The South and the East - with Pakistan

The North - former Soviet republics and with

independent nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

and Tajikistan. West – Iran

There is also a short border with China in the mountainous.

(East)

The population of Afghanistan is uncertain.

Multiethnic Muslim state. Language?

Afghanistan became a unified entity in the mid-1700s, a poor and

underdeveloped country in a very rough neighborhood. Beginning in the 1830s, Afghanistan fought two

wars over the issue of Russia’s feeble attempts at gaining influence

and using Afghanistan against British India, which contained the territory of what is now modern

Pakistan. The Third Anglo-Afghan War was fought after World War I

for independence from British interference with Afghan affairs.

After victory in the third war, later celebrated as the

beginning of Afghan self-rule, Amanullah decided to

modernize his kingdom. He was the first Afghan ruler to

take aid and military assistance from the Soviet

Union. He announced reforms and predictably had to put

down a few revolts in the east over taxation, conscription,

and social changes, such as the education of women.

In May 1921, Afghanistan and the Russian Soviet Republic signed a Treaty of Friendship. The Soviets

provided Amanullah with aid in the form of cash, technology and military equipment. British influence in

Afghanistan waned. The Soviets desired to extract more from the

friendship treaty than Amanullah was willing to give. The United Kingdom

imposed minor sanctions and diplomatic slights as a response to the

treaty, fearing that Amanullah was slipping out of their sphere of influence.

The Saur Revolution

In 1978, as President Daoud’s regime approached its fifth year, he realized that the leftists had grown strong during his rule. He began to tack to the right, warming

to the United States while relations with Moscow cooled. A demonstration after the mysterious death of an Afghan leftist alarmed Daoud, who put the leading

members of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan under house arrest. The leaders of that

party called for a coup. A relatively small band of leftist army officers, with some logistical help from Soviet advisors, attacked the palace, killing Daoud and his family. The Saur Revolution, an urban coup d’état,

marked the birth of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

After the revolution, Taraki assumed the Presidency, Prime

Ministership and General Secretary of the PDPA. The

government had close relations with the Soviet Union.

On July 3, 1979, United States President Jimmy Carter signed

the first directive for covert financial aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.

In February 1979, U.S.-Afghan relations nosedived when radicals in Kabul

kidnapped U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs. Against American advice,

Afghan-led, Soviet-advised rescue attempt ended up killing the kidnappers and the Ambassador. U.S. aid programs

ended and the diplomatic profile was reduced. Afghanistan’s conscripted army was unstable and not up to dealing with emerging mujahideen (holy warriors).

Tensions between Soviet advisors and Afghan commanders also grew. In March 1979, the insurgency took a

drastic turn. A rebel attack against the city of Heart resulted in the massacre of 50 Soviet officers and their dependents

The Afghan government requested Soviet troops to provide security and

to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels. However, the

Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them. Based on information

from the KGB, Soviet leaders felt that Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin's

actions had destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. Following his initial

coup against and killing of President Taraki, the KGB station in Kabul

warned Moscow that Amin's leadership would lead to "harsh repressions, and as a result, the

activation and consolidation of the opposition.

President Taraki visited Moscow in September 1979. He was told by the

Soviet leadership that he had to moderate his program and that the major obstacle to change was his

power hungry, radical prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Taraki hatched a

plot, but Amin learned of it and countered with one of his own. Shortly after a photo of Taraki

embracing Brezhnev appeared on the front of Pravda, Taraki was killed by Amin’ henchmen. Amin then took the positions of defense secretary,

prime minister, president, and general secretary of the party.

The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan,

comprising KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev from

the Central Committee and Dmitriy Ustinov, the Minister of Defence. In late April 1978, the committee reported that Amin was purging his opponents,

including Soviet loyalists, that his loyalty to Moscow was in

question and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan

and possibly the People's Republic of China

The Soviet Union decided to intervene on December 24, 1979, when the Red Army invaded its

southern neighbor. Over 100,000 Soviet troops took part in the

invasion, which was backed by another one hundred thousand

Afghan military men. In the meantime, Hafizullah Amin was killed and replaced by Babrak

Karmal.

The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev on the scene in 1985 and his 'new

thinking' on foreign and domestic policy was probably the most

important factor in the Soviets' decision to leave.

Gorbachev was trying to ease cold war tensions by signing the

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 with the U.S. and

withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan whose presence had garnered so much international

condemnation.

In 1994 the most significant group in present-day Afghanistan emerges

unheralded. A mullah in Kandahar, Mohammad Omar Akhund (commonly known as Mullah Omar), forms a group

which he calls Taliban, meaning 'students' - in this

case students of the Qur'an. In the violence and chaos of

Afghanistan, the Taliban inevitably become a guerrilla

group;

In September, 1996, the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and

financial support by Saudi Arabia, captured Kabul and declared

themselves the legitimate government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; they imposed a particularly puritanical form of

Islamic law in the two thirds of the country they controlled.

The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a

position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud (1953–2001- a

political and military leader in Afghanistan) declined

for he did not fight to obtain a position of power.

In early 2001 Massoud addressed the European Parliament in

Brussels asking the international community to provide

humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan.He stated that the

Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong

perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan the

Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for

up to a year.

On 9 September 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Arab suicide attackers inside Afghanistan and

two days later about 3,000 people became victims of the September 11,

2001 attacks in the United States. Then US President George W. Bush accused

Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the faces behind the attacks. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to US authorities

and to disband al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring

Freedom was launched in which teams of American and British special forces

worked against the Taliban.

