📅 On This Day in Military History
2 events across history
Following Little Bighorn, General Crook dispatched Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's cavalry to destroy the Northern Cheyenne village of Dull Knife and Little Wolf in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Mackenzie's force of 1,100 soldiers and 400 scouts located the village of approximately 183 lodges in a sheltered canyon and attacked at dawn in bitter cold. The village was destroyed, 500 horses captured, and the Cheyenne were driven into the mountains with inadequate clothing and no food. Many froze to death.
The destruction of the Northern Cheyenne's winter camp was a deliberate strategy to eliminate the material basis of resistance. Without horses, food stores, and shelter in the Wyoming winter, further fighting was impossible. This battle, combined with the relentless winter campaign following Little Bighorn, forced the Northern Cheyenne toward surrender.
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The Taliban heartland and birthplace of the movement, Kandahar was the final Taliban stronghold. Hamid Karzai — the future Afghan president — had parachuted into southern Afghanistan weeks earlier with a satellite phone and 30 fighters, rallying Pashtun tribes against the Taliban. US Special Forces and CIA officers backed Karzai while Marines established the first US forward operating base at Camp Rhino south of the city. After two weeks of fighting, Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership fled on motorcycles into the Pakistani tribal areas. Kandahar fell on December 7.
The fall of Kandahar ended the Taliban government's territorial control of Afghanistan but not the war. Mullah Omar's motorcycle escape with the Taliban's entire senior leadership epitomized the fatal flaw of the campaign: destroying the regime while the leadership — the actual enemy — escaped intact. The pattern of military success masking strategic failure would repeat itself for the next 20 years.
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