HISTORY

Excavation of prehistoric sites suggests that humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago, and that farming communities of the area were among the earliest in the world.
Afghanistan is a country at a unique nexus point where numerous Eurasian civilizations have interacted and often fought, and was an important site of early historical activity. Through the ages, the Hindu Kush has been home to the Aryans (Indo-Iranians: Indo-Aryans, Persians, Medes, Parthians, etc.). It also has been invaded by a host of people, including the Greeks, Mauryans, Kushans, Hepthalites, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, British, Soviets, and most recently by the Americans. On other occasions, native entities have invaded surrounding regions to form empires of their own.
Between 2000 and 1200 BC, waves of Indo-European-speaking Aryans are thought to have flooded into this part of Asia which now consists of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and others, setting up a nation that during the rule of Medes and the Persian Empire became known as Aryānām Xšaθra or Airyānem Vāejah. Later, during the rule of Ashkanian, Sasanian and after, it was called Erānshahr ايرانشهر (Irānshæhr) meaning "Dominion of the Aryans", which included large parts of Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and modern-day Central Asia (Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the western part of Pakistan, etc.).

Buddhas of Bamyan were the largest Buddha statues in the world, dating back to 1st century A.D.
It has been speculated that Zoroastrianism might have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 to 800 BC. Ancient Eastern Iranian languages, such as Avestan, may have been spoken in this region around a similar time-line with the rise of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the 6th century BC, the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids supplanted the Median Empire and incorporated what was known as Persia to Greeks within its boundaries; and by 330 BC, Alexander the Great had invaded Afghanistan and conquered the surounding regions. Following Alexander's brief occupation, the Hellenistic successor states of the Seleucids and Bactrians controlled the area, while the Mauryas from India annexed the southeast for a time and introduced Buddhism to the region until the area returned to the Bactrian rule.
During the 1st century AD, the Tocharian Kushans created a vast dynasty in Khorasan, bringing the Buddhism culture into this territory. Kushanians were then defeated by Sassanids in the 3rd century AD. Sassanids ruled up to the 7th century, when Muslim Arab armies conquered the Sassanid Empire in the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah.
The Arab Empire initially annexed parts of western Afghanistan in 652 and then conquered most of the rest of Afghanistan between AD 706 and 709 and administered the region as Khorasan. Over time much of the local population converted to Islam. Khorasan became the center of various important empires, including the Ghaznavid Empire (962-1151), founded by a local Turkic ruler from Ghazni named Yamin ul-Dawlah Mahmud. This empire was replaced by the Ghorid Empire (1151-1219), founded by another local ruler, this time of Tajik extraction, Muhammad Ghori, whose domains laid the foundations for the Delhi Sultanate in India.

Coronation of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who became the first king of Afghanistan.
In 1219, the region was overrun by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, who devastated the land. Their rule continued with the Ilkhanates, and was extended further following the invasion of Timur Lang, a ruler from Central Asia. In 1504, Babur, a descendant of both Timur Lang and Genghis Khan, established the Mughal Empire with its capital at Kabul. By the early 1700s, the region of present-day Afghanistan was controlled by three ruling groups: Uzbeks to the north, Safavids to the west and the remaining larger area by the Mughals.
In 1709, Mir Wais Khan Khotak, leader of the Pashtun Ghilzai clan, overthrew and killed Gurgin Khan, the Safavid gouvernor of Kandahar. Mir Wais Khan successfully defeated the Safavid's attempts to assert control over Kandahar, which he held until his death in 1715 and was succeeded by his son Mahmud Khotak. In 1722, Mahmud Khotak led an Afghan army to Isfahan, sacked the city and proclaimed himself Mahmud Shah of Persia. The Afghan dynasty was eventually removed from power by Nadir Shah of Persia.
In 1738, Nadir Shah conquered Kandahar; in the same year he occupied Ghazni, Kabul and Lahore. On June 19, 1747, Nadir Shah was assassinated, possibly planned by his nephew Ali Qoli. In the same year, one of Nadir Shah's high-ranking military generals, Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Pashtun from the Durrani clan, called for a loya jirga following Nadir Shah's assassination. The Afghans came together at Kandahar and unanimously chose Ahmad Shah to be king, who changed the name of his tribe to Durrani (Persian: "pearl of pearls").