U.S. air attacks began on October 7, 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom has

had two phases in its war in Afghanistan. The first—from October

2001 to March 2002—was an example of conventional fighting, and the second

of an evolved insurgency. Conventional - network-centric military

operation. It featured the Northern Alliance—a united front of Tajiks,

Hazarra, and Uzbeks—and anti-Taliban Pashtun forces fighting a war of

maneuver against the Taliban and its foreign-fighter supporters, many of

whom were trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The U.S. contribution

came in the form of airpower and advice from Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary

personnel

The United Nations called a conference at Bonn, Germany.The United States and its

allies did not invite even the most moderate of the Taliban—and there were a few—to participate in the Bonn Process to establish a new government. No one

was in a mood to sit down with the discredited allies of al Qaeda, who had covered themselves with human rights

abuses and brought ruin own on themselves by supporting al Qaeda. As a result of the conference, Afghan leaders formed an interim government without Taliban participation. Hamid Karzai, a

Durrani Pashtun, was appointed president. The United Nations Security

Council has recognized the legitimacy of the government.

The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 defines the institutional reforms required to lay the foundation for stability, peace and prosperity in five distinct spheres,

namely counter narcotics; judicial reform; disarmament, demobilisation

and reintegration; training of the Afghan National Army; and training of police

forces. Japan is the lead country overseeing the demobilization,

disarmament and reintegration process. The United States is leading

international efforts to train the Afghan National Army. Germany has taken the

lead in training the Afghan National Police. Italy is the lead country for

judicial reform. The United Kingdom is leading international efforts to help

combat the production of and trade in narcotics.

At the meeting International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was created under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1386, 1413 and 1444 to

enable the Transitional Authority itself and the UN Assistance Mission in

Afghanistan to operate in the area of the capital, Kabul, and its surroundings with

reasonable security.

Initially, the core of the ISAF headquarters in Kabul was

formed from the Joint Command Centre in Heidelberg, Germany, which provided the first NATO

ISAF Force Commander. Together with its civilian support elements, the overall strength of ISAF amounts to approximately 8 000 personnel. A rotation plan

has been developed that provides for the longer-term

support of the ISAF’s mission headquarters at least until

February 2008

In January 2004, NATO appointed former Turkish Foreign Minister Hikmet Cetin as

its Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, with responsibility for

advancing political and military aspects of the Alliance’s engagement in

Afghanistan. The Senior Civilian Representative works under the guidance of the North Atlantic Council and in close co-ordination with the ISAF Commander

and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, as well as with the Afghan

authorities and other international bodies present in the country.

On 8 December 2005, meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels,

the Allied Foreign Ministers endorsed a plan that paved the way for an expanded ISAF role and presence in Afghanistan.

The first element of this plan was the expansion of ISAF to the south in 2006. On 5 October

2006, ISAF implemented the final stage of its expansion, by taking on command of the international

military forces in eastern Afghanistan from the US-led

Coalition.

Providing support to the Afghan National Police (ANP) within

means and capabilities is one of

ISAF’s key supporting tasks. In this sphere, ISAF works in

coordination with and in support of the United States as well as

the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL)

which was launched in June 2007.

The war in Afghanistan has also become the main effort in the U.S. war on terrorism. President Obama

in the first 18 months of his administration twice reinforced our Afghanistan contingent. Friendly

forces—U.S., allied, and Afghan—in the fall of 2010 included 384,000

military and police personnel, more than 10 times the estimated size of the full-time Taliban fighting force.In

his first 20 months in office, according to the New America Foundation, President Obama

nearly tripled the total Bush administration 2007–2008 drone strikes against terrorist targets in

Pakistan.

In 2010, by the end of September, the administration

had conducted 50 percent more strikes than it did in all of 2009.In a May 2010 state

visit to Washington, President Karzai also received a

promise from the Obama administration of a long-term strategic relationship that will

cement the U.S.-Afghan partnership beyond the sound

of the guns.

Popular support for the war has been much lower in Europe than

in the United States.While 49 nations are in the NATO-led coalition, burden- and risk-

sharing have remained problems. Only Afghanistan, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, the

Netherlands, the United States, and a few other nations pursue

full-time offensive combat operations. Washington also

outstrips its allies in security- and foreign-assistance spending

The leaders of the NATO-member countries endorsed on May 21, 2012 an exit strategy for the War in Afghanistan

and declared their long-term commitment to Afghanistan. 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 different NATO mission will then advise, train and assist the Afghan

security forces including the Afghan Special Operations Forces. The pace of

withdrawal will determined by each country individually, but coordinated with

coalition planners.

The transition process was completed and Afghan forces

assumed full security responsibility at the end of

2014, when the ISAF mission was completed. A new,

smaller non-combat mission (“RS - Resolute Support”) was launched on 1 January 2015

to provide further training, advice and assistance to the Afghan security forces and

institutions.

The US military bases in Kandahar and Jalalabad are

likely to remain open beyond the end of 2015, a senior US official said as

Washington considers slowing its pull-out from

Afghanistan.

19.03.2015

According to a Western official nations with troops in Afghanistan pledged roughly $1 billion to fund Afghan

security forces after 2014, while the majority of the funding will come from

the United States. This was conformed by a report of The Los Angeles Times which stated that according to British

Prime Minister David Cameron Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the

Netherlands, Estonia and others had made pledges that added "almost" $1

billion. However, these figures changed later as in June 2012 news media like The Globe and Mail, The Herald Sun, The Washington Post, and BBC News

Online published that at the NATO Chicago summit an annual aid of 4.1

billion U.S. dollars was pledged to pay for ongoing training, equipment and financial support for Afghanistan’s

security forces after 2014.