After Alexander's death (323 B.C.) the region at first was part of the Seleucid empire. In the north, Bactria became independent, and the south was acquired by the Maurya dynasty. Bactria expanded southward but fell (mid-2d cent. B.C.) to the Parthians and rebellious tribes (notably the Saka). Buddhism was introduced from the east by the Yüechi, who founded the Kushan dynasty (early 2d cent. B.C.). Their capital was Peshawar. The Kushans declined (3d cent. A.D.) and were supplanted by the Sassanids, the Ephthalites, and the Turkish Tu-Kuie.

The Muslim conquest of Afghanistan began in the 7th cent. Several short-lived Muslim dynasties were founded, the most powerful of them having its capital at Ghazna. Mahmud of Ghazna, who conquered the lands from Khorasan in Iran to the Punjab in India early in the 11th centuary, was the greatest of Afghanistan's rulers. Jenghiz Khan and Timur (late 14th centuary) were subsequent conquerors of renown. Babur, a descendant of Timur, used Kabul as the base for his conquest of India and the establishment of the Mughal empire in the 16th cent. In the 18th cent. the Persian Nadir Shah extended his rule to north of the Hindu Kush. After his death (1747) his lieutenant, Ahmad Shah, an Afghan tribal leader, established a united state covering most of present-day Afghanistan. His dynasty, the Durrani, gave the Afghans the name (Durrani) that they themselves frequently use.

Afghanistan's history as a country spans little more than two centuries, although it has contributed to the greatness of many great Central Asian empires. As with much of the region, the rise and fall of political power has been inextricably tied to the rise and fall of religions.

It was in Afghanistan that the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism began in the 6th century BCE. Later, Buddhism spread west from India to the Bamiyan Valley, where it remained strong until the 10th century AD. The eastward sweep of Islam reached Afghanistan in the 7th century AD, and today the vast majority of Afghanis are Muslim.

Between 1220 and 1223, Genghis Khan tore through the country, reducing Balkh, Herat, Ghazni and Bamiyan to rubble. After damage was repaired, Timur swept through in the early 1380s and reduced the region to rubble again. Timur's reign ushered in the golden Timurid era, when poetry, architecture and miniature painting reached their zenith.

Timur's fourth son, Shah Rukh, built shrines, mosques and medressas throughout Khorasan, from Mashhad, in modern-day Iran, to Balkh. Herat continued to prosper under Sultan Hussain Baykara (died 1506), producing such great Central Asian poets as Jami and Alisher Navoi.

The rise of the great Mughal empire again lifted Afghanistan to heights of power. Babur had his capital in Kabul in 1512, but as the Mughals extended their power into India, Afghanistan went from being the centre of the empire to merely a peripheral part of it. In 1774, with European forces eroding the influence of the Mughals on the Indian subcontinent, the kingdom of Afghanistan was founded.

The 19th century was a period of often comic-book confrontation with the British, who were afraid of the effects of unruly neighbours on their great Indian colony. The rise of tensions and the weakness of the Afghan kingdom resulted in some remarkably unsuccessful and bloody wars being fought on extremely flimsy pretexts. The first, between 1839 and 1842, saw the British garrison almost totally wiped out while retreating in the Khyber Pass - out of 16,000 persons, only one man survived. The British managed to reoccupy Kabul and carried out a bit of razing and burning to show who was boss, but this again was short-lived.

Following local wars, from 1878 to 1880, Afghanistan agreed to become more or less a protectorate of the British, happily accepted an annual payment to keep things in shape and agreed to a British resident in Kabul. No sooner had the diplomatic mission been installed in Kabul, however, than all its members were murdered. This time the British decided to keep control over Afghanistan's external affairs, but to leave the internal matters strictly to the Afghans themselves.

In 1893 the British drew Afghanistan's eastern boundaries along the so-called Durand Line, neatly partitioning many Pathan tribes into what today is Pakistan. This has been a cause of Afghan-Pakistani strife for many years, and is the reason the Afghans refer to the western part of Pakistan as Pashtunistan.

From WWI onwards Afghanistan's trade was tilted heavily towards the USSR. Soviet foreign aid to Afghanistan far outweighed Western assistance. Only in tourism did the West have a major influence on the country. Turkish-style reforms failed and the country remained precariously unstable for decades. The postwar kingdom ended in 1973 when the king - a Pathan, like most of those in power - was neatly overthrown while away in Europe. His 'progressive' successors were hardly any more progressive than he had been, but the situation under them was far better than that which was to follow.

