Frank Gardner: Not only Americans risked life and limb to serve in Afghanistanave

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

It started with the flight in – to Kandahar, Kabul or Camp Bastion. It could be a long, slow descent with the lights out on an RAF jet, or a rapid, corkscrew down in a C-130 transport plane. In both cases the aim was to avoid being blown out of the air by a Taliban surface-to-air missile.

Over the course of 20 years thousands of servicemen and women, as well as civilians, from dozens of countries deployed to Afghanistan, answering the US call for assistance.

That call came in the form of invoking Nato's Article 5 of its charter – the only time it has ever happened in Nato's 77-year history – which states that an attack on one member shall be deemed an attack on all.

America was reeling from the devastating 9/11 attacks when al-Qaeda, which was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, murdered nearly 3,000 people by flying packed airliners into New York's Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington.