Twenty years have passed since the United States began its war on terror following the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001.
While U.S. forces managed to kill Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks, they ended the two-decade conflict by pulling out of Afghanistan without having been able to build a democratic state in the country and eliminate the Taliban.
To onlookers, the pullout from Afghanistan gave the impression that the U.S. was defeated and that it had abandoned Afghanistan.