LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Afghanistan: Soviet Union
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Begin the lesson by asking students what they know about Afghanistan's recent history. You may ask what the Taliban is and if they know why this group rose to power. Are they aware that the former Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan? Do they know any details of the United States' policy toward Afghanistan prior to the events of September 11, 2001?
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Following the removal of the Soviet forces, the US and its allies lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country or influence events there. The USSR continued to support President Najibullah (former head of the Afghan secret service, KHAD) until 1992 when new Russian government refused to sell oil products to Najibullah regime.[49]
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There was, though, a kind of method in the madness: Brezinski hoped not just to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, but to ferment unrest within the Soviet Union itself. His plan, says author Dilip Hiro, was "to export a composite ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Muslim-majority Central Asian states and Soviet Republics with a view to destroying the Soviet order." Looking back in 1998, Brezinski had no regrets. "What was more important in the world view of history?... A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War>"
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The last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in February 1989. By the end of 1989, just months after the Soviet withdrawal, the Berlin Wall came crashing down, communism was defeated and the Soviet Union began to disintegrate.
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In his memoirs, former CIA director Robert Gates (1991-1993) said that the U.S. provoked the December 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by giving military assistance to the mujahideen. Gates recalls a meeting, nine months earlier, on March 30, 1979, when Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocombe said "there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.'"68
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The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 but met stiff resistance from Muslim rebels, called mujahideen, who received support from the United States. The Soviets agreed to withdraw in 1986 and completed their withdrawal in 1989.
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