Throughout history, Afghanistan’s many invaders have generally struggled to maintain control and usually had little impact on the land and its culture. The country forms a natural corridor between the Central Asian steppes and India, but few conquerors in history have made much headway there, especially among the peaks and valleys of the Hindu Kush range in the east—not Alexander the Great, not Britain in the 1800s, not the Russians in the 1980s, and not the US during its post-9/11 occupation of the country. The country is rugged, dominated by mountains and high-desert plains; the people are fiercely loyal to their local tribal affiliations and don’t take kindly to outside troublemakers.

Since the 1970s, Afghanistan has suffered through numerous civil wars and occupations. The Soviet Union’s attempt to pacify the country in the 1980s proved futile, and that costly defeat contributed to the collapse of the SU a few years later. Meanwhile, as many as 2 million Afghans lost their lives. The US quietly supported fighters who resisted the Soviets; some of these insurgents, in turn, founded the Taliban and Al Qaeda organizations that launched the 9/11 attacks on US soil.

Shortly after 9/11, the US and its allies began an invasion of Afghanistan in an operation approved by the United Nations.