The war in Afghanistan has been going on so long that it has become an ingrained, unconscious experience of this generation.

Oct. 7 was the ninth anniversary of the war, which began as the United States’ military response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After nearly a decade, 1,342 American troops have died in the country, and the reconstruction of Afghanistan’s government and society remains problematic. While opinions about our involvement in Afghanistan are diverse, many people from our generation do not fully understand how the situation developed.

The U.S. and 46 allies have been in Afghanistan since 2001, but the United States’ involvement began about thirty years ago. In 1978, a military coup placed the Democratic Party of Afghanistan in charge of the government. However, because of a strict communist ideology, the mujahideen started a rebellion. This word, literally translated as “strugglers,” comes from the same Arabic trilateral as “jihad,” which means “striving in the way of Allah” but is often identified with Islamic extremists.

In 1979, at the DRA’s request, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to quell the mujahideen militants. In the following decade, the United States, which was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, poured at least six billion dollars—some estimates run as high as 40 billion—into Afghani armament and combat training.

In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew their forces from Afghanistan due to severe casualties and costs. The mujahideen overthrew the DRA, which led to continued conflict between separate mujahideen groups. The United States also withdrew its funding to the mujahideen and made no effort to help rebuild the country.

In 1992, peace talks established the Islamic State of Afghanistan, a transitional government whose true leader was its defense minister, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Instabilities in the ISA enabled outside forces to enter the country and assert control, specifically the Taliban. Between 1992 and 1994, Pakistani, Iranian and Uzbekistani forces assaulted the capitol, Kabul.

The Taliban swept across the country from the Pakistani border, implementing brutal extremist governance and pushing Massoud’s forces into the northern corner of the nation. In September of 1996, the Taliban captured Kabul.

At this point, Osama bin Laden, founder of Al-Qaeda, fled Sudan. He had been involved in planning and funding several terrorist plots, including a truck bombing beneath the World Trade Center in 1993. With his connections with the Taliban, he moved his operations to the refuge offered by Afghanistan.

From 1996 through 2001, Al-Qaeda committed more attacks against America than ever before, including an assassination attempt on President Clinton in 1996, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks in 2001.

The rest is history. In 2008, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that fewer than 100 al-Qaeda insurgents remained on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If bin Laden is among them, the U.S. chances of finding him are slim.

The point is that we cannot completely eradicate al-Qaeda. The history of American involvement in Afghanistan, and, for that matter, Soviet involvement, has shown that waging war on loosely organized militants is fundamentally different from the formal wars that shaped our strategies in the first half of the 20th century. We have done what we can, and now all we can do is work to prevent future attacks.