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 will assist Afghan forces and a small contingent of troops with a specific mission to combat al-Qaeda through counterterrorism operations. On 21 May 2012 the leaders of the NATO-member countries endorsed an exit strategy during the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago. The NATO-led ISAF Forces will hand over command of all combat missions to Afghan forces by the middle of 2013, while shifting at the same time from combat to a support role of advising, training and assisting the Afghan security forces and then withdraw most of the 130,000 foreign troops by the end of December 2014. A new and