After the bloody 1978 pro-Moscow revolution, Afghanistan rapidly deteriorated. Its procommunist, antireligious government was far out of step with the strongly Islamic popular movements in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, and soon the ever-volatile Afghan tribes had the countryside up in arms. A second revolution brought in a government that leaned even more heavily on Soviet support and the country lurched towards anarchy. The USSR decided that enough was enough. Another 'popular' revolution took place in 1979, and a Soviet puppet government was installed in Kabul, with what looked like half the Soviet army lined up behind it.

An Islamic jihad (holy war) was called and seven mujaheddin factions emerged. The Soviets soon found themselves mired in what later became known as 'Russia's Vietnam'. The war ground on through the 1980s. Afghan tribal warriors remained disorganised but determined, brave and increasingly well-equipped; the CIA pumped up to US$700 million a year into the conflict in one of the largest covert operations in history. Soon the Soviet regime held only the cities, which were cut off as road convoys were ambushed and aircraft brought down with surface-to-air missiles. In the late 1980s Gorbachov finally pulled the Russians out.

The war had cost the Soviets over 15,000 men, galvanised Central Asian nationalism and contributed significantly to the collapse of the USSR. More than a million Afghans lay dead and 6.2 million people, over half the world's refugee population, had fled the country. Afghanistan, once again, was reduced to rubble.

The Soviet withdrawal in 1989 weakened the government of President Najibullah, who proposed a government of national unity. The mujaheddin declined. In April 1992 Najibullah was ousted; a week later fighting erupted between rival mujaheddin factions in Kabul. An interim president was installed and replaced two months later by Burhanuddin Rabbani, a founder of the country's Islamic political movement. The fighting continued, doing more damage than the Soviet occupation.

The two bitter rivals were, however, forced into an alliance in May 1996 by the spectacular military successes of a group of Islamic fighters called the Taliban ('talib' means 'religious student' or 'seeker of knowledge'), a group of ethnic Pashtuns backed by Pakistan. They took Kandahar in 1994 and in September 1996 entered Kabul unopposed - Rabbani and Hekmatyar's forces had already fled north.

The Taliban were pushed further south by the US-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. On the international field the Taliban seemed to enjoy playing the part of the pariah. In 1998 the US bombed the southeast in an attempt to flush out terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden. In retaliation a UN official was murdered in Kabul and all UN staff and aid agencies temporarily pulled out of the country. That same year tensions with Iran almost spilled over into war. The Taliban also made themselves infamous by their sadistic repression of women and dissidents as well as their destruction of the country's cultural heritage.

Following terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC in September 2001, the USA and its allies began military operations in Afghanistan to find terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and quash the al-Qaeda terrorist network, allied to the Taliban. The Taliban disbanded, thus ending one of the world's most repressive regimes, although they have since resumed guerilla operations.

Since December 2001 a UN-appointed interim government has brought a thin veneer of stability to the government. With no end in sight to the military operations, and ethnic unrest and banditry a serious problem, the outlook for Afghanistan remains bleak. In September 2002 an assassination attempt was made on President Hamid Karzai, highlighting the country's precarious state of affairs. In January 2004, the Loya Jirga, or Grand Council, adopted a constitution consolidating political power for the president.

The Afghan Wars and Independence
The reign of the Durrani line ended in 1818, and no predominant ruler emerged until Dost Muhammad became emir in 1826. During his rule the status of Afghanistan became an international problem, as Britain and Russia contested for influence in central Asia. Aiming to control access to the northern approaches to India, the British tried to replace Dost Muhammad with a former emir, subordinate to them. This policy caused the first Afghan War (1838–42) between the British and the Afghans. Dost Muhammad was at first deposed but, after an Afghan revolt in Kabul, was restored. In 1857, Dost Muhammad signed an alliance with the British. He died in 1863 and was succeeded, after familial fighting, by his third son, Sher Ali.

