🇦🇫 Afghanistan

Urban civilisation is believed to have begun in the region as early as 3000 BCE, with the early city of Mundigak near Kandahar acting as a centre of the Helmand culture. An Indus Valley site was also found at Shortugai on the Oxus River in the north. These settlements place Afghanistan among the earliest zones of farming and urban life in the world.

After 2000 BCE successive waves of semi-nomadic Central Asian peoples, including Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians, moved south into the region then known as Ariana. Many subsequently migrated onward into South Asia, Western Asia and Europe. The movement laid the ethnolinguistic foundations of the later population.

By the middle of the 6th century BCE the Achaemenids overthrew the Medes and absorbed the Afghan regions within their eastern boundaries. An inscription on the tomb of Darius I lists the Kabul Valley among his 29 conquered countries. The region, notably Zoroastrian Arachosia, became a key province of the Persian world.

Alexander entered the region in 330 BCE, a year after the Battle of Gaugamela ended Achaemenid power. His brief occupation opened the region to Hellenistic rule and culture, later expressed through the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms.

After controlling the region following Alexander's occupation, the Seleucids transferred much of it to the Mauryans in 305 BCE as part of an alliance. The Mauryans held the land south of the Hindu Kush until their overthrow around 185 BCE, after which the Greco-Bactrians reconquered it.

The Silk Road appeared during the first century BCE, linking the region with China, India, Persia and the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Khiva. Chinese silk, Persian silver and Roman gold passed through, while Badakhshan lapis lazuli was mined and traded. Trade wealth and cultural exchange became a defining feature of the region.

Centred in Afghanistan from the mid-to-late first century CE, the Kushans became great patrons of Buddhist culture and Buddhism flourished across the region. Their rule ended with the Sassanid conquest in the 3rd century CE, but Buddhist culture persisted in the northeast and south for centuries.

Arab Muslim forces introduced Islam to Herat and Zaranj in 642 CE and spread eastward, with some inhabitants accepting the faith and others revolting. The region had previously hosted a syncretic mix of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. The conquest began the long transformation of Afghanistan into a Muslim society.

Saffarid Muslims from Zaranj conquered the Zunbils and the Kabul Shahi in 870 CE, displacing the Hindu dynasty that had replaced the Buddhist Turk Shahi. The Samanids then extended Islamic influence south of the Hindu Kush, and the Ghaznavids rose in the 10th century.

By the 11th century Mahmud of Ghazni had defeated the remaining Hindu rulers, Islamising the region except Kafiristan. He made Ghazni an important city and patronised scholars such as al-Biruni and the poet Ferdowsi. The Ghaznavid era established Afghanistan as a centre of Islamic power and learning.

The Ghurids toppled the Ghaznavids in 1186 and ruled Afghanistan for less than a century, leaving architectural achievements such as the remote Minaret of Jam. They were in turn conquered by the Khwarazmian dynasty in 1215.

In 1219 CE Mongol forces annihilated the Khwarazmian cities of Herat and Balkh as well as Bamyan. The devastation forced many locals back into an agrarian rural society, reversing centuries of urban development. Mongol rule continued through the Ilkhanate in the northwest.

Timur's invasion ended the fragmented post-Mongol order and founded the Timurid Empire in 1370. Under Shah Rukh, Herat became the focal point of the Timurid Renaissance, a cultural rebirth compared to Florence in the Italian Renaissance.

Arriving from Ferghana in the early 16th century, Babur seized Kabul and went on to defeat the Afghan Lodi dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate at the First Battle of Panipat. Between the 16th and 18th centuries the Uzbek Khanate of Bukhara, the Safavids and the Mughals ruled parts of the territory.

The Ghilzai tribal leader Mirwais Hotak defeated Gurgin Khan, the Safavid governor of Kandahar, in 1709 and established his own kingdom. His death in 1715 was followed by a violent succession within his family. The revolt marked the emergence of independent Afghan political power.

