KABUL – With the stroke of midnight last night marking the end of NATO's joint combat mission in Afghanistan, Duffel Blog looks back on 13 roller-coaster years of history that gripped a nation and forged a generation of American heroes and FOBBITs:

November 2001: Aided by US Special Forces and a coalition bombing campaign, Northern Alliance fighters sweep Afghanistan and uproot the Taliban from Mazar-e-Sharif, Bamiyan, Herat, Kabul, and Jalalabad – so basically nowhere we’ve ever heard of.

December 2001: Osama Bin Laden located in Tora Bora, which clears that up.

March 2002: The coalition scores a net victory with Operation Anaconda, but that’s not cheering anyone up when Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring suffers a harrowing defeat at the 74th Oscars to that Russell Crowe suckfest, A Beautiful Mind.