The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) from 1979 to 1989. The war was a major conflict of the Cold War as it saw extensive fighting between Soviet Union, the DRA and allied paramilitary groups against the Afghan mujahideen and their allied foreign fighters. While the mujahideen were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of their support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The involvement of the foreign powers made the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside. The war resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Approximately 6.5% to 11.5% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people is estimated to have been killed over the course of the conflict. The Soviet–Afghan War caused grave destruction throughout Afghanistan and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, formally ending the Cold War. It is also commonly referred to as "the Soviet Union's Vietnam".
Khost is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan located in the southeastern part of the country. Khost consists of thirteen districts and the city of Khost serves as the capital of the province. Historically, Khost used to be a part of Paktia and a larger region surrounding Khost is still referred to as Loya Paktia.
The Turi or Torai are a tribe of the Pashtun people, inhabiting the Kurram Valley, in Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, with a smaller number living across the Durand line in the Paktia province of Afghanistan. They speak Pashto and are adherents of the Twelver Shia sect of Islam. Unlike the majority of Pashtun tribes, The Turis predominantly follow the Shia sect of Islam, because of this and other reasons and land history they are usually tensions between them and the Sunni Pashtun tribes; Mangal and Bangash tribe who also live in Kurram Valley.
This is a timeline of Pakistani history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in the region of modern-day Pakistan. To read about the background of these events, see History of Pakistan and History of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Kurram District is a district in the Kohat Division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The name Kurram comes from the river Kwarma in Pashto which itself derives from the Sanskrit word Krumuḥ.
The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War, also known as the FirstAfghan Civil War, took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Soviet–Afghan War on 15 February 1989 until 27 April 1992, ending the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties, that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Soviet-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan administration since before the Soviet intervention.
The Battles of Zhawar were fought during the Soviet–Afghan War between Soviet Army units, and their allies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against Afghan mujahideen groups. The Soviets' objective was to destroy the Mujahideen logistic base situated at Zhawar, 3 kilometers from the Pakistani border.
A series of occasional armed skirmishes and firefights have occurred along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border between the Afghan Armed Forces and the Pakistan Armed Forces since 1949. The latest round of hostilities between the two countries began in April 2007. Militants belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar also use Afghanistan's territory to target Pakistani security personnel deployed along the border. The Diplomat says that the presence of terrorists belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan on Afghan soil is the reason for sporadic shelling of Afghanistan's territory by Pakistani security forces.
The Afghan mujahideen were Islamist resistance groups that fought against the Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War.
The Mangal are a tribe of the Afghan or Pashtun people residing in eastern Paktia and adjacent Khost provinces of Afghanistan, and in the town of Tari Mangal, district Kurram, Pirdil Khel, Fatima Khel and Surrani of Bannu Pakistan. Their land constitutes the northeastern part of the Loya Paktia region. The Mangals descend from Karlani Pashtun lineage.
A Scud missile is one of a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was exported widely to both Second and Third World countries. The term comes from the NATO reporting name attached to the missile by Western intelligence agencies. The Russian names for the missile are the R-11, and the R-17Elbrus. The name Scud has been widely used to refer to these missiles and the wide variety of derivative variants developed in other countries based on the Soviet design.
al-Husayn was a short-range ballistic missile developed in Ba'athist Iraq. An upgraded version of Scud missile, the al-Husayn was widely used by the Iraqi Army during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).
Tari Mangal is a town in the Kurram Valley at the Durand Line, near Spin Ghar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. Tari Mangal is 23 kilometres (14 mi) away from Parachinar, and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the town of Aryob in Zazi District, Afghanistan. The Pashtun tribe Mangal has been living in Tari Mangal since 1600 AD. From 1977–1988, during the Soviet–Afghan War, the city served as a Mujahideen camp. Weapons and funds from the United States, en route to Pakistan, were delivered to Afghanistan through the border at Tari Mangal, as well as its neighbouring region Torkham. Due to Tari Mangal's normal weather in summer, many people from hot areas in Pakistan visit Tari Mangal to enjoy cold weather.
The Battle of Jalalabad, also known as Operation Jalalabad or the Jalalabad War, occurred in the spring of 1989, marking the beginning of the Afghan Civil War. The Peshawar-based Seven-Party Union, supported by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, attacked Jalalabad, which was then under the administration of the Soviet-backed Republic of Afghanistan. Though the mujahideen quickly captured the Jalalabad Airport and Samarkhel, the former base of the Soviet 66th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, the Afghan Armed Forces recaptured them and claimed victory.
During the Soviet–Afghan War, there was a large amount of foreign involvement. The Afghan mujahidin were backed primarily by Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom making it a Cold War proxy war. Pakistani forces trained the mujahidin rebels while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia offered the greatest financial support. However, private donors and religious charities throughout the Muslim world—particularly in the Persian Gulf—raised considerably more funds for the Afghan rebels than any foreign government; Jason Burke recounts that "as little as 25 per cent of the money for the Afghan jihad was actually supplied directly by states." Saudi Arabia was heavily involved in the war effort and matched the United States' contributions dollar-for-dollar in public funds. Saudi Arabia also gathered an enormous amount of money for the Afghan mujahidin in private donations that amounted to about $20 million per month at their peak. Other countries that supported the Mujahideen were Egypt, China, West Germany, France, Turkey, Japan and even Israel, Iran on the other hand only supported the Shia Mujahideen, namely the Persian speaking Shiite Hazaras in a limited way. One of these groups was the Tehran Eight, a political union of Afghan Shi'a. They were supplied predominately by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Iran's support for the Hazaras nevertheless frustrated efforts for a united Mujahidin front.
The Islamic Emirate of Kunar was a short-lived unrecognized Salafi quasi-state in Kunar Province, which was led by Jamil al-Rahman and established by his group, Jamaat al-Dawah ila al-Quran wal-Sunnah. The Islamic Emirate of Kunar was the first modern Islamic state, and it had captured the attention of many Salafis from Arab nations, who ended up either sending money or coming to Afghanistan to join them.
The 2023 Kurram Parachinar conflict started as a land dispute and turned into a series of sectarian clashes that took place in the Kurram District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan near Pak-Afghan Border, from May to July 2023.
The KhAD-KGB campaign in Pakistan was a joint campaign in which the Afghan KhAD’s foreign "Tenth Directorate" and the Soviet KGB targeted Pakistan using prostitution spy rings, terror attacks, hijackings, serial killings, assassinations and the dissemination of propaganda to dissuade Pakistan from supporting the Afghan mujahideen.
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