3291 1 HUGE TOLL: Nearly 2,000 US defence personnel, 70,000 Afghan security men and 47,000 civilians have died in the Afghan war since 2001. Reuters Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr Senior Journalist In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington and the death of around 3,000 office-goers and rescue workers in the twin towers, the then United States President George W Bush rushed the mighty American commando forces, with NATO in tow, into the target-impoverished, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Initially, the Bush Administration asked the Pakistan interlocutors to persuade the Taliban, who had been in power in Afghanistan since 1996, to hand over the prime suspect of the terror attack, Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaida. The Taliban mulishly refused. And the American troops poured in.