shipping containers on trucks or were shot dead in an incident known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre. Some were shot dead when guards shot air holes into the containers. The dead were buried in graves in the Dasht-i-Leili desert just west of Sheberghan, in the Jowzjan Province. Physicians for Human Rights discovered the mass grave in 2002, but the Bush administration discouraged attempts to investigate the incident.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: After the fall of Kabul and Kandahar, suspected al-Qaeda members, including bin Laden and other key leaders, withdrew to Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province. From there they moved into the Tora Bora region of the Spin Ghar (White Mountains), 20 km away from the Pakistan border, which had a network of caves and prepared defenses used by the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. Signal intercepts and interrogation of captured Taliban fighters and al-Qaeda terrorists pointed towards the presence of significant numbers of foreign fighters and possible senior leaders in the area. Instead of committing conventional forces, both the White House and the Pentagon decided to isolate and destroy al-Qaeda elements in the area with the US SOF supporting locally recruited Afghan militias, due to a fear of repeating the Soviet's experience in the area.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: ODA 572 and a CIA team were dispatched to Tora Bora to advise eastern anti-Taliban militias under the command of two warlords: Hazrat Ali and Mohammed Zaman. Hazrat Ali and Zaman distrusted each other, and during the battle their militias sometimes shot at each other. Using CIA funds, some 1,000 Afghan fighters were recruited for the coming battle. The leader of the CIA team was Gary Berntsen, who in November had replaced Gary Schroen as the senior CIA officer in Afghanistan. On December 2 Berntsen requested a battalion of Rangers be dropped into the mountains to establish blocking positions along potential escape routes out of Tora Bora into Pakistan. In addition to the Rangers, other available forces included 1,000 Marines under Brigadier General Jim Mattis in Kandahar and soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in Uzbekistan. Franks denied Berntsen's request.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: From the outset of the battle, ODA 572 with its attached Combat Controller called in precision airstrikes, whilst the Afghans launched a number of poorly executed attacks on established al-Qaeda positions, with limited success. The militias would typically gain ground in the morning following US airstrikes, but relinquish control of those gains the same day. They would also retreat to their base areas to sleep and break their fast each night, since the battle occurred during Ramadan, the month when Muslims do not eat or drink during the day. With the Afghan offensive stalled and the CIA and ODA teams overstretched, Franks decided to deploy special operations soldiers from JSOC into the battle on December 9.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Forty operators from A Squadron Delta Force deployed forward to Tora Bora and assumed tactical command of the battle from the CIA. With the Delta squadron were a dozen of so members of the British SBS. The Delta operators were deployed in small teams embedded within the militias and sent their own operators out to search for bin Laden. Eventually, with the assistance of Green Berets and CIA operators, the militias made progress. The Delta squadron commander agreed with the Jawbreaker assessment of the situation and requested blocking forces or the scattering of aerial landmines to deny mountain passes to the enemy. Since the deployment of the Ranger battalion had been denied, he requested that his operators carryout the proposed role but all his requests were denied by General Franks. On December 12, two weeks into the battle, Zaman opened negotiations with the trapped al-Qaeda and Taliban in Tora Bora. Against the wishes of the Americans and British, Zaman called a temporary truce to allow al-Qaeda to surrender. This truce was a ruse to allow as many as several hundred al-Qaeda and members of the 055 Brigade to escape over night toward Pakistan. According to journalist Peter Bergen, bin Laden left Tora Bora on the night of December 12 and went to Kunar Province.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The following day, a handheld radio recovered from the body of a dead al-Qaeda fighter allowed members of the Delta squadron, SBS, CIA, and MI6 to hear bin Laden's voice – apparently apologizing to his followers for leading them to Tora Bora and giving his blessing for their surrender – thought to be a recording addressed to the terrorists that stayed to fight a rearguard action to allow bin Laden to escape. The leader of the CIA Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora believed that two large al-Qaeda groups escaped: the smaller group of 130 jihadis escaped east into Pakistan, while the second group including bin Laden and 200 Saudi and Yemeni jihadis took the route across the mountains to the town of Parachinar, Pakistan. The Delta squadron commander believed that bin Laden crossed the border into Pakistan sometime around December 16. A Delta reconnaissance team, call-sign 'Jackal', spotted a tall man wearing a camouflage jacket with a large number of fighters entering a cave. The team called in multiple airstrikes on the presumption that it was bin Laden, but later DNA analysis from the remains did not match bin Laden's. With the majority of the enemy gone, the battle came to an end on December 17.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On December 20, ODA 561 was inserted into the White Mountains to support ODA 572 in gathering intelligence in the caves and to assist with recovering DNA samples from terrorist bodies. US and UK forces continued searching into January, but no sign of al-Qaeda leadership emerged. An estimated 220 al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the battle and 52 prisoners were taken. No American or British personnel were killed.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In subsequent years, the military was heavily criticized for not deploying ground forces into Tora Bora to capture bin Laden. According to journalist Sean Naylor, Franks opposed the idea because he was "obsessed with not repeating the Soviets' mistake of deploying large conventional formations into Afghanistan," believing it would provoke popular resistance. Another possible explanation is that his attention was elsewhere – Franks spent December 12, the day bin Laden may have escaped, briefing Secretary Rumsfeld on his plan for invading Iraq. There were also logistical obstacles: airlift assets in Afghanistan were limited, so transporting a large ground force to the Spin Ghar and resupplying it was "essentially impossible," according to an official Army history. Mattis, however, developed a plan that he thought logistically feasible – to drop artillery observers on the mountain passes with five days of sustainment to reduce resupply requirements.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In late November 2001 the United Nations hosted the Bonn Conference; the Taliban were excluded, while three Afghan opposition groups participated. Observers included representatives of neighboring and other involved major countries. The resulting Bonn Agreement created the Afghan Interim Authority and outlined the Bonn Process that would lead towards a new constitution and a new Afghan government. Following the Bonn Conference, tribal leaders and former exiles established an interim government in Kabul under Hamid Karzai.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: The Costs of War Project at Brown University estimated that between 1,537 and 2,375 civilians were killed during the invasion. Northern Alliance casualties are unknown. United States casualties were 12 military personnel and one CIA officer (Mike Spann), while the Taliban suffered 8,000 to 12,000 killed. According to Human Rights Watch, during the invasion the Northern Alliance "carried out systematic attacks on Pashtun villages, raping women, summarily executing civilians, and stealing livestock and land."


