“According to the U.S. Defense Department [in a ‘fact sheet’ on February 26, 2002], [in Afghanistan, following the collapse of the Taliban] the number rose to about eleven thousand foreign troops, among them five thousand American soldiers, by February 2002. This number was wholly inadequate in a country where a Soviet occupation force of 120,000 had failed to overcome resistance in the 1980s.”
– Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 45