Leading the Afghan army to the Persian capital in 1722, Mahmud took Isfahan after the Battle of Gulnabad and claimed the Persian throne. The Afghan dynasty was ousted from Persia by Nader Shah following the Battle of Damghan in 1729.

In the 1738 siege of Kandahar, Nader Shah took the final Hotak stronghold from Shah Hussain Hotak. Persian and Afghan forces then invaded India and plundered Delhi, with the young Ahmad Shah Durrani serving as a commander. Nader Shah's assassination in 1747 opened the way for Afghan independence.

A loya jirga near Kandahar chose Ahmad Shah as head of state in October 1747 after the collapse of Nader Shah's Afsharid empire, uniting the Pashtun tribes under what is widely regarded as the first Afghan state. At its peak the empire stretched from eastern Iran to northern India.

Ahmad Shah mounted campaigns into Khorasan in 1750–1751 and again in 1754–1755. The expeditions extended Durrani power westward in the empire's formative decades.

The Afghan army under Akbar Khan could not capture the Jamrud Fort from the Sikh Khalsa Army, but killed the Sikh commander Hari Singh Nalwa. The engagement brought the Afghan-Sikh Wars to a close, fixing the eastern limits of Afghan power.

Fateh Khan, leader of the Barakzai tribe, had installed his brothers throughout the empire before being brutally murdered in 1818. His brothers and the Barakzai rebelled, and Afghanistan fractured into warring polities including the Principality of Qandahar, the Emirate of Herat and the Khanate of Qunduz. The most prominent survivor was the Emirate of Kabul under Dost Mohammad Khan.

The term Afghanistan was officially used in 1855 when the British recognised Dost Mohammad Khan as king of Afghanistan. The recognition gave the state its enduring name and a measure of external legitimacy amid Anglo-Russian rivalry.

The country's first newspaper appeared in 1873, the beginning of an Afghan print press that now numbers hundreds of outlets. Radio Television Afghanistan originated in 1925 and Radio Kabul was broadcasting local services by the 1920s.

The politically independent Hazara-dominated Hazaristan and pagan Kafiristan were subdued by Abdur Rahman between 1891 and 1896. Known as the "Iron Amir" for his ruthless methods against tribes, he centralised control over the whole territory. He died in 1901 and was succeeded by his son Habibullah Khan.

In 1893 Abdur Rahman signed an agreement dividing the ethnic Pashtun and Baloch territories along the Durand Line. The line forms the modern-day border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and has remained a persistent source of dispute.

During the First World War the Central Powers approached Habibullah Khan through the Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition, urging Afghanistan to declare independence from Britain and attack British India as part of the Hindu–German Conspiracy. The effort failed but sparked domestic discontent about neutrality. Habibullah was assassinated in February 1919.

After assuming power following Habibullah's assassination in February 1919, Amanullah Khan entered British India via the Khyber Pass. The war ended foreign political hegemony over Afghanistan's external affairs.

After King Amanullah Khan's forces fought the British to a stalemate in the third Anglo-Afghan war, the Treaty of Rawalpindi of 19 August 1919 ended British control over Afghan foreign policy, and Amanullah declared the Emirate of Afghanistan a sovereign and fully independent state. He ended traditional isolation by establishing diplomatic relations, notably with the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic. Afghans mark 19 August as Independence Day.

A Treaty of Friendship was signed with the Soviet Union in 1921, and renewed in 1978. The Soviet relationship brought extensive aid and military training to Afghanistan's forces over subsequent decades.

Article 68 of the 1923 constitution, championed by Mahmud Tarzi, implemented compulsory elementary education, and slavery was abolished the same year. Queen Soraya was a leading figure in the campaign for women's education. These reforms marked the first systematic attempt at state-led modernisation.

On 9 June 1926 Amanullah Khan took the title King of Afghanistan, converting the emirate into a kingdom. The monarchy he created lasted almost half a century.

Reforms such as the abolition of the burqa and co-educational schools alienated tribal and religious leaders, provoking civil war. King Amanullah abdicated in January 1929 and Kabul fell to Saqqawist forces under Habibullah Kalakani. The episode showed the limits of rapid social reform in Afghanistan.

