History of the Australian Army with automatic weapons; and shoot army personnel or others until they were killed or captured. Australia, as one of the many countries who sent troops to Afghanistan, provided specialist SAS teams for use against Taliban/Al Qaeda forces. Australia was one of the countries to provide combat forces for the US-led invasion of Iraq. In Australia it was known as Operation Falconer. In all Australia contributed some 2,000 personnel. The Army contribution to this was 500 soldiers. Following the end of major combat operations, Australia announced a withdrawal of most of its forces in Iraq. It left behind approximately 950 troops
Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan where 10,000 troops would leave Afghanistan by July 2011 and the remaining 23,000 would leave Afghanistan by the end of September 2012. The removal of the 23,000 U.S. troops began in July 2012. In a statement announcing an end to the surge Panetta stated: Once the United States and its allies agreed on the timing for the shift in the Afghanistan mission — under which American troops would step away from the lead combat role to a supporting mission focused primarily on counterterrorism and training Afghan security forces (according to the 2012 NATO Chicago Summit this shift is planned for