-Introduction
-Pre-Soviet History
-Pashtun People
-Soviet Invasion
-The Afghan Girl
-End of Occupation
-Taliban Rule
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After 9 years of fighting resistance in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was encountering moral problems with it's troops. More significantly, the drain on Soviet spending was drawing the attention of the Soviet military. While the Soviet's had anticipated crushing the resistance by demoralizing the opposition, the resistance had benefited from holding out. The longer the Soviet's maintained their occupation, the more people opposed it, including other countries.

In February 1988, the Soviet Union announces it's intention to withdraw troops after 15,000 troops were killed and roughly 37,000 were wounded during the occupation. The Soviet's abandoned the country having laid some 5 million land mines and destroying much of the economy. By 1989, the last Soviet troops were being withdrawn leaving a country Afghanistan with no central government and setting the stage for the Taliban regime.