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: A landlocked country with forbidding terrain and a harsh climate, Afghanistan presents major difficulties for military operations. Prior to the war, the United States had no military bases in Central or South Asia. The initial CIA Jawbreaker team entered Afghanistan by helicopter from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, stopping to refuel in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The US established its main base at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base (known as K2) in Uzbekistan. Personnel and equipment were flown from the large American bases in Germany to K2 and then onward to Afghanistan. Pakistan granted the use of Shahbaz Air Base in Jacobabad as an auxiliary base, and the CIA flew Predator drones from both Jacobabad and Shamsi Airfield. Masirah Island off the coast of Oman served as the headquarters of Joint Special Operations Command, while the aircraft carrier USS "Kitty Hawk" in the Indian Ocean was used as a platform for helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment to fly special operations personnel into southern Afghanistan. Some B-52 bombers flew into Afghanistan from the island of Diego Garcia, and B-2 bombers flew nonstop from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri to Afghanistan.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: According to historian Carter Malkasian, the campaign was a "striking military success". The United States achieved its war aims while committing a force of only 110 CIA officers, 350 special operators, and 5,000 Rangers and Marines. The model of special forces working with local fighters and calling in precision air strikes was heavily used by the United States during later operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. One explanation for the rapid victory is that in Afghan culture, fighters tend to defect to the winning side once its victory is seen as inevitable; as anthropologist Thomas Barfield puts it, "Just as the Taliban had come to power by persuading people that they were winners without fighting and buying the defection of wavering commanders with suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills, they lost the war in a reverse process." The pattern recurred during the 2021 Taliban offensive, when the US-backed government collapsed and a resurgent Taliban captured a dozen provincial capitals in a week before it entered Kabul unopposed.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Scholars have disputed the legality of the invasion under international law. The United States and its allies argued that the invasion was an act of self defense, which is legal according to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. The US sent a letter to the Security Council on October 7 stating that, "Afghanistan was harboring terrorists who attacked the United States, that further attacks might be anticipated, and that military action was needed to deter them." Legal scholar John Quigley has argued that the invasion was illegal because al-Qaeda, not Afghanistan, was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, and because there was no evidence that further terrorist attacks were imminent. Sean Murphy made the opposite case, that Afghanistan was responsible for the actions of al-Qaeda because it allowed al-Qaeda to operate from its territory and refused to extradite al-Qaeda operatives. The debate continued with the 2009 publication of Myra Williamson’s "Terrorism, War and International Law: The Legality of the Use of Force Against Afghanistan in 2001". Williamson analyzed the legal questions raised by state responses to terrorism and the implications of the Afghanistan precedent for later conflicts such as the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq and the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In October 2001 when the invasion began, polls indicated that about 88% of Americans and about 65% of Britons backed military action. An Ipsos-Reid poll conducted between November and December 2001 showed that majorities in Canada (66%), France (60%), Germany (60%), Italy (58%), and the UK (65%) approved of US airstrikes while majorities in Argentina (77%), China (52%), South Korea (50%), Spain (52%), and Turkey (70%) opposed them. There were a number of protests against the invasion, including 20,000 people in Washington, D.C. on September 29 and 20,000 people in London on October 7. In Afghanistan, according to anthropologist Thomas Barfield, there was "a surprising level of popular support...for the US intervention, especially among non-Pashtuns." In November 2001, CNN reported widespread relief amongst Kabul's residents after the Taliban fled the city, with young men shaving off their beards and women taking off their burqas.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: On December 20, 2001, the United Nations authorized an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), with a mandate to help the Afghans maintain security in Kabul and surrounding areas. For its first years ISAF consisted of 8,000 American and 5,000 coalition soldiers and its mandate did not extend beyond the Kabul area. In February 2002, the US detected a large concentration of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the eastern Shah-i-Kot Valley. Coalition forces cleared the valley during Operation Anaconda in March 2002, which resulted in 8 US soldiers killed and 80 wounded.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: US forces established their main base at Bagram airbase just north of Kabul. Kandahar airport also became an important US base, and outposts were established in eastern provinces to hunt for Taliban and al-Qaeda fugitives. Following Operation Anaconda, al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters established sanctuaries on the Pakistani border, where they launched cross-border raids beginning in April 2002.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld aimed to carry out operations in Afghanistan rapidly and leave as fast as possible. He thus wished to focus on kinetic counter-terrorism operations and building up a new Afghan Army. Rumsfeld announced in mid-2002 that "The war is over in Afghanistan," to the disbelief of State Department, CIA, and military officials in the country. As a result, Rumsfeld downplayed the need for an Afghan army of even 70,000 troops, far fewer than the 250,000 envisaged by Karzai.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: In February 2002, the National Security Council met to decide whether to expand ISAF beyond Kabul. In a dispute between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's view—that the force should not be expanded—prevailed. Historians later wrote that the failure of ISAF to be deployed beyond Kabul drove Karzai to offer positions within the state to potential spoilers whose activities did great harm to the state's reputation. Because the rise of the Taliban insurgency was linked to grievances over governance, this became a serious problem.