As the Russians acquired territory bordering on the Amu Darya, Sher Ali and the British quarreled, and the second Afghan War began (1878). Sher Ali died in 1879. His successor, Yakub Khan, ceded the Khyber Pass and other areas to the British, and after a British envoy was murdered the British occupied Kabul. Eventually Abd ar-Rahman Khan was recognized (1880) as emir. In the following years Afghanistan's borders were more precisely defined. Border agreements were reached with Russia (1885 and 1895), British India (the Durand Agreement, 1893), and Persia (1905). The Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 guaranteed the independence of Afghanistan under British influence in foreign affairs. Abd ar-Rahman Khan died in 1901 and was succeeded by his son Habibullah. Despite British pressure, Afghanistan remained neutral in World War I. Habibullah was assassinated in 1919. His successor, Amanullah, attempting to free himself of British influence, invaded India (1919). This third Afghan War was ended by the Treaty of Rawalpindi, which gave Afghanistan full control over its foreign relations.

Attempts at Modernization and Reform
The attempts of Amanullah (who, after 1926, styled himself king) at Westernization—including reducing the power of the country's religious leaders and increasing the freedom of its women—provoked opposition that led to his deposition in 1929. A tribal leader, Bacha-i Saqao, held Kabul for a few months until defeated by Amanullah's cousin, Muhammad Nadir Khan, who became King Nadir Shah. The new king pursued cautious modernization efforts until he was assassinated in 1933. His son Muhammad Zahir Shah succeeded him. Afghanistan was neutral in World War II; it joined the United Nations in 1946.

When British India was partitioned (1947), Afghanistan wanted the Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province, who had been separated from Afghan's Pashtuns by the Durand Agreement of 1893, to be able to choose whether to join Afghanistan, join Pakistan, or be independent. The Pathans were only offered the choice of joining Pakistan or joining India; they chose the former. In 1955, Afghanistan urged the creation of an autonomous Pathan state, Pushtunistan (Pakhtunistan). The issue subsided in the late 1960s but was revived by Afghanistan in 1972 when Pakistan was weakened by the loss of its eastern wing (now Bangladesh) and the war with India.

In great-power relations, Afghanistan was neutral until the late 1970s, receiving aid from both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the early 1970s the country was beset by serious economic problems, particularly a severe long-term drought in the center and north. Maintaining that King Muhammad Zahir Khan had mishandled the economic crisis and in addition was stifling political reform, a group of young military officers deposed (July, 1973) the king and proclaimed a republic. Lt. Gen. Muhammad Daud Khan, the king's cousin, became president and prime minister. In 1978, Daud was deposed by a group led by Noor Mohammed Taraki, who instituted Marxist reforms and aligned the country more closely with the Soviet Union. In Sept., 1979, Taraki was killed and Hafizullah Amin took power. Shortly thereafter, the USSR sent troops into Afghanistan, Amin was executed, and the Soviet-supported Babrak Karmal became president.

The Afghanistan War and Islamic Fundamentalism
In the late 1970s the government faced increasing popular opposition to its social policies. By 1979 guerrilla opposition forces, popularly called mujahidin (“Islamic warriors”), were active in much of the country, fighting both Soviet forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government. In 1986, Karmal resigned and was replaced by Mohammad Najibullah. The country was devastated by the Afghanistan War (1979–89), which took an enormous human and economic toll. After the Soviet withdrawal, the government steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces. In early 1992, Kabul was captured, and the guerrilla alliance set up a new government consisting of a 50-member ruling council. Burhanuddin Rabbani was named interim president.

The victorious guerrillas proved unable to unite, however, and the forces of guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar launched attacks on the new government. As fighting among various factions continued, Afghanistan was in effect divided into several independent zones, each with its own ruler. Beginning in late 1994 a militia of Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist students, the Taliban, emerged as an increasingly powerful force. In early 1996, as the Taliban continued its attempt to gain control of Afghanistan, Rabbani and Hekmatyar signed a power-sharing accord that made Hekmatyar premier. In September, however, the Taliban captured Kabul and declared themselves the legitimate government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; they imposed a particularly puritanical form of Islamic law in the two thirds of the country they controlled.

In August, 1998, as the Taliban appeared on the verge of taking over the whole country, U.S. missiles destroyed what was described by the Pentagon as an extensive terrorist training complex near Kabul run by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born militant accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In Mar., 1999, a UN-brokered peace agreement was reached between the Taliban and their major remaining foe, the forces of the Northern Alliance, under Ahmed Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik and former mujahidin leader, but fighting broke out again in July. In November, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Afghanistan; this action and the 1998 U.S. missile attacks were related to the Afghani refusal to turn over bin Laden. Additional UN sanctions, including a ban on arms sales to Taliban forces, were imposed in Dec., 2000.

