Map of Asia
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Background of Afghanistan
Background information about the country of Afghanistan.
World Fact Book: Afghanistan Background
Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747.
The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian empires until
it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment
in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup.
The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist
regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989
under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist
mujahedin rebels. Subsequently, a series of civil wars saw Kabul finally
fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement that
emerged in 1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy. Following the
11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, a US, Allied,
and anti-Taliban Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban
for sheltering Osama BIN LADIN. The UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001
established a process for political reconstruction that included the
adoption of a new constitution and a presidential election in 2004, and
National Assembly elections in 2005. On 7 December 2004, Hamid KARZAI became
the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The National
Assembly was inaugurated on 19 December 2005.
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