title: United States invasion of Afghanistan

text: Several events in early 2002, taken together, can be seen as the conclusion of the first phase of the US-led war in Afghanistan. The first was the dispersal of the major groups of the Taliban and al-Qaeda after the end of Anaconda. In February 2002 the United States decided to not expand international security forces beyond Kabul. President Bush made his speech at the Virginia Military Institute on April 17, 2002, invoking General George Marshall while talking about Afghan reconstruction, resulting in discussion of a 'Marshall Plan' for Afghanistan. The decision against a significant expansion of international presence and development assistance was later seen by historians as a major error. The US's growing commitment to Iraq, however, was absorbing more and more resources, which in hindsight would have made committing such resources to Afghanistan impossible.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Leland Tyler Wayne (born September 16, 1993), professionally known as Metro Boomin, is an American record producer, record executive, and DJ. He is known for his dark production style and its influence on modern hip hop and trap.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Raised in St. Louis, Wayne began his music career as a producer in 2009, at age 16; he relocated to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College in 2011 and continued to work extensively with Atlanta-based artists Young Thug, Future, 21 Savage, Gucci Mane, and Migos. Wayne gained mainstream success after producing the song "Tuesday" by iLoveMakonnen and Drake, which reached number 12 on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100. Wayne subsequently produced the U.S. top-20 singles "Jumpman" by Drake and Future and "Low Life" by Future featuring the Weeknd before attaining his first number one with "Bad and Boujee" by Migos. He followed this with "Congratulations" by Post Malone, "Tunnel Vision" by Kodak Black, "Mask Off" by Future, "Bank Account" by 21 Savage and his second U.S. number one "Heartless" by the Weeknd.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Wayne released the collaborations "Savage Mode" (2016) and "Savage Mode II" (2020) with 21 Savage, "DropTopWop" (2017) with Gucci Mane, "Perfect Timing" (2017) with Nav, "Double or Nothing" (2017) with Big Sean. Wayne's debut studio album "Not All Heroes Wear Capes" (2018) debuted at number one on the U.S. "Billboard" 200. He released his second album, "Heroes & Villains", in 2022.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Leland Tyler Wayne was born on September 16, 1993, in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended Parkway North High School. He has four siblings. After a brief in the seventh grade at age 13. This happened when his mother bought him a laptop and he got a copy of the music production software FruityLoops. In high school, he produced out five beats a day. Initially, Wayne wanted to rap, and started making beats so that he could have music to rap over. However, he eventually turned his full attention toward hip hop production. As he continued to hone his production skills, while still in high school, he began to utilize online social media platforms, such as Twitter, to network with more established rap artists as well as beat submissions for potential music placements.


title: Metro Boomin

text: During high school, Metro's mother would often drive him for over eight hours from St. Louis to Atlanta to collaborate with artists he met online. One of the first artists with whom he worked was Bricksquad Monopoly rapper Tay Don which led him to collaborate with Bricksquad label artists such as OJ da Juiceman, Gucci Mane, and eventually his frequent collaborator Future, an artist that he continues to collaborate with to this day. Upon graduating high school, Metro Boomin moved to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College, studying Business Management. He chose to take a hiatus from school after a semester, because the schedule demands of a full-time music career became too much to balance. Metro has collaborated with artists including Nicki Minaj, Ludacris, Juicy J, Yo Gotti, 21 Savage, Wiz Khalifa, Chief Keef, The Weeknd, YG, Young Jeezy, Meek Mill, Travis Scott, Ace Hood, Young Scooter, Young Thug, Lil Durk, Rich Homie Quan, Trinidad James, Drake, Lana Del Rey, Lil Uzi Vert, Migos, DJ Khaled, Schoolboy Q, Post Malone, Nav, Swae Lee, Gunna, Lil Wayne, Waka Flocka Flame, and Kanye West. Metro also regularly collaborates with other modern hip hop producers, including Sonny Digital, 808 Mafia, Southside, Zaytoven, Young Chop, DJ Spinz and Tay Keith on "Not All Heroes Wear Capes".


title: Metro Boomin

text: Metro Boomin has worked extensively with rapper Future. The two first worked together on a song called "Hard", included on DJ Esco's "Welcome 2 Mollyworld" mixtape, and have collaborated on numerous songs since, including two singles from Future's second album, "Honest", the album's lead single, "Karate Chop", and title track, "Honest", co-produced by DJ Spinz.


title: Metro Boomin

text: In May 2013, Metro announced his debut mixtape, "19 & Boomin". Following warm-up singles, featuring artists like Trinidad James, Gucci Mane, and others, Metro released the mixtape, hosted by mixtape website LiveMixtapes, on October 7, 2013. The mixtape, all original songs, included "Maison Margiela", featuring Future, and "Some More", featuring Young Thug, both of which were subsequently released as music videos.


title: Metro Boomin

text: In March 2014, Metro and Young Thug announced that they would release a collaborative album, performed and released under the moniker "Metro Thuggin". The album was to be self-titled and was planned to be released sometime in 2015. Along with the announcement, Metro Thuggin released the collaborative track, "The Blanguage". The 'Metro Thuggin' project was ultimately scrapped. Photographer Cam Kirk claims to have a copy of the complete, finished album. A few leaked tracks from the project were found circulating the internet in late 2015, yet an official mixtape has never surfaced.


title: Metro Boomin

text: In 2014, Metro made an appearance on Nicki Minaj's third studio album, "The Pinkprint", producing the track "Want Some More".