Amanullah's cousin Nadir Shah killed Habibullah Kalakani in October 1929 and took the throne. He abandoned Amanullah's reforms for a more gradual approach to modernisation. He was assassinated in 1933 by Abdul Khaliq.

The 1930s saw significant development of roads and infrastructure, the founding of a national bank and increased education provision. Road links in the north underpinned a growing cotton and textile industry. The decade laid the foundations of a modern national economy.

Zahir Shah reigned as king from 1933 to 1973, pursuing national independence and gradual modernisation while improving relations with the United Kingdom. His long reign delivered the country's most stable modern period before the upheavals of the 1970s.

Afghanistan became a member of the League of Nations in 1934, formalising its place in the international system after independence. The step accompanied broader engagement with foreign powers, notably Nazi Germany, which held the largest share in Afghan development at the time.

Tribesmen led by Mazrak Zadran, Salemai and the Faqir of Ipi, many of them Amanullah loyalists, rose against King Zahir's reign. The revolts tested the monarchy's authority over the peripheral tribal areas.

Afghanistan joined the United Nations in 1946, securing recognised standing in the post-war international order. Membership later underpinned disputes over which authority holds the country's UN seat.

Until 1946 King Zahir ruled with the assistance of an uncle who continued Nadir Shah's policies. Shah Mahmud Khan took the premiership in 1946 and allowed greater political liberty, a first opening of the political system.

A friendship treaty concluded with India in 1950 established one of Afghanistan's enduring bilateral relationships. It sat alongside close ties with Germany and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan's foreign policy.

Daoud Khan replaced Shah Mahmud Khan as prime minister in 1953, pursuing a Pashtun nationalist agenda that produced highly tense relations with Pakistan. He pushed social modernisation reforms and sought closer ties with the Soviet Union, deepening Afghan dependence on Soviet aid.

From the late 1960s Afghanistan attracted many European and American travellers on the hippie trail. Tourism peaked in 1977, the year before the onset of political instability and armed conflict.

Completed in 1964, the Salang Tunnel forms a key portion of the Ring Road and allows travel through the Hindu Kush, connecting northern and southern Afghanistan. It remains a critical piece of national transport infrastructure.

The 1964 constitution was promulgated and the first prime minister from outside the royal family was sworn in. It represented the monarchy's furthest step towards constitutional government, and Taliban planners later cited an amended version of it as a possible framework.

Daoud, a former prime minister, deposed his cousin King Zahir Shah on 17 July 1973 while the king was abroad, declaring Afghanistan a republic with himself as president. His government was overthrown and he was killed in the 1978 Saur Revolution.

PDPA officers overthrew and killed President Mohammed Daoud Khan on 28 April 1978, establishing a Marxist–Leninist government under Nur Muhammad Taraki. Land and social reforms provoked rural unrest that grew into an insurgency, prompting the Soviet invasion the following year.

By 1979 opposition to PDPA rule had grown into countrywide guerrilla war waged by mujahideen and smaller Maoist groups. Pakistan provided covert training centres, the United States supported the rebels through the ISI, and the Soviet Union sent thousands of military advisers to the regime. The conflict became a Cold War proxy war.

The total population was reported at about 15.5 million in 1979, before civil war drove millions abroad in the 1980s. Returning refugees produced rapid growth in the 2000s; by 2024 the national statistics authority estimated 35.7 million while the UN estimated over 42 million. Afghanistan was the world's largest refugee-producing country for 32 years as of 2013.

Prime minister Hafizullah Amin orchestrated Taraki's assassination in October 1979 and became PDPA general secretary. Conditions deteriorated sharply under Amin and thousands of people went missing, prompting Soviet dissatisfaction.

