Afghanistan timeline December 2001
Nation-building in Afghanistan
- U.S. President George W. Bush named Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, a top-ranking Muslim in the U.S. government, as a special envoy to help Afghanistan recover from Taliban rule.
- Pashtun soldiers, once loyal to the Taliban, attacked 20 Uzbek troops walking toward Yol Abad, Afghanistan. The gun battle lasted 20 minutes. A soldier from each side died.
- Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul, as Afghan Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni and British Major General John McColl, who is to lead the international force, signed an agreement setting up an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
- In a US air-raid on a suspected arms dump, US bombs killed 107 civilians at a village near the town of Gardez. Witnesses found pools of blood, scraps of flesh and clumps of human hair among the destroyed houses. The U.S. military rejected the accusation.
- A US military spokesman said that the US was holding 180 prisoners from al-Qaeda or the Taliban; 164 are being held in Kandahar.
- An unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk surveilance drone crashed while returning from a mission supporting the war in Afghanistan. The aircraft was not shot down and plans were made to recover the wreckage.
- In the early hours, Qalaye Niazi was bombed by at least one U.S. jet, one B-52 bomber and two helicopters obliterating the village. The United Nations said the dead included 17 men, 10 women and 25 children, and quoted a reliable local source for the information that 52 people had been killed.
- At least 92 Afghan civilians were killed in the US bombing of Nizai Qala in Paktia province overnight.
- A videotape was released of Osama bin Laden in which he praised the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack in the United States.
- James Dobbins left Kabul after the inauguration of the new Afghan government.
- A 30-member six-month interim government headed by Pashtun royalist Hamid Karzai was installed.
- U.S. jets struck a convoy carrying tribal elders and guests en route to the ceremony in Kabul. U.S. officials insisted the convoy had opened fire on U.S. aircraft just before it was bombed, and that the convoy had been carrying leaders of al Qaeda the Taliban. Some 65 people were killed in that attack.
- The U.N. Security Council authorized the deployment of a deployment of the British-led force to help protect Afghanistan's new interim government, but restricted it to the Kabul area. The force was expected to reach its full strength of about 5,000 by the end of February, 2003.
- James Dobbins reopened the United States embassy in Afghanistan.
- After surrounding a giant cave complex in the eastern Afghan region of Tora Bora, United States and Afghan troops intercepted a radio transmission that was believed to have come from Osama bin Laden. U.S. warplanes blanketed the area with bombs.