title: Metro Boomin

text: In October 2014, Metro executive produced Future's "Monster" mixtape. This spawned the first appearance of the single "Fuck Up Some Commas". Metro produced the sixth single from Future's "Honest", "I Won", which features Kanye West. The song became a single a month after the album was released.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Metro served as executive producer for Drake and Future's collaborative mixtape "What a Time to Be Alive", released on September 20, 2015. In addition, he produced or co-produced seven of the 11 tracks on the mixtape.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Metro served alongside DJ Esco as executive producer for Future's 2016 mixtape, "Purple Reign". In 2016, he won Producer of the Year at the BET Hip Hop Awards.


title: Metro Boomin

text: In 2016, Metro Boomin was credited with produced charting hits such as "Jumpman" by Future and Drake, "Bad and Boujee" by Migos, "Low Life" by Future and The Weeknd, and the 21 Savage collaboration "X". That year, he contributed to Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo", and he and 21 Savage released the EP "Savage Mode". In 2017, he produced charting singles such as "Tunnel Vision" by Kodak Black, "Bounce Back" by Big Sean, "Mask Off" by Future, and "Bank Account" by 21 Savage.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On July 14, 2017, Metro and rapper and fellow record producer Nav released two singles, "Perfect Timing (Intro)" and "Call Me", the dual lead singles from their collaborative mixtape, "Perfect Timing". The mixtape was released by Boominati Worldwide, XO, and Republic Records, one week later, on July 21. It features guest appearances from Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, Offset, 21 Savage, Belly, and Gucci Mane.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On October 31, 2017, Metro and rappers 21 Savage and Offset released their collaborative studio album, "Without Warning", as a surprise release. On the same day, "Ric Flair Drip", performed by Metro and Offset was released as the lead single. The album features guest appearances from Travis Scott and Quavo.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On November 3, 2017, Metro and rapper Big Sean released a single titled "Pull Up n Wreck", featuring rapper 21 Savage, the lead single from their collaborative studio album, "Double or Nothing". The mixtape was released on December 8, 2017. It features guest appearances from Travis Scott, 2 Chainz, 21 Savage, Kash Doll, Young Thug, and Swae Lee. On February 13, 2018, "So Good", featuring Kash Doll became the lead single.


title: Metro Boomin

text: In January 2018, Metro Boomin was featured in a Gap campaign with singer SZA, alongside a self-produced remix of "Hold Me Now". The remix was released to digital platforms on the same day as the campaign. In an interview with "XXL", explaining the campaign with Gap and the remix, he stated;


title: Metro Boomin

text: In April 2018, Metro Boomin announced his "retirement" from rap on his Instagram page, changing his bio to "Retired record producer/DJ". However, he since garnered production credits on Nicki Minaj's fourth studio album "Queen", as well as Minaj's labelmate Lil Wayne, on his twelfth studio album, "Tha Carter V", which both debuted in the top 5 of the "Billboard" 200.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On October 26, 2018, multiple billboards appeared in Atlanta and New York depicting Metro Boomin as a "missing person". It was later revealed to be a teaser for his debut studio album, "Not All Heroes Wear Capes", for his comeback, which he had been working on since 2015. The album was released on November 2, 2018, and features guest appearances from Gucci Mane, Travis Scott, 21 Savage, Swae Lee, Gunna, Young Thug, Wizkid, J. Balvin, Offset, Kodak Black, and Drake. "Not All Heroes Wear Capes" debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 and number 16 on the UK Top 40 Albums.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On November 27, 2019, he co-produced The Weeknd's fourth "Billboard" Hot 100 number-one single "Heartless", with Illangelo and Dre Moon. The song was released as the lead single from the singer's fourth studio album, "After Hours" (2020). Metro also helped produce three other tracks on the album, "Escape from LA", "Faith" and "Until I Bleed Out".


title: Metro Boomin

text: On September 29, 2020, Metro and 21 Savage announced their fourth collaborative project, "Savage Mode II", a sequel to their EP, "Savage Mode" (2016). It features guest appearances from Drake, Young Thug, and Young Nudy. On October 13, 2020, the dual lead singles became "Runnin" and "Mr. Right Now", the latter of which features Drake. The album was released on October 2, 2020, and debuted atop on the "Billboard" 200 chart, earning both artists their second number-one albums, which were also back-to-back for both artists.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On November 22, 2022, Metro announced the title of his upcoming second studio album: "Heroes & Villains", which released on December 2. On November 30, he released an accompanying short film preview for the album. The film was directed by Gibson Hazard and featured appearances by Metro, Gunna, LaKeith Stanfield, Morgan Freeman, and Young Thug.


title: Metro Boomin

text: The album was released on December 2, 2022 with guest appearances from John Legend, Future, Chris Brown, Don Toliver, Travis Scott, Young Nudy, The Weeknd, 21 Savage, Young Thug, Mustafa, A$AP Rocky, Takeoff, and Gunna. The album was received well by audiences, with many considering it Metro's best work to date and complimenting the production and featured artists' performances.


title: Metro Boomin

text: On December 13, 2022, Metro was confirmed to be working on the music for the upcoming by screenwriters Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Specializing in the trap sub-genre of hip hop, Metro Boomin utilizes a distinctive mix of heavy bass, rattling synthetic percussion and dark, gothic melodies. Metro Boomin hardly strays from hip hop, although he has produced 4 tracks from The Weeknd's R&B album "After Hours"; in addition, he has also remixed pop songs such as "Hold Me Now" (produced as a Gap marketing collaboration).


title: Metro Boomin

text: In hip hop music, producers may choose to mark their work with a producer tag, a catchy shout-out usually placed at the beginning of a song which allows listeners to recognize and appreciate certain producers.


