Nawaz Sharif on 12 October 1999. 2000s Following the September 11 attacks in 2001 by Al-Qaeda, the American-led intervention in Afghanistan led to the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan after the country had harboured the terrorists behind it. However, the US occupation of the country failed to quell the subsequent Taliban insurgency. During the Iraqi conflict, the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, but the conflict continued as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. The United States also conducted a series of military strikes on al-Qaeda militants in Yemen since the War on Terror began. The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa began in 2004 when tensions rooted in the Pakistan Army's search for al-Qaeda fighters in the Waziristan area escalated into armed resistance, with Pakistan's actions presented as its contribution to the War on Terror. Russia also engaged on its own, largely internally focused, counter-terrorism campaign during the Second Chechen War and the Insurgency in the North Caucasus. Rising to leadership during this time, Vladimir Putin's first tenure as president saw the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year, while Russia also experienced democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism, characterised by endemic corruption,. Putin became during this time the second-longest serving contemporary European president after his close ally Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. In other post-communist states, colour revolutions against the local elites took place, including the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Bulldozer Revolution (2000), Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003), Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004), and Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution (2005). The Russo-Georgian War place in August 2008 following a period of worsening relations between the two countries. In the 2000s, there was an active movement towards further consolidation of the European Union, with the introduction of symbols and institutions usually reserved for sovereign states, such as citizenship, a common currency (used by 19 out of 27 members), a flag, an anthem and a motto (In Varietate Concordia, "United in Diversity"). An attempt to introduce a European Constitution was made in 2004, but it failed to be ratified; instead, the Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007 in order to salvage some of the reforms that had been envisaged in the constitution. The largest expansion of the European Union (EU), in terms of territory, number of states, and population took place on 1 May