In August 2021 the Taliban, an ultraconservative Islamic fundamentalist group, recaptured the Afghan capital of Kabul after being removed from power 20 years earlier. This was a poignant symbol of the failure of Western powers in Afghanistan. Having been international pariahs when they emerged in the 1990s, the Taliban came to rule Afghanistan and formed a close connection with al Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for thousands of deaths in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. Triggering a military response, the Taliban were quickly removed by a United States (US)- led international coalition with the support of many Afghans, who tacitly supported the overthrow of the Taliban regime. Spread across a landmass twice the size of Germany, Afghanistan's population of 35–40 million found themselves under foreign occupation, even if the reach of foreign troops was inhibited by Afghanistan's mixed geographical terrain. What started as a counterterrorism operation soon evolved into a more ambitious plan to rebuild an Afghan state and transform it into a stable functioning democratic system that would eliminate the possibility of the country being used as a sanctuary for terrorists in the future.

As the US, and increasingly the European Union (EU) and its Member States, sought to stabilize Afghanistan through economic development and transformational governance, they found themselves facing a growing insurgency.