title: Metro Boomin

text: One of Boomin's tags, "Metro Boomin want some more, nigga", originates from vocals of the Boomin-produced song "Some More" by Young Thug, and received widespread attention in early 2016.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Metro's most prominent and iconic tag "If Young Metro don't trust you I'm gon' shoot you" is performed by Future. The origin of the tag comes from the song "Right Now" by Uncle Murda, also produced by Boomin. The tag appeared first in Drake's 2015 song, "Jumpman" from the collaborative mixtape "What a Time to Be Alive", and gained widespread attention after its use in the Migos hit "Bad and Boujee".


title: Metro Boomin

text: Metro is known for his tag "Young Metro, young Metro, young Metro" spoken by his longtime collaborator Future. Boomin' often references "3x" or "Young Metro 3x" as a nod to this signature tag.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Another one of Boomin's tags is just "Metro!", originally spoken by Young Thug on his song "Hercules". The tag can be most prominently heard at the beginning of the Metro produced song "Mr. Right Now" by 21 Savage and Drake, off the 2020 cut "Savage Mode II," as well as appearing various times in "Heroes & Villains".


title: Metro Boomin

text: Boomin's latest tag "Metro in this bitch goin' brazy" can be heard in the track 'More M's' from 21 Savage's and Drake's album "Her Loss". The tag originated from the track "No Opp Left Behind" from 21 Savage's album "Savage Mode II".


title: Metro Boomin

text: Wayne's mother, Leslie Joanne Wayne, was killed in a murder-suicide by his stepfather on June 5, 2022.


title: Metro Boomin

text: Boominati Worldwide is a label owned by Metro Boomin. It was launched in June 2017 in partnership with Republic Records and Universal Music Group. Metro stated: "Launching Boominati Worldwide is the next step in my career as a producer, an artist and a businessman. I created the label to represent a collective of highly gifted individuals who have the shared gift of being able to influence the world through culture and art".


title: Ellipsis

text: The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term originates from the , meaning 'leave out'.


title: Ellipsis

text: Opinions differ as to how to render ellipses in printed material. According to "The Chicago Manual of Style", it should consist of three periods, each separated from its neighbor by a non-breaking space: . According to the "AP Stylebook", the periods should be rendered with no space between them: . A third option is to use the Unicode character U+2026 .


title: Ellipsis

text: The ellipsis is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or (colloquially) "dot-dot-dot". Depending on their context and placement in a sentence, ellipses can indicate an unfinished thought, a leading statement, a slight pause, an echoing voice, or a nervous or awkward silence. Aposiopesis is the use of an ellipsis to trail off into silence—for example: "But I thought he was..." When placed at the end of a sentence, an ellipsis may be used to suggest melancholy or longing.


title: Ellipsis

text: The most common forms of an ellipsis include a row of three periods or full points or a precomposed triple-dot glyph, the horizontal ellipsis . Style guides often have their own rules governing the use of ellipses. For example, "The Chicago Manual of Style" ("Chicago" style) recommends that an ellipsis be formed by typing three periods, each with a space on both sides , while the "Associated Press Stylebook" ("AP" style) puts the dots together, but retains a space before and after the group, thus: . Whether an ellipsis at the end of a sentence needs a fourth dot to finish the sentence is a matter of debate; "Chicago" advises it, as does the "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" (APA style), while some other style guides do not; the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" and related works treat this style as optional, saying that it "may" be used.


title: Ellipsis

text: When text is omitted following a sentence, a normal full stop (period) terminates the sentence, and then a separate three-dot ellipsis is commonly used to indicate one or more subsequent omitted sentences before continuing a longer quotation. "Business Insider" magazine suggests this style and it is also used in many academic journals. The "Associated Press Stylebook" favors this approach.


title: Ellipsis

text: In her book on the ellipsis, "Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission", Anne Toner suggests that the first use of the punctuation in the English language dates to a 1588 translation of Terence's "Andria", by Maurice Kyffin. In this case, however, the ellipsis consists not of dots but of short dashes. "Subpuncting" of medieval manuscripts also denotes omitted meaning and may be related.


title: Ellipsis

text: Occasionally, it would be used in pulp fiction and other works of early 20th-century fiction to denote expletives that would otherwise have been censored.


title: Ellipsis

text: An ellipsis may also imply an unstated alternative indicated by context. For example, "I never drink wine ..." implies that the speaker does drink something elsesuch as vodka.


title: Ellipsis

text: In poetry, an ellipsis is used as a thought-pause or line break at the caesura or this is used to highlight sarcasm or make the reader think about the last points in the poem.


title: Ellipsis

text: In news reporting, often put inside square brackets, it is used to indicate that a quotation has been condensed for space, brevity or relevance, as in "The President said that [...] he would not be satisfied", where the exact quotation was "The President said that, for as long as this situation continued, he would not be satisfied".


title: Ellipsis

text: Herb Caen, Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist for the "San Francisco Chronicle", became famous for his "three-dot journalism".


title: Ellipsis

text: "The Chicago Manual of Style" suggests the use of an ellipsis for any omitted word, phrase, line, or paragraph from within but not at the end of a quoted passage. There are two commonly used methods of using ellipses: one uses three dots for any omission, while the second one makes a distinction between omissions within a sentence (using three dots: . . .) and omissions between sentences (using a period and a space followed by three dots: . ...). The Chicago Style Q&A recommends that writers avoid using the precomposed  (U+2026) character in manuscripts and to place three periods plus two nonbreaking spaces (. . .) instead, leaving the editor, publisher, or typographer to replace them later.


title: Ellipsis

text: The Modern Language Association (MLA) used to indicate that an ellipsis must include spaces before and after each dot in all uses. If an ellipsis is meant to represent an omission, square brackets must surround the ellipsis to make it clear that there was no pause in the original quote: . Currently, the MLA has removed the requirement of brackets in its style handbooks. However, some maintain that the use of brackets is still correct because it clears confusion.


