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After the scare of The Cuban Missile Crisis and then the humiliation of the Vietnam War, the 1970s saw the USA, the USSR and China making an effort to improve relations.

This led to a period known as ��é�ٱ�Գٱ�, a word meaning the relaxing of tension.

Afghanistan bordered some of the USSR.

During the 1970s, the USSR became increasingly nervous about its neighbour.

Afghanistan, although a poor country, had valuable gas fields which the USSR wished to exploit.

It was also a centre of Muslim unrest.

In 1975, Muslim extremists had rebelled and had continued to attack the Afghan government.

The USSR feared the unrest might unsettle Muslims living within the USSR.

The unrest culminated in an uprising in September 1979 when Hafizullah Amin, a communist but also anti-Soviet, seized power.

On the 24th December 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.

Amin was assassinated and a pro-Moscow leader, Babrak Karmal, was installed in his place.

The USSR poured billions of dollars into the war in Afghanistan which lasted for ten years.

The Mujahideen fought against the Afghan troops in a similar fashion to the guerrilla warfare used by the Vietcong in the Vietnam War.

They ambushed Soviet supply convoys and hid in the mountains or with the civilian population.

The Soviet forces simply could not defeat them.

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the new Soviet leader in 1988, he decided that the USSR should begin the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

In 1989, the last Soviet troops left the country.

• The USSR lost 15,000 troops, but the true damage was done to its image and from the billions of dollars it spent during the war.
• Afghanistan became the Soviet Union’s Vietnam – an expensive, embarrassing war with little hope of victory, where they were beaten by local guerrilla forces.
• Civil war raged after the Soviet withdrawal, setting the stage for the �ղ�����������’s takeover of the country in 1996.
• Several million Afghans had either fled to Pakistan for refuge or had become internal refugees.
• An estimated one million civilians were killed.
• Afghanistan was left in ruins.

• Destroyed ��é�ٱ�Գٱ�: USA withdrew from trade and the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
• Criticism within USSR: start of its downfall.
• Afghanistan abandoned: paved the way for the Taliban.
• Increase in weapons: nuclear missiles were placed in Britain and Europe by USA.