Zahir Shah became the youngest, longest-serving and last king of Afghanistan.
By 1751, Ahmad Shah managed to reconquer and rule the entire present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Khorassan region of Iran, along with Dehli in India. In 1772, Ahmad Shah retired to his home in Maruf in the mountains east of Kandahar, where he died peacefully. He was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani, who transferred the capital from Kandahar to Kabul. Timur died in 1793 and was finally succeeded by his son Zaman Shah.
During the 19th century, following the Anglo-Afghan wars (fought 1839-1842, 1878-1880, and lastly in 1919) and the ascension of the Barakzai Pashtun dynasty, Afghanistan saw much of its territory and autonomy ceded to the United Kingdom. The UK exercised a great deal of influence, and it was not until King Amanullah Khan acceded to the throne in 1919 (see "The Great Game") that Afghanistan regained complete independence. During the period of British intervention in Afghanistan, ethnic Pashtun territories were divided by the Durand Line, and this would lead to strained relations between Afghanistan and British India – and later the new state of Pakistan – over what came to be known as the Pashtunistan debate.
The longest period of stability in Afghanistan was between 1933 and 1973, when the country was under the rule of King Zahir Shah. However, in 1973, Zahir's brother-in-law, Sardar Mohammed Daoud launched a bloodless coup. Daoud and his entire family were murdered in 1978 when the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan launched a coup known as the Great Saur Revolution and took over the government.

Sardar Daoud Khan was President of the Republic of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978.
Opposition against, and conflict within, the series of communist governments that followed, was considerable. As part of a Cold War strategy, in 1979 the United States government under President Jimmy Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski began to covertly fund and train anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret service agency known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), who were derived from discontented Muslims in the country who opposed the official atheism of the Marxist regime. In order to bolster the local Communist forces, the Soviet Union—citing the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness that had been signed between the two countries —intervened on December 24, 1979. The Soviet occupation resulted in a mass exodus of over 5 million Afghans who moved into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. More than 3 million settled in Pakistan alone. Faced with mounting international pressure and the loss of approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers as a result of Mujahideen opposition forces trained by the United States, Pakistan, and other foreign governments, the Soviets withdrew ten years later, in 1989. For more details, see Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The Soviet withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was seen as an ideological victory in the US, which had backed the Mujahideen through three US presidential administrations in order to counter Soviet influence in the vicinity of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Following the removal of the Soviet forces in 1989, the US and its allies lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country or influence events there. The USSR continued to support President Najibullah (formerly the head of the secret service, Khad) until his downfall in 1992. However, the absence of the Soviet forces resulted in the downfall of the pro-communist government as it steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces.

The result of the fighting was that the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had escaped to take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum thereby coming into existence. Fighting continued among the various Mujahideen factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The most serious fighting during this growing civil conflict occurred in 1994, when 10,000 people were killed in Kabul. The chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in turn spawned the rise of the Taliban, who were mostly Pashtuns from Kandahar.

Soviet troops withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1988.

The Taliban developed as a politico-religious force, and eventually seized Kabul in 1996. By the end of 2000, the Taliban were able to capture 95% of the country, aside from the opposition (Afghan Northern Alliance) strongholds primarily found in the northeast corner of Badakhshan Province. The Taliban sought to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and were later implicated as terrorists, most notably by harbouring and supporting Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
During the Taliban's seven-year rule, much of the population experienced restrictions on their freedom and violations of their human rights. Women were banned from jobs, girls forbidden to attend schools or universities. Those who resisted were punished. Communists were systematically eradicated and the strict Islamic Sharia law was imposed. The Taliban also managed to nearly eradicate the majority of the opium production by 2001.

Ahmed Shah Massoud was a Tajik Afghan military commander who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s, then against the Taliban in the 1990s. He was assassinated in September 2001.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a military campaign to destroy the Al-Qaeda terrorist network operating in Afghanistan and overthrow their host (the Taliban). The US made common cause with the Afghan Northern Alliance to achieve its ends.
In December 2001, major leaders from the Afghan opposition groups and diaspora met in Bonn, Germany, and agreed on a plan for the formulation of a new democratic government that resulted in the inauguration of Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar, as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority.
After a nationwide Loya Jirga in 2002, Karzai was chosen by the representatives to assume the title as President of Afghanistan. In 2003, the country convened a Constitutional Loya Jirga (Council of Elders) and ratified a new constitution the following year. Hamid Karzai was elected President in a nation-wide election in October 2004. Legislative elections were held in September 2005. The National Assembly--the first freely elected legislature in Afghanistan since 1973--sat in December 2005, and was noteworthy for the inclusion of women as voters, candidates, and elected members.
As the country continued to rebuild and recover, as of late 2006, it was still struggling against widespread poverty, continued warlordism, poor infrastructure, possibly the largest concentration of land mines and other unexploded ordinance on earth, as well as a huge illegal poppy and heroin trade. Afghanistan also remains subject to occasionally violent political jockeying. The landmine problem persists; in 2002, the Red Cross recorded 409 landmine deaths in Afghanistan, one of the highest mine tolls anywhere. The country continues to grapple with the Taliban insurgency, the threat of attacks from a few remaining al-Qaeda, and instability, particularly in the north, caused by the remaining semi-independent warlords.
Afghanistan timeline and Invasions of Afghanistan.