October 7 is the tenth anniversary of the US military campaign in Afghanistan, launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, that helped oust the Taliban government.
But a decade and many billions of dollars later Afghanistan is still desperately poor and battling a worsening insurgency.
Here is a timeline of the main events over the last 10 years:
October 7, 2001: United States attacks Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, host to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
November 13: Anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces enter Kabul.
December 5: Afghan groups sign deal in Bonn on interim government headed by ethnic Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai.
June 11, 2002: Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, opens and later elects Hamid Karzai as president of interim government. He is sworn in as president for 18 months on June 19.
October 9, 2004: Presidential election. Karzai declared winner and sworn in on December 7.
January 31, 2006: Afghanistan receives pledges of $10.5 billion to help it fight poverty and the drug trade.
July 30: NATO forces take control of security in the south, moving from Kabul and the safer north and west.
October 5: NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) assumes responsibility for security across the country.
July 23, 2007: Former King Mohammad Zahir Shah, whose 40-year reign coincided with one of the most peaceful periods in the country's history, dies.
June 12, 2008: Donors pledge about $20 billion in aid at a Paris conference but say Kabul must do more to fight corruption.
July 7: Suicide car bomb hits Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 58 people and wounding 141.
December 5: Karzai and new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari pledge to boost cooperation and agree a joint strategy to fight al Qaeda and others along their shared border.
January 27, 2009: Thousands of US troops move into two key provinces in eastern Afghanistan as part of strategy of outgoing Bush administration.
February 17: New US President Barack Obama orders 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan to tackle intensifying insurgency.
March 27: Obama announces plans to send a further 4,000 US troops to train Afghan security forces, along with civilian personnel to improve delivery of basic services.
March 29: Karzai announces he will stay in office after his term officially ends on May 21 until elections in August. He later says he will run for re-election.
August 20: Presidential election.
October 19: US election observers Democracy International say a run-off vote is needed because the UN-led probe into election fraud has pushed Karzai below 50 percent of the vote.
October 20: The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announces Karzai will face Abdullah Abdullah in a second round.
October 28: Five foreign UN staff are killed when militants attack a guest house used by foreigners. A rocket aimed at the presidential palace hits the Serena hotel.
November 1: Abdullah quits the Nov. 7 run-off, saying the IEC and government have not met his demands, including the sacking of top election officials. Karzai is declared president again the next day.
November 5: The United Nations says it will evacuate hundreds of its international staff for several weeks due to deteriorating security, a blow for Western efforts to stabilise the country.
November 19: Karzai is sworn in, pledging to tackle corruption and calling for a Loya Jirga grand assembly.
December 1: President Obama decides to boost US troop numbers by 30,000, bringing the total to 100,000.
June 2, 2010: A jirga gathering of tribal leaders and other notables approves a plan by Karzai to seek a peace deal with moderate elements of the Taliban.
July 20, 2010: Afghan forces should be leading security operations throughout their country by 2014, an international conference says. The government will be given more responsibility for its own affairs, including security, in exchange for guarantees it will improve standards and accountability.
November 20: Obama says for the first time his goal is to end the US combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and to significantly reduce the number of US troops deployed there by then.
May 2, 2011: Osama bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad, 60 km (35 miles) north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
July 12: Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger influential half-brother of the president, is assassinated by a trusted guard.
September 13: Five Afghan police and 11 civilians, are killed as insurgents shower Kabul's diplomatic enclave with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire for 20 hours.
The United States blamed the attack, the most coordinated militant assault on Kabul since the war began, on the Taliban-linked Haqqani network based on Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan.
September 20: A man posing as a Taliban representative meeting former president and chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, detonates a bomb hidden in his turban and kills him at his Kabul home.
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