Thursday,24th July 2008 UTC

On this page about Soviet war in Afghanistan:

• Tags
• Encyclopedia extract
• Translations
• Search Results

Tags

• Afghan Civil War (4)
• Anti-communism (61)
• Cold War (141)
• Guerrilla wars (22)
• Invasions (26)
• Islam and communism (1)
• Wars involving Afghanistan (1)
• Wars involving the Soviet Union (5)

Encyclopedia: Soviet war in Afghanistan

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting Afghanistan's Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the Mujahideen#Afghan mujahideen insurgents that were fighting to overthrow Communist rule. The Soviet Union supported the government while the rebels found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. The conflict, concurrent to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, was also seminal in the rise of Mujahideens in central Asia.

The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 25, 1979. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989. Due to the high cost and ultimate futility of this conflict for this Cold War superpower, the Soviet war in Afghanistan has often been referred to as the equivalent of the United States' Vietnam War.

Translations

How to say "Soviet war in Afghanistan" in other languages:

	(Chinese)	阿富汗战争 (1979年)
	(Japanese)	アフガニスタン侵攻 (1979)
	(German)	Afghanischer Bürgerkrieg und sowjetische Invasion
	(Spanish)	Invasión soviética de Afganistán
	(French)	Guerre d'Afghanistan (1979)
	(Italian)	Invasione sovietica dell'Afghanistan

Search results

Bagram Air Base

Bagram Air Base is located near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. Its 10,000 foot runway was built in 1976. It was extensively used by Soviet aircraft during the Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1980-1989. It is now home to much of the airpower of the United States and its allies which is based in...

→  read in the encylopedia

Quagmire

examples of quagmires were the American involvement in the Vietnam War and the Soviet war in Afghanistan... describe a foreign military campaign in which there is either no foreseeable possibility of victory... formulated in the absence of victory. The military campaign is likened to a kind of swamp or marsh in...

→  read in the encylopedia

Alfa squad

...

→  read in the encylopedia

Total war

. Examples include the US war in Vietnam, the Six Day War, and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Examples of... at night. Total war was also used in battles between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, where both sides...Total war is a neologism to describe an international war in which countries or nations use all of...

→  read in the encylopedia

Combined arms

helicopters. In the Soviet war in Afghanistan, helicopters were treated much like flying light tanks... training. In war, the U.S. first acquires a local base, or concentrates aircraft carriers. Next, enemy... influences on modern warfare. In the Vietnam War, troops were deployed in large part by helicopters. For...

→  read in the encylopedia