title: Ellipsis

text: The MLA now indicates that a three-dot, spaced ellipsis should be used for removing material from within one sentence within a quote. When crossing sentences (when the omitted text contains a period, so that omitting the end of a sentence counts), a four-dot, spaced (except for before the first dot) ellipsis should be used. When ellipsis points are used in the original text, ellipsis points that are not in the original text should be distinguished by enclosing them in square brackets (e.g. ).


title: Ellipsis

text: According to the Associated Press, the ellipsis should be used to condense quotations. It is less commonly used to indicate a pause in speech or an unfinished thought or to separate items in material such as show business gossip. The stylebook indicates that if the shortened sentence before the mark can stand as a sentence, it should do so, with an ellipsis placed after the period or other ending punctuation. When material is omitted at the end of a paragraph and also immediately following it, an ellipsis goes both at the end of that paragraph and at the beginning of the next, according to this style.


title: Ellipsis

text: According to Robert Bringhurst's "Elements of Typographic Style", the details of typesetting ellipses depend on the character and size of the font being set and the typographer's preference. Bringhurst writes that a full space between each dot is "another Victorian eccentricity. In most contexts, the Chicago ellipsis is much too wide"—he recommends using flush dots (with a normal word space before and after), or "thin"-spaced dots (up to one-fifth of an em), or the prefabricated ellipsis character . Bringhurst suggests that normally an ellipsis should be spaced fore-and-aft to separate it from the text, but when it combines with other punctuation, the leading space disappears and the other punctuation follows. This is the usual practice in typesetting. He provides the following examples:


title: Ellipsis

text: In legal writing in the United States, Rule 5.3 in the "Bluebook" citation guide governs the use of ellipses and requires a space before the first dot and between the two subsequent dots. If an ellipsis ends the sentence, then there are three dots, each separated by a space, followed by the final punctuation (e.g. ). In some legal writing, an ellipsis is written as three asterisks, or , to make it obvious that text has been omitted or to signal that the omitted text extends beyond the end of the paragraph.


title: Ellipsis

text: "The Oxford Style Guide" recommends setting the ellipsis as a single character or as a series of three (narrow) spaced dots surrounded by spaces, thus: . If there is an ellipsis at the end of an incomplete sentence, the final full stop is omitted. However, it is retained if the following ellipsis represents an omission between two complete sentences.


title: Ellipsis

text: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. … And if they have not died, they are still alive today.


title: Ellipsis

text: Contrary to "The Oxford Style Guide", the "University of Oxford Style Guide" demands an ellipsis not to be surrounded by spaces, except when it stands for a pause; then, a space has to be set after the ellipsis (but not before). An ellipsis is never preceded or followed by a full stop.


title: Ellipsis

text: When applied in Polish syntax, the ellipsis is called , literally 'multidot'. The word "wielokropek" distinguishes the ellipsis of Polish syntax from that of mathematical notation, in which it is known as an . When an ellipsis replaces a fragment omitted from a quotation, the ellipsis is enclosed in parentheses or square brackets. An unbracketed ellipsis indicates an interruption or pause in speech. The syntactic rules for ellipses are standardized by the 1983 Polska Norma document PN-83/P-55366, (Rules for Setting Texts in Polish).


title: Ellipsis

text: The combination "ellipsis+period" is replaced by the ellipsis. The combinations "ellipsis+exclamation mark" and "ellipsis+question mark" are written in this way: !.. ?..


title: Ellipsis

text: The most common character corresponding to an ellipsis is called "3"-ten rīdā (""3"-dot leaders", ). 2-ten rīdā exists as a character, but it is used less commonly. In writing, the ellipsis consists usually of six dots (two "3"-ten rīdā characters, ). Three dots (one "3"-ten rīdā character) may be used where space is limited, such as in a header. However, variations in the number of dots exist. In horizontally written text the dots are commonly vertically centered within the text height (between the baseline and the ascent line), as in the standard Japanese Windows fonts; in vertically written text the dots are always centered horizontally. As the Japanese word for dot is pronounced "", the dots are colloquially called "" (, akin to the English "dot dot dot").


title: Ellipsis

text: In text in Japanese media, such as in manga or video games, ellipses are much more frequent than in English, and are often changed to another punctuation sign in translation. The ellipsis by itself represents speechlessness, or a "pregnant pause". Depending on the context, this could be anything from an admission of guilt to an expression of being dumbfounded at another person's words or actions. As a device, the "ten-ten-ten" is intended to focus the reader on a character while allowing the character to not speak any dialogue. This conveys to the reader a focus of the narrative "camera" on the silent subject, implying an expectation of some motion or action. It is not unheard of to see inanimate objects "speaking" the ellipsis.


title: Ellipsis

text: In Chinese, the ellipsis is six dots (in two groups of three dots, occupying the same horizontal or vertical space as two characters) (i.e. ).


title: Ellipsis

text: In Spanish, the ellipsis is commonly used as a substitute of "et cetera" at the end of unfinished lists. So it means "and so forth" or "and other things".


title: Ellipsis

text: Other use is the suspension of a part of a text, or a paragraph, or a phrase or a part of a word because it is obvious, or unnecessary, or implied. For instance, sometimes the ellipsis is used to avoid the complete use of expletives.


title: Ellipsis

text: When the ellipsis is placed alone into a parenthesis (...) or—less often—between brackets [...], which is what happens usually within a text transcription, it means the original text had more contents on the same position but are not useful to our target in the transcription. When the suppressed text is at the beginning or at the end of a text, the ellipsis does not need to be placed in a parenthesis.


