History of Afghanistan

Some people argue that the history of 9/11 goes back to 1979 during the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union had long been interested in Afghanistan, so when the Afghan government was overthrown by an internal coup in April 1978, the Soviets quickly took advantage of the situation. By the end of that year, in December 1978, the Soviet government signed an agreement of friendship and cooperation with Afghanistan. The Soviets also promised to provide the new government with a military assistance program. The new government depended on the Soviet Union for military equipment and advisers as the unrest by the opposing Afghans spread and the new Afghan army began to collapse.

By October 1979, relations between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union grew worse when the leader refused to take Soviet advice on how to stabilize the government. When the security situation got worse, large numbers of Soviet airborne forces landed in Kabul on December 24, 1979 and joined the Soviet army already there. Two days later, on December 26, these invading forces killed the Afghan leader and installed a man who had been an exiled leader of another faction. He was brought back from Czechoslovakia where he had been exiled and was made the Afghan Prime Minister. Soviet ground forces invaded from the north on December 27.

Al-Qaeda is an international terrorist network founded around 1988 by Osama bin Laden to defeat the Soviet Union. Al-Qaeda helps finance, recruit, transport and train thousands of fighters from dozens of countries to be part of an Afghan resistance. Al-Qaeda's current goal is to continue the holy war beyond Afghanistan to spread and support Muslims beliefs by establishing a network throughout the world. They work with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow "non-Islamic" regimes and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries.