Home > Invasions of Afghanistan

From a geopolitical sense, controlling Afghanistan is vital in controlling Central Asia. It played an important part in the Great Game power struggles. Current struggles over Afghanistan can be viewed as an extension of the struggle over control over Central Asia and its natural resources, as well as its strategic location in the middle of Eurasia. Historically, the conquest of Afghanistan has also played an important role in the invasion of India from the West through the Khyber Pass.

The first historically documented invasion of Afghanistan was made by Alexander the Great in 330 BC as part of his string of conquests. Among the cities conquered was Herat.

Afghanistan was invaded from the west by the Arabs under the Abbasid Dynasty, causing the conversion of most of its inhabitants to Islam. Later, Afghanistan was invaded twice from the north and east by the Mongols (once by Genghis Khan, once by Timur) in a drive to conquer both India and the heartlands of Dar al-IslamDar al-Islam ( Arabic: literally house of submission is a term widely used in the Islamic world to refer to those lands under Muslim government(s). In the conservative tradition of Islam the world is divided into two components: dar al-Islam the house of.

The Soviet invasion of AfghanistanThe Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a 10-year war which wreaked incredible havoc and destruction on Afghanistan. The 'shooting' war is generally held to have started December 24, 1979. Soviet troops ultimately withdrew from the area between May 15, 198 happened in 1979Events January-February January 1 Sino-American relations: United States and the People's Republic of China establish diplomatic relations January 4 State of Ohio agrees to pay $675,000 to families of dead and injured in Kent State University shootings., prompting a Western boycott of the Olympics, and kickstarting US funding for radical, armed Islamic resistance groups. Mujahadeen eventually succeeded in forcing the SovietsThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1 out, in the USSR's most humiliating military defeat, which may have led to the dissolution of Soviet communism.

Most recently, the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a stated attempt to capture Osama bin Laden, the terrorist they claim masterminded the bombing of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Although they did not capture him, they succeeded in toppling the radical Islamic government of the Taliban, who were accused of acts of cruelty. The Taliban leadership survives in hiding and continues, along with many other factions, to keep Afghanistan unstable.