title: Ellipsis

text: In French, the ellipsis is commonly used at the end of lists to represent . In French typography, the ellipsis is written immediately after the preceding word, but has a space after it, for example: . If, exceptionally, it begins a sentence, there is a space before and after, for example: . However, any omitted word, phrase or line at the end of a quoted passage would be indicated as follows: [...] (space before and after the square brackets but not inside), for example: .


title: Ellipsis

text: In German, the ellipsis in general is surrounded by spaces, if it stands for one or more omitted words. On the other side there is no space between a letter or (part of) a word and an ellipsis, if it stands for one or more omitted letters, that should stick to the written letter or letters.


title: Ellipsis

text: Example for both cases, using German style: "The first el...is stands for omitted letters, the second ... for an omitted word."


title: Ellipsis

text: The suggests the use of an ellipsis () to indicate a pause longer than a period and, when placed between brackets, the omission of letters, words or phrases.


title: Ellipsis

text: In computer menu functions or buttons, an ellipsis means that upon selection more options (sometimes in the form of a dialog box) will be displayed, where the user can or must make a choice. If the ellipsis is absent, the function is immediately executed upon selection.


title: Ellipsis

text: For example, the menu item "Save" indicates that the file will be overwritten without further input, whereas "Save as..." indicates that a dialog follows where the user can, for example, select another location, file name, or format.


title: Ellipsis

text: Ellipses are also used as a separate button (particularly considering the limited screen area of mobile apps) to represent partially or completely hidden options. This usage may alternatively be described as a "More button" (see also hamburger button signifying completely hidden options).


title: Ellipsis

text: In mobile, web, and general application design, the vertical ellipsis, , is sometimes used as an interface element, where it is sometimes called a kebab icon. The element typically indicates that a navigation menu can be accessed when the element is activated, and is a smaller version of the hamburger icon (≡) which is a stylized rendering of a menu.


title: Ellipsis

text: An ellipsis is also often used in mathematics to mean "and so forth". In a list, between commas, or following a comma, a normal ellipsis is used, as in:


title: Ellipsis

text: To indicate the omission of values in a repeated operation, an ellipsis raised to the center of the line is used between two operation symbols or following the last operation symbol, as in:


title: Ellipsis

text: Sometimes, e.g. in Russian mathematical texts, normal, non-raised, ellipses are used even in repeated summations.


title: Ellipsis

text: The latter formula means the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to 100. However, it is not a formally defined mathematical symbol. Repeated summations or products may similarly be denoted using capital sigma and capital pi notation, respectively:


title: Ellipsis

text: Normally dots should be used only where the pattern to be followed is clear, the exception being to show the indefinite continuation of an irrational number such as:


title: Ellipsis

text: The diagonal and vertical forms of the ellipsis are particularly useful for showing missing terms in matrices, such as the size-"n" identity matrix:


title: Ellipsis

text: A two- or three-dot ellipsis is used as an operator in some programming languages. One of its most common uses is in defining ranges or sequences, for instance means all the numbers from 1 through 10. This is used in many languages, including Pascal, Modula, Oberon, Ada, Haskell, Perl, Ruby, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, Bash shell and F#. It is also used to indicate variadic functions in the C, C++ and Java languages. "See Ellipsis (programming operator)".


title: Ellipsis

text: The CSS codice_1 property can be set to codice_2, which cuts off text with an ellipsis when it overflows the content area.


title: Ellipsis

text: The ellipsis is a non-verbal cue that is often used in computer-mediated interactions, in particular in synchronous genres, such as chat. The reason behind its popularity is the fact that it allows people to indicate in writing several functions:


title: Ellipsis

text: Although an ellipsis is technically complete with three periods (...), its rise in popularity as a "trailing-off" or "silence" indicator, particularly in mid-20th-century comic strip and comic book prose writing, has led to expanded uses online. Today, extended ellipses anywhere from two to dozens of periods have become common constructions in Internet chat rooms and text messages. The extent of repetition in itself might serve as an additional contextualization or paralinguistic cue, to "extend the lexical meaning of the words, add character to the sentences, and allow fine-tuning and personalisation of the message".


title: Ellipsis

text: Unicode recognizes a series of three period characters (U+002E) as compatibility equivalent (though not canonical) to the horizontal ellipsis character.


title: Ellipsis

text: In HTML, the horizontal ellipsis character may be represented by the entity reference codice_3 (since HTML 4.0), and the vertical ellipsis character by the entity reference codice_4 (since HTML 5.0). Alternatively, in HTML, XML, and SGML, a numeric character reference such as codice_5 or codice_6 can be used.


title: Ellipsis

text: In LaTeX, note that the reverse orientation of codice_7 can be achieved with codice_8 provided by the codice_9 package: codice_10 yields .


title: Ellipsis

text: As with all characters, especially those outside the ASCII range, the author, sender and receiver of an encoded ellipsis must be in agreement upon what bytes are being used to represent the character. Naive text processing software may improperly assume that a particular encoding is being used, resulting in mojibake.


title: Ellipsis

text: In Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1), the ellipsis is used as an extension marker to indicate the possibility of type extensions in future revisions of a protocol specification. In a type constraint expression like codice_12 an ellipsis is used to separate the extension root from extension additions. The definition of type A in version 1 system of the form codice_13 and the definition of type A in version 2 system of the form codice_12 constitute an extension series of the same type A in different versions of the same specification. The ellipsis can also be used in compound type definitions to separate the set of fields belonging to the extension root from the set of fields constituting extension additions. Here is an example: codice_15


title: Ellipsis

text: In some Linux distributions, it can be inserted with (this produces an interpunct on other systems), or .


