"and any remnants of Al Qaeda."
Didnt a British Commander, right from the start of the war basically said he had not found any Al Quaeda terrorist forces (he apparenty beleived the Propaganda and hence was suprised when it turned out to be false) and only Afghans (who unlike the British and US forces where in the region where they were born and lived)?
I thought, wrongly some will say, that Al Qaeda was an american fabrication derived from the Cold War and US Support (throught Saudi puppets) for Islamic extremism to use as agitators and cannon fodder against the USSR. Before the CIA backed islamic mujadeen "freedom fighters" fought the Russians in Afghanistan, couldn't women get a superior education?
When the US backed foreigners like CIA backed and funded Osama Ben Laden left Afghanistan, the plague of extremism remained behind, apparently.
Note that this is in no way a problem for the US (by US I mean rulers/elite not the people in general who dont know why a British diplomat quit his post in something-istan), Islamic extremists are just fine and dandy, the more the better as would probably say the author of the grand chessboard, Talibans got red carpet treatment before they refused the Gas deal (and showed they could threaten the Opium production, like fremen destroying Spice production in Dune?) and more repressive (boiling people alive) are just fine they are backed and funded/protected by the US, so the altruistic BS about liberating the Afghans from the Talibans is imho, a steaming pile of crap when a country next door boils people alive.