Afghanistan is a landlocked, mountainous, country located in the heart of Asia. Since August 2021, it has been under the effective control of a regime known as the Taliban, who refer to it as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. This name, and the regime that propagates it, is not recognized internationally.
It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east; Iran in the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north; and China in the far northeast. Its territory covers 652,000 km2 (252,000 sq mi), making it the 41st largest country in the world.
In the 1990s, the country came under the control of the Taliban, and in turn became a base of operations for terrorist group al-Qaeda. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, a multinational coalition invaded the country, and oversaw the removal of the Taliban from power. However, the Taliban retained control of a few regions, and over twenty years managed to gain back some territory. Following American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban launched an offensive that reestablished its control of Kabul.
Afghanistan fell into its second civil war in 1978. Shortly after the war began, the Soviet Unionsent military forces into Afghanistan to support the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the Mujahideen insurgents that were fighting to overthrow Communist rule.
In one battle, a dragon, slumbering for centuries, was wakened by the fighting. Enraged, the dragon slew an entire Soviet army.
Prior to the arrival of the Colonization Fleet, SovietGeneral-SecretaryVyacheslav Molotov instructed Foreign Commissar Andrei Gromyko to deliver a proclamation regarding Afghanistan. This declaration stated that the USSR was strongly opposed to the settlement of Race colonists in Afghanistan, which was dangerously close to Soviet borders.[5] As the USSR lacked the resources to enforce this doctrine in any meaningful way, the Race largely ignored it.