A Canadian bagpiper playing " Amazing Grace " during a memorial service, October 29, 2009, at Forward Operating Base Wilson, Afghanistan

In response to this Etisalat and MTN Group were launched, and by 2009 there were about 18 million mobile phone users in Afghanistan.

There are about 18 million GSM mobile phone subscribers in Afghanistan as of 2009, with over 75, 000 fixed-telephone-lines and little over 190, 000 CDMA subscribers.

In FY 2009, the United States resettled just 328 refugees from Afghanistan.

On September 27, 2009, Ismail Khan survived a suicide blast that killed 4 of his bodyguards in Herat, in western Afghanistan.

Beginning in 2009, some detainees captured in Afghanistan have been read their Miranda rights by the FBI, according to Congressman Michael Rogers of Michigan, who claims to have witnessed this himself.

It has helped to sponsor popular traveling exhibits, such as an early 2010s " King Tut " exhibit featuring magnificent artifacts from the tomb of the young Egyptian Pharaoh ; " The Cultural Treasures of Afghanistan " which opened in May 2008 and traveled to other cities for 18 months ; and an exhibition of China's Terracotta Warriors in its Washington headquarters in 2009 – 10.

A 2009 meeting between the heads of state of Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan paved the way for a new highway through Tajikistan.

According to the Washington Post, in December 2009, after US President Barack Obama announced he would deploy 30, 000 more U. S. soldiers, and that Washington wants others to follow suit, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted with the message that Turkey would not contribute additional troops to Afghanistan.

In 2009, Lieutenant James Adamson, aged 24, of the Royal Regiment of Scotland was awarded the Military Cross for a bayonet charge whilst on a tour of duty in Afghanistan: after shooting one Taliban fighter dead Adamson had run out of ammunition when another enemy appeared.

Recent operations have included patrolling the Gulf of Aden, off Somalia ( since 2009 ), the war in Afghanistan ( since 2005 ), intervention in East-Timor ( 1999 – 2004 ), in Guinea-Bissau ( 1990, 1998 and 1999 ), Angola ( 1992 ) and ongoing peacekeeping responsibilities in the Balkans and Lebanon.

Afghan provincial governors at Jalalabad in 2009, discussing security and the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

The current president Hamid Karzai was declared the first ever democratically elected head of state in Afghanistan in 2004, winning a second five-year term in 2009.

In 2009, a nationwide survey conducted by the Afghan Central Statistics Office ( CSO ) estimated that the total number of Afghans living inside Afghanistan was about 24. 5 million and by 2011 it reached 26 million.

In 2009, the BBC republished a Soviet booklet on Afghanistan first published in 1987, giving vital tips to Internationalist soldiers and officers.

Gordon Goldstein's 2008 book Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam was reported to be, in late September, 2009, the " must-read-book " amongst President Barack Obama's war advisers, as they contemplated the alternative courses ahead in Afghanistan.

* Sergeant Dakota Meyer ( b. 1988 ), born and initially educated in Adair County, received the Medal of Honor in 2011 for his actions in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2009

The library is named after United States Army Sergeant Fernando " Ferna " De La Rosa, who died during a roadside bomb explosion on October 27, 2009 in the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan.

French Marine with the FAMAS rifle in Afghanistan, 2009

US Marines on patrol in Afghanistan, 2009.

On 17 February 2009, President Barack Obama ordered 4, 000 soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Lewis, Washington to Afghanistan.

On 17 February 2009, President Barack Obama ordered 4, 000 soldiers that are part of 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team to Afghanistan, along with 8, 000 Marines.

The single remained on the chart for two months, by far the band's longest run for any of its singles ; later, on 26 October 2009, BFBS Forces Radio launched its live Afghanistan studio output with the track after it topped a listeners poll seeking a suitable first track.

Wyden also opposed President Obama's plan for a " troop surge " in Afghanistan in 2009.

Abdur Rahman lived in exile in Tashkent, then part of Russian Turkestan, for eleven years, until the 1879 death of Sher Ali, who had retired from Kabul when the British armies entered Afghanistan.

In March 1880, a report reached India that Abdur Rahman was in northern Afghanistan ; and the governor-general, Lord Lytton, opened communications with him to the effect that the British government were prepared to withdraw their troops, and to recognize Abdur Rahman as Amir of Afghanistan, with the exception of Kandahar and some districts adjacent to it.

The British evacuation of Afghanistan was settled on the terms proposed, and in 1881, the British troops also handed over Kandahar to the new Amir.

In 1885, at the moment when the Amir was in conference with the British viceroy, Lord Dufferin, in India, the news came of a skirmish between Russian and Afghan troops at Panjdeh, over a disputed point in the demarcation of the northwestern frontier of Afghanistan.

To one who had been a man of war from his youth, who had won and lost many fights, the rout of a detachment and the forcible seizure of some debatable frontier lands was an untoward incident ; but it was not a sufficient reason for calling upon the British, although they had guaranteed his territory's integrity, to vindicate his rights by hostilities which would certainly bring upon him a Russian invasion from the north, and would compel his British allies to throw an army into Afghanistan from the southeast.

In 1893 Mortimer Durand negotiated with Abdur Rahman Khan, the Durand Line Treaty for the demarcation of the frontier between Afghanistan, the FATA, North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan Provinces of Pakistan the successor state of British India.

In 1893, Mortimer Durand was deputed to Kabul by the government of British India for this purpose of settling an exchange of territory required by the demarcation of the boundary between northeastern Afghanistan and the Russian possessions, and in order to discuss with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan other pending questions.

In the agreement, the relations between the British Indian and Afghan governments, as previously arranged, were confirmed ; and an understanding was reached upon the important and difficult subject of the border line of Afghanistan on the east, towards India.

In the year 1893, during rule of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, a Royal Commission for setting up of Boundary between Afghanistan and British Governed India was set up to negotiate terms with the British, for the agreeing to the Durand line, and the two parties camped at Parachinar, now part of FATA Pakistan, which is near Khost, Afghanistan.

However, difficulties in South Africa ( epitomised by the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana ), as well as Afghanistan, weakened his government and led to his party's defeat in the 1880 election.

The British Army is currently deployed in Kosovo, Cyprus, Germany, Afghanistan and many other places.

Among these actions were the Seven Years ' War, the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the New Zealand land wars, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the First and Second Boer Wars, the Fenian raids, the Irish War of Independence, its serial interventions into Afghanistan ( which were meant to maintain a friendly buffer state between British India and the Russian Empire ), and the Crimean War ( to keep the Russian Empire at a safe distance by coming to Turkey's aid ).

With this letter, Dost Mohammad formally set the stage for British intervention in Afghanistan.

The British became the major power in the Indian sub-continent after the Treaty of Paris ( 1763 ) and began to show interest in Afghanistan as early as their 1809 treaty with Shuja Shah Durrani.

It was the threat of the expanding Russian Empire beginning to push for an advantage in the Afghanistan region that placed pressure on British India, in what became known as the " Great Game ".

The Great Game set in motion the confrontation of the British and Russian empires, whose spheres of influence moved steadily closer to one another until they met in Afghanistan.

To justify his plan, the Governor-General of India Lord Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto in October 1838, setting forth the necessary reasons for British intervention in Afghanistan.

The British denied that they were invading Afghanistan, instead claiming they were merely supporting its legitimate Shuja government " against foreign interference and factious opposition ".

While preparations were under way for a renewed advance on Kabul, the new Governor-General Lord Ellenborough ordered British forces to leave Afghanistan after securing the release of the prisoners from Kabul and taking reprisals.