Epilogue | Campaign Against Terror | FRONTLINE | PBS

On March 19, 2002, Operation Anaconda ended (started on March 2) after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters with 11 allied troop fatalities. From the article:

"MARCH 2002: OPERATION ANACONDA

The largest battle of the war in Afghanistan to date was mounted in March 2002, three months after the collapse of the Taliban. In Operation Anaconda -- the largest U.S. ground offensive since the Gulf War -- over 2,000 U.S. and coalition forces moved into in eastern Afghanistan, where, according to intelligence reports, hundreds of Al Qaeda and Taliban were amassing in the mountains and caves of the Shah-e-Kot valley.

The plan was for friendly Afghan forces to attack the enemy from the north and force them south, where U.S. troops were waiting at the three escape routes from the valley. The assault, a combination of airstrikes and ground battles, did not start off well for the allied forces and what was expected to last 72 hours stretched out for more than two weeks. Coalition commanders had been expecting to find between 150 and 200 enemy fighters in the valley; after their arrival, they increased their estimate to between 500 and 1,000 -- a figure that some Afghan commanders dispute.

The heaviest U.S. casualties occurred on March 4, the third day of the fighting. Two MH-47 Chinook helicopters were hit by heavy fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades as they approached their battle position, code-named Ginger, where allied forces had taken heavy fire in previous days. The two helicopters managed to fly off but soon found that Navy SEAL Neil Roberts had fallen out the back of a damaged Chinook. Two more helicopters flew back to drop off troops to rescue Roberts, who had been captured and killed. An 18-hour battle ensued in which six more Americans died. U.S. forces had not suffered such a high number of casualties in one single day since the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, where 18 Rangers and Special Operations soldiers were killed.

The heaviest fighting of Operation Anaconda occurred in the first week of the battle. According to U.S. Colonel Frank Wiercinski, the commander of the initial assault, the fighting tapered off from March 7 to March 12, when Al Qaeda snipers became the biggest problem.

The operation ended on March 19, when the last U.S. and Canadian forces left the Shah-e-Kot Valley. U.S. commanders declared the operation a success; coalition troops had killed hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters and recovered intelligence documents, arms and ammunition caches from the caves. However, Afghan commanders did not necessarily agree with the U.S. evaluation. They claimed that U.S. estimates of enemy casualties were too high and that many Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to flee the valley."