The air campaign began at 12:30 a.m. local time on October 7, 2001. B-2 Stealth bombers launched from Diego Garcia, Tomahawk cruise missiles arced across the night sky, and F-16s roared off from bases in Central Asia. The target was Taliban air defenses, command and control facilities, and al-Qaeda training camps. The campaign was called Infinite Justice (later renamed Enduring Freedom after complaints that the original name offended Muslims).

What was remarkable about the first weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom was not the air campaign—significant as it was—but the partnership on the ground. The CIA had been building relationships with the Northern Alliance, the coalition of mujahedeen groups that had fought the Taliban since their rise to power in 1996. The Northern Alliance held territory in the north of Afghanistan and had never fully surrendered to Taliban rule.

The Taliban had never fully conquered Afghanistan. They controlled most of the country and its major cities, but the Panjshir Valley and the northern regions remained contested. When 9/11 happened and the U.S. began planning its response, the Northern Alliance became the obvious ground partner. They had fighters, they had knowledge of the terrain, and they had motivation.

The CIA's Special Activities Division deployed paramilitary officers—case officers with combat training—to work with the Northern Alliance. The most famous was a man known as "Jawbreaker," Gary Schroen, the CIA's veteran Afghanistan hand. He arrived in the Panjshir Valley with a team in early September, before the air campaign even began, to assess the Northern Alliance's capability and begin coordinating what would come next.

The operation that unfolded was unconventional. It was not a traditional invasion with massed infantry formations. Instead, it was a combination of:

Precision air strikes against Taliban positions and al-Qaeda training camps. Highly trained CIA paramilitaries and special forces advisors embedded with Northern Alliance units. American air power called in by spotters on the ground. Cash payments to local commanders to secure their support. The element of surprise and the psychological impact of U.S. military involvement.

The first major success came at Mazar-i-Sharif in early November 2001. The city, long held by the Taliban, fell to the Northern Alliance with U.S. air support. The Taliban commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum, switched sides (he would defect multiple times during the war, depending on which way the wind was blowing). The fall of Mazar-i-Sharif opened the way to Kabul.

By November 13, just 37 days after the air campaign began, the Taliban had abandoned Kabul. The Northern Alliance entered the capital. Journalists who had expected a long, grinding war were shocked. The rapidity of the Taliban's collapse seemed to confirm what the proponents of military technology and airpower had always believed: with superior firepower, strategy, and the right local partners, a modern military could achieve quick victories.

The Taliban were not entirely defeated, however. They withdrew south and east, toward their traditional stronghold in Kandahar and toward the mountain regions near Pakistan. Al-Qaeda fighters and senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, escaped to Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, whom everyone assumed would be captured in the mountains, also escaped.

By December 2001, the major cities of Afghanistan were back in American hands (figuratively) and the Taliban government had fallen. The operation had cost relatively few American lives—fewer than 200 killed in action during the entire campaign—and American casualties were remarkably light. There were no large set-piece battles, no long sieges, no Stalingrad-like urban combat.

This speed and efficiency became a template in American strategic thinking. After years of defeat in Somalia and Bosnia, after the costs of Desert Storm, here was proof that a smaller, technologically advanced force with air superiority and local partners could achieve rapid, decisive results.

What the speed masked, however, was the incompleteness of the victory. The Taliban and al-Qaeda had not been destroyed; they had been dispersed. They had not surrendered; they had retreated. The idea that the war was won in the fall of 2001 would prove to be the first of many false victories in Afghanistan.

But in December 2001, sitting in Washington or at CENTCOM headquarters, the view was triumphalist. The Taliban were gone. The first phase of the war on terror was over. Enduring Freedom had been a success. It would take years to understand what had actually been achieved and what had been left undone.