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Ahmad Shah Durrani unified the Pashtun tribes and founded
Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between
the British and Russian Empires until it won independence
from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in
democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 communist
countercoup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the
tottering Afghan communist regime, touching off a long and
destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless
pressure by internationally supported anti-communist
mujahidin rebels. A series of subsequent civil wars saw
Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hard-line
Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in 1994 to end the
country's civil war and anarchy. Following the 11 September
2001 terrorist attacks, a US, Allied, and anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban for
sheltering Usama bin Ladin.
A UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001 established a process
for political reconstruction that included the adoption of a
new constitution, a presidential election in 2004, and
National Assembly elections in 2005. In December 2004, Hamid
Karzai became the first democratically elected president of
Afghanistan, and the National Assembly was inaugurated the
following December. Karzai was re-elected in August 2009 for
a second term. The 2014 presidential election was the
country's first to include a runoff, which featured the top
two vote-getters from the first round, Abdullah Abdullah and
Ashraf Ghani. Throughout the summer of 2014, their campaigns
disputed the results and traded accusations of fraud,
leading to a US-led diplomatic intervention that included a
full vote audit as well as political negotiations between
the two camps. In September 2014, Ghani and Abdullah agreed
to form the Government of National Unity, with Ghani
inaugurated as president and Abdullah elevated to the
newly-created position of chief executive officer. The day
after the inauguration, the Ghani administration signed the
US-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement and NATO Status of
Forces Agreement, which provide the legal basis for the
post-2014 international military presence in Afghanistan.
After two postponements, the next presidential election has
been re-scheduled for September 2019.
The Taliban remains a serious challenge for the Afghan
Government in almost every province. The Taliban still
considers itself the rightful government of Afghanistan, and
it remains a capable and confident insurgent force fighting
for the withdrawal of foreign military forces from
Afghanistan, establishment of sharia law, and rewriting of
the Afghan constitution. In 2019, negotiations between the
US and the Taliban in Doha entered their highest level yet,
building on momentum that began in late 2018. Underlying the
negotiations is the unsettled state of Afghan politics, and
prospects for a sustainable political settlement remain
unclear.
Location: Southern Asia, north and west of Pakistan, east of
Iran.
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