The Taliban controlled some 90% of the country by 2000, but their government was not generally recognized by the international community (the United Nations recognized President Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Northern Alliance). Continued warfare had caused over a million deaths, while 3 million Afghans remained in Pakistan and Iran as refugees. Adding to the nation's woe, a drought in W and central Asia that began in the late 1990s has been most severe in Afghanistan.

In early 2001 the Taliban militia destroyed all statues in the nation, including two ancient giant Buddhas in Bamian, outside Kabul. The destruction was ordered by religious leaders, who regarded the figures as idolatrous and un-Islamic; the action was met with widespread international dismay and condemnation, even from other Islamic nations. In September, in a severe blow to the Northern Alliance, Massoud died as a result of a suicide bomb attack by assassins posing as Arab journalists. Two days after that attack, devastating terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which bin Laden was apparently involved in planning, prompted new demands by U.S. President Bush for his arrest.

When the Taliban refused to hand bin Laden over, the United States launched (October, 2001) attacks against Taliban and Al Qaeda (bin Laden's organization) positions and forces. The United States also began providing financial aid and other assistance to the Northern Alliance and other opposition groups. Assisted by U.S. air strikes, opposition forces ousted Taliban and Al Qaeda forces from Afghanistan's major urban areas in November and December, often aided by the defection of forces allied with the Taliban. Several thousand U.S. troops began entering the country in November, mainly to concentrate on the search for bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and to deal with the remaining pockets of their forces.

In early December a pan-Afghan conference in Bonn, Germany, appointed Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun with ties to the former king, as the nation's interim leader, replacing President Rabbani. By January, 2002, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were largely defeated, although most of their leaders and unknown numbers of their forces remained at large. Fighting continued on a sporadic basis, with occasional real battles, as occurred near Gardez in Mar., 2002. The country itself largely reverted to the control of the regional warlords who held power before the Taliban, and their forces again engaged in fighting each other at times. Britain, Canada, and other NATO nations provided forces for various military, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations. Many other nations also agreed to contribute humanitarian aid; the United Nations estimated that $15 billion would be needed over the next 10 years to rebuild Afghanistan.

The former king, Muhammad Zahir Khan, returned to the country from exile to convene (June, 2002) a loya jirga (a traditional Afghan grand council) to establish a transitional government. Karzai was elected president (for a two-year term), and the king was declared the “father of the nation.” That Karzai and his cabinet face many challenges was confirmed violently in the following months when one of his vice presidents was assassinated and an attempt was made on Karzai's life. Nonetheless, by the end of 2002 the country had achieved a measure of stability. Sporadic, generally small-scale fighting with various guerrillas continued into 2004, particularly in the southeast, with the Taliban appearing to regain some strength and even control in certain districts. There also has been fighting between rival factions in various parts of the country.

Reconstruction has proceeded slowly, and central governmental control outside Kabul remained almost nonexistent. In August, 2003, NATO assumed command of the international security force in the Kabul area. A new constitution was approved in January, 2004, by a loya jirga. It provides for a strong executive presidency and contains some concessions to minorities, but tensions between the dominant Pashtuns and other ethnic groups were evident during the loya jirga. In early 2004 the United States and NATO both announced increases in the number of troops deployed in the country. The U.S. move coincided with new operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, while the NATO forces were slated to be used to provide security and in reconstruction efforts. Some 2.4 million Afghan refugees have repatriated since the overthrow of the Taliban, with most of them returning from Pakistan; some 2 million Afghanis are still refugees.

Early 1896
In the fighting in Kafiristan, the Afghans have captured twenty-five forts at an admitted loss of 1,500 killed and wounded. In some of the valleys, however, the Kafirs still hold out, although many of the chiefs submit to the amir at the beginning of February. Soon after hostilities are resumed on the southern and eastern sides of Kafiristan, and nearly all the fertile portions are taken by the Afghan forces. In May the troops are ordered into the more inaccessible northwestern part, so as to complete the subjugation of the country. The amir treats the conquered people with leniency. Orders are issued forbidding slave traffic in Kafirs, for it was alleged that after the victories in the Bashgal Valley at the beginning of the year certain captives were reduced to an atrocious form of slavery. The amir also gives orders to the Afghan officers to treat the Kafirs kindly, and not seek to convert them by force to Islam.