It’s not just Americans who are risking their lives serving in Afghanistan.

Blast walls, rocket attacks, Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)…and long lines in the canteen. Anyone who deployed to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, regardless of role, will have their own vivid memories of that period.

It all starts with a flight to Kandahar, Kabul or Bastion Camp. It could be a long, slow descent of an RAF jet with its lights out, or it could be a rapid spiral descent of a C-130 transport. In both cases, the goal was to avoid being blown out of the sky by Taliban surface-to-air missiles.

Over the past 20 years, thousands of military personnel and civilians from dozens of countries have been deployed to Afghanistan in response to U.S. calls for assistance.

The call came in the form of an invocation of Article 5 of the NATO Charter – the only time this has happened in NATO’s 77-year history – which states that an attack on one member state shall be considered an attack on all members.

The United States was reeling from the devastating 9/11 attacks, when Al Qaeda, sheltered by the Afghan Taliban, flew packed passenger planes to the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people.

With the joint efforts of the U.S. military, the CIA and Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, the Taliban were quickly ousted.

Royal Marines and British Special Forces subsequently pursued al-Qaeda remnants across mountains and ridges, but many fled to safety and regrouped in Pakistan.

It wasn’t until ten years later that U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos tracked down Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a villa in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The first two years of the U.S.-led so-called Operation Enduring Freedom were relatively quiet. In late 2003, as U.S. attention turned to Iraq, U.S. military personnel we met even began to refer to Afghanistan as “the forgotten operation.” But it’s still dangerous.

At Kandahar Air Base, soaked by heavy rain, we watched Romanian troops patrol nervously in Soviet-era armored vehicles, wary of the next ambush.

As I flew in a Black Hawk helicopter to a remote American manned firebase in the mountains of Paktika province, my BBC crew and I were delighted to be told: “You have come to the worst place in the world”.

Sure enough, the Taliban fired Chinese-made rockets from the base after dark, which, as far as we know, had been buried there by farmers who had been bribed or coerced.

Everything changed after 2006, when Britain deployed troops to Helmand province, a part of Afghanistan that had previously been relatively peaceful.

The Taliban have made their intentions clear. They said, if you come, we will fight you.

However, the British government at the time seemed alarmed by the intensity of the fighting that 3 Parachute Troops was now involved in, with British paratroopers calling in mortar and artillery fire so close to their positions that it was called “dangerously close” to prevent their base from being captured.

Over the next eight years, until the end of combat operations in 2014, Americans were not the only ones risking their lives to serve in Afghanistan.

British, Canadians, Danes and Estonians all witnessed the fiercest fighting in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. It would also be disrespectful to ignore the bravery and sacrifice of so many Afghans over two decades.

I say “combat,” but most soldiers’ greatest fear stems from hidden IEDs, those cleverly concealed ones. The Taliban, of course, know every inch of the terrain and are often able to correctly guess the exact location where troops need to cross irrigation ditches or canals, thus placing bombs accordingly.

In an instant, in a blinding flash of light and a puff of black smoke, a healthy twenty-something’s life could either end or be catastrophically changed, leaving him facing amputation and a host of other complications.

These IEDs are so common that soldiers walk out of their FOB (Forward Operating Base) gates on patrol praying that if they are hit it will result in an amputation below the knee rather than above the knee.

The courage and resilience of the people I have met since, who managed to turn their shattered lives around despite great loss and adversity, is both humbling and awe-inspiring.

These are just some of the people who responded to the U.S.’s call for help after the 9/11 attacks.

No wonder the country’s president sparked outrage across the country at his suggestion that they were somehow hiding from the fighting.