title: Ellipsis

text: In Chinese and sometimes in Japanese, ellipsis characters are made by entering two consecutive "horizontal ellipses", each with Unicode code point U+2026. In vertical texts, the application should rotate the symbol accordingly.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The Daily Stormer is an American far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial commentary and message board website that advocates for a second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website "Total Fascism", which had focused on his own long-form essays on fascism, race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. In contrast, "The Daily Stormer" relies heavily on quoted material with exaggerated headlines.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The site is known for its use of Internet memes, which have been likened to the imageboard 4chan and cited as attractions for a younger and more ideologically diverse audience. While some white nationalist authors have praised "The Daily Stormer"s reach, others have taken issue with its content and tone, accusing Anglin of being an agent provocateur, used to discredit true white nationalism.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" orchestrates what it calls the "Troll Army", which is involved in Internet trolling of figures with whom Anglin disagrees politically. In August 2017, after causing outrage by insulting the victim of a car-ramming homicide at the far-right Unite the Right rally, the website was rejected by several domain registrars. In August 2019, the site went offline temporarily when their service provider, BitMitigate, was cut off by their cloud infrastructure provider; the site found another provider.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In June 2019, a federal judge ordered Anglin to pay $4.1 million to comedian Dean Obeidallah, whom Anglin had falsely accused of orchestrating the Manchester Arena bombing. In July 2019, a federal magistrate recommended that Anglin pay $14 million to Tanya Gersh, a woman from Whitefish, Montana against whom Anglin had organized a targeted harassment campaign.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Andrew Anglin was born in 1984, and grew up near Columbus, Ohio. According to both Anglin and his childhood classmates, he was liberal as a youth. He attended the Linworth Alternative Program and the Worthington Kilbourne High School from 1999 to 2003, where he was remembered as a dreadlocked vegan. His friends in high school report that his behavior changed during his sophomore year at Linworth, where he exhibited self-harming behavior, and began to promote conspiracy theories. After high school, Anglin took classes at Columbus State Community College in 2003, and studied English at Ohio State University for one semester in 2004.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In 2006, Anglin launched a conspiracy theory website, "Outlaw Journalism", which was modeled after the works of Alex Jones and Hunter S. Thompson, whom Anglin admired.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In 2008, after posting on "Outlaw Journalism" that the only way for humanity to survive was to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, Anglin began traveling around Southeast Asia, eventually ending up in Davao City, in the Philippines. In 2011, he spent several weeks with a Tboli village in southern Mindanao, where he initially intended to stay permanently, selling some of his possessions to raise money for a dowry to marry two local Muslim women. In 2012, Anglin wrote that he found the locals to be "a civilized, non-aggressive and industrious people" but he eventually came to consider them too "primitive", became lonely and only wanted to associate with members of his own race, and "By the Grace of God, I found Adolf Hitler."


title: The Daily Stormer

text: In 2012, Anglin launched another website, "Adventure Quest 2012", which discussed conspiracy theories such as the existence of reptilian humanoids. He described the aim of the site as seeking to "mend the wounds produced by modern society ... and [help] the reader transcend these physical bonds and reach total ascendancy. To mend these wounds, the world must learn to embrace diversity and color." In 2014, he stated that although he agreed with the central tenets of Nazism, he had reservations over reintroducing all aspects of Hitler's regime. A self-proclaimed "troll", Anglin stated that he was introduced to Nazism on the online imageboard 4chan. Later in 2012, he launched his first neo-Nazi website, "Total Fascism". Feeling that "Total Fascism" was not appealing to a younger demographic and had articles that were too long, Anglin launched "The Daily Stormer" on July 4, 2013, with shorter articles and a more provocative style. Anglin said in March 2014 he spends 70 hours a week writing for the website.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: Anglin's location is not known. An investigative article by "The Huffington Post" in November 2016 analyzed his social media and FBI sources, and concluded that he was living in Germany. Rumors have also claimed that he is residing in Russia. In July 2017, Anglin told CNN he was residing in Lagos, Nigeria. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists the site as being headquartered in Worthington, Ohio, with activity in several other states. The website is registered in the name of Anglin's father Greg, who runs a Christian-inspired counseling service in Worthington.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" is primarily funded through donations which Anglin solicits regularly from site visitors. His father was protested against by Anti-Racist Action for receiving donations from the site's readers to pass on to his son. In February 2017, the website announced a corporate sponsor—Smerff Electrical, owned by Simon Hickey of Brisbane, Australia, whose website contains images of alt-right meme Pepe the Frog. Anglin told "Mother Jones" that he received donations from Silicon Valley, and that Santa Clara County, California was the largest source of traffic to his website.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: The site is believed to have received over $200,000 in Bitcoin contributions since it began accepting the cryptocurrency in 2014. A current cryptocurrency wallet has consistently kept approximately $80,000 in Bitcoin on hand. Money entering and being spent by the accounts is publicly tracked by a Twitter bot. A Twitter account supportive of the "Stormer" announced that Coinbase was deleting accounts of persons attempting to send Bitcoin to them; Coinbase stated in general terms that it "prohibits use of an account which would abuse, harass, threaten, or promote violence against others". On August 20, 2017, for example, Anglin received a donation of 14.88 bitcoin, the number being a reference to Fourteen Words, and to Adolf Hitler (H is the eighth letter, so "88" = "HH" = "Heil Hitler"). At the time, it was worth $60,000, but had Anglin kept the entire amount, it would have been worth about $235,000 by the end of the year.


title: The Daily Stormer

text: "The Daily Stormer" is run through a company called Moonbase Holdings, with Anglin saying that he chose the name so that donors could avoid scrutiny from their credit card companies. The company made $3,400 per month on the alt-right crowdfunding website Hatreon, which ceased operations in February 2017. In his defamation lawsuit against Anglin, Muslim American radio personality Dean Obeidallah requested that Moonbase Holdings be scrutinized to find any other individuals with connections to the company.