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Now that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have reconsolidated in Waziristan (the porous border-area between Pakistan and Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding out, and where Musharraf's Pakistani government has next-to-nothing control [in fact, he is supposed to have made some form of hands-off deal with tribal leaders in that region]), it might not be a bad idea to take a quick cruise through a (not too) recent history of Afghanistan induced first by the British, then the (now defunct) Soviet Union, and now by the US in the neglected so-called war on terror, distracted by a useless Iraq war, thanks to George W. Bush, useless and expensive (in terms of American and Iraqi lives and also of money--$2 billion a week, according to one estmate). In recent years, numerous arguments have been made in television, online, and print media about the fact that the Bush administration became distracted by the real war on terror in Afghanistan and Waziristan, too numerous, in fact, to be repeated and/or linked here.

So now by all means please join me on this quick cruise, where we'll have a primer (on deck, so to speak) to bring us up to speed about this country that even Genghis Khan could not conquer, and that more or less flummoxed the hapless Soviets in their almost decade-long escapade, and where, some have argued, began the process of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1949: (Waziristan was an autonomous region in the first place between Pakistan and Afghanistan, home of the Pashtun tribe. ) But in 1949, the British forced the then Afghan ruling entity, known as the loya jirga, to draw the so-called Durand Line, an international boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that then divided the Pashtun tribe between the two countries. Therein lies the historical origin of the troubled region from the get-go, an artificial and ineffective boundary that, interestingly enough, still exists as we type on this keyboard.

1979: The Soviet Union occupies Afghanistan, inaugurating a 9-year somewhat misnamed "Soviet-Afghan War."

1980: Soviet troops install a puppet regime in Kabul. The US, Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, offer support to various Mujahideen , or Islamic anticommunist resistance groups, as they begin a guerrilla war against Soviet forces. The war becomes a steady drain on Soviet resources and saps the morale of its soldiers. Many observers compare the Soviet Union's experience of Afghanistan to the U.S. experience in Vietnam. In fact, in my opinion, the Soviet invasion begins the end of the cold war. But my point here is that the US sank a lot of money and equipment helping and arming the Mujahideen.

1988-1989: All Soviet troops are withdrawn.

1992: Mujahideen resistance forces finally remove the Soviet-installed regime from power, leaving rival militias to vie for influence in its wake.

1993: Mujahideen factions agree on the formation of a government with Burhanuddin Rabbani installed as president, but factional infighting continues.

1994: The Taliban emerges as the strongest faction of the Muslim Afghan Mujahideen rebels.

1996: The Taliban seize control of Kabul and implement the Sharia, the fundamentalist Islamic law, barring women from work and education. Islamic punishment is introduced including amputation and death by stoning.

1996: Taliban militia offers exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden refuge in Afghanistan.

1998: The U.S. launches missiles at suspected bases of Osama bin Laden, whom the US has accused of bombing two of its embassies in Africa. The Taliban also blow up the Buddhas in Bamiyan. (H/T to GregB and SanderO)

November 1999: The UN. imposes an air embargo and freezes Taliban assets in an attempt to force the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial.

2000-2001: Record cold, drought and civil war push an estimated 200,000 Afghans into refugee camps, many of them in Pakistan.

July 13, 2001: Taliban authorities ban use of the Internet to stop access to material deemed vulgar, immoral and anti-Islamic.

July 19, 2001: Taliban authorities ban playing cards, computer discs, movies, satellite TV dishes, musical instruments, cassettes and chessboards, after declaring them "against the Sharia."

September 12, 2001: A day after the September 11 events, the Taliban condemns the hijacking attacks against the United States and urges the US not to attack them in retaliation, saying the Afghan people are already in a great deal of misery.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Except we're now experiencing a living history (but for real and not at all in classrooms) of Afghanistan in 2008!

March 20, 2003: George W. Bush stubbornly decides to deploy thousands of troops to Iraq, when his administration could have confined this living history lesson within US classrooms instead of exposing it to the killing (of mostly American lives) fields and deserts of Iraq--and of Afghanistan.

And now, alas, sadly, our quick cruise must come to an end.

(Biodun Iginla)