who was involved in the soviet invasion of afghanistan
Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups known as the mujahideen fought against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government, mostly in the country's rural countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed by the United States and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000[27] and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees,[28][29][31][32] mostly to Pakistan and Iran.
Cold War By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making accommodations in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, inaugurating a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983), and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises (1983). The United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", c. 1985) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully (with the exception of the Romanian Revolution) overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse of communist regimes in other countries such as Mongolia, Cambodia and South Yemen. The United States remained as the world's only superpower.
Economic nationalism While the coining of the term "
War in Afghanistan (2001–present) The War in Afghanistan (or the U.S. War in Afghanistan; code named Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan (2001–2014) and Operation Freedom's Sentinel (2015–present))[50][51] followed the United States invasion of Afghanistan[52] of October 7, 2001. The U.S. was supported initially by the United Kingdom and Canada[53] and later by a coalition of over 40 countries, including all NATO members. The war's public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.[54] The War in Afghanistan is the second longest war in United States history, behind the Vietnam War.[55][56][57][58][59]