In the 19th century, modern Afghanistan was frequently invaded and served as a point of European and Eurasian conflict given its geographic location near the imperial ambitions of tsarist Russia in Central Asia and British rule of what is now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. After the Russian Revolution, the Afghan government recognized the Bolshevik regime and remained loosely allied with the USSR. This relationship deteriorated and escalated into longstanding conflict in 1979. That year, a radical Marxist regime conducted a successful coup in Kabul and launched unpopular economic and social reforms. The regime had little popular support, and by late December, Soviet troops entered the country to defend it. This was based on the core doctrine of Soviet foreign policy named for then-leader Leonid Brezhnev: that socialist regimes would be defended with arms and economic support. The USSR’s primary political rival, the United States, backed the diverse coalition of resistance forces, most of them Muslims from a variety of ethnic groups and some foreign countries. The war itself produced a bloody stalemate, while Soviet troops withdrew during 1988-89. The war was unpopular within the USSR and is frequently regarded as one of the contributing factors to its 1991 collapse.

In the years following the Soviet withdrawal, the country remained politically unstable and economically devastated.