Displeased with Hafizullah Amin, Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in late December 1979, took Kabul and killed him, installing Babrak Karmal at the head of a regime including both PDPA factions and beginning a nine-year war against US, Pakistani and Saudi-backed mujahideen insurgents. Estimates of Afghan deaths range from 562,000 to 2 million, with about 6 million displaced, mainly to Pakistan and Iran; casualty figures remain disputed. Bombardment destroyed villages and damaged Herat and Kandahar, and millions of landmines were laid.

The last Soviet troops crossed the Amu Darya river on 15 February 1989, ending a nine-year occupation that had propped up the communist government against Western and Pakistani-backed mujahideen forces. The war militarised Afghan society, shifting power from clergy, elders and intelligentsia to warlords for decades thereafter, and civil war continued after the withdrawal; the Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah survived until 1992.

Rising temperatures destroyed nearly a seventh of Afghanistan's glaciers between 1990 and 2015, increasing the risk of glacial lake outburst floods. Climate change could displace an additional 5 million people within Afghanistan by 2050.

A Pakistani airstrike destroyed the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul on 16 March 2026, during the Afghanistan–Pakistan war. The UN mission in Afghanistan put the death toll at 269 or more and Afghan officials at 408; Human Rights Watch called it a possible war crime, while Pakistan denied deliberately targeting the hospital.

Uzbekistan's president decreed procedures on 4 February 2026 to begin a joint feasibility study with Afghan and Pakistani authorities for a proposed 573-kilometre railway linking Tashkent to Peshawar via Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul. The three countries had signed a framework agreement for the project, estimated to cost around $4.8 billion, in Kabul in July 2025.

Pakistani airstrikes on suspected militant camps in eastern Afghanistan on 21 February 2026 killed at least 18 people. Five days later Taliban forces attacked Pakistani border posts and Pakistan's defence minister declared open war, launching a campaign of strikes that reached Kabul, Kandahar and Bagram Airfield.

A man convicted of killing 13 members of a single family was shot dead in front of spectators in Khost on 2 December 2025. It was among a series of public executions the Taliban have carried out since returning to power in 2021.

On 6 December 2025 Australia sanctioned four officials, including the minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice and the chief justice, and imposed a weapons embargo, citing human rights violations against women.

The resolution, issued in December 2025, barred Afghans from carrying out attacks in other countries and was welcomed by Pakistan. Pakistani scholars responded with their own statement urging both governments to resolve their disputes through dialogue rather than force.

Afghanistan's exports increased in October 2025 even as fighting shut the main border crossings with Pakistan, the World Bank said, attributing the rise to higher shipments to India and Uzbekistan. Thousands of trucks had been stranded at crossings including Torkham during the closures.

Explosions in Kabul on 9 October 2025 were followed by cross-border airstrikes, including Pakistani strikes on the capital, and Taliban attacks that killed at least 23 Pakistani soldiers. A truce mediated by Qatar and Turkey took effect on 19 October, though follow-up talks in Istanbul later broke down.

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck Kunar province on 31 August 2025, killing more than 2,200 people and injuring thousands more. The United Nations appealed for emergency funding on 5 September, and a further earthquake killed at least 31 people in Samangan province in November 2025.

The Taliban supreme leader extended a fibre-optic ban rolled out province by province from mid-September to a nationwide shutdown of internet and mobile networks on 29 September 2025, citing efforts to prevent immorality. Access was restored on 1 October after businesses and banks reported heavy losses.

A decree of 15 August 2025 dropped the description of the Taliban administration as interim, with all ministers confirmed on a permanent rather than acting basis. The move formalised the structure of the Islamic Emirate four years after the fall of Kabul.

As of July 2025 only Russia had recognised the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the de jure government. Afghanistan otherwise remains diplomatically isolated, ranking among the lowest in the world in the V-Dem democracy indices as a closed autocracy.

In January 2025 the ICC issued two warrants against Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief judge Abdul Hakim Haqqani for crimes against humanity. The charges concern the persecution of Afghan women and girls since 2021 and the brutal suppression of opposition through murder, imprisonment, torture and sexual violence.

Over 17 million people, one-third of the population, require urgent food assistance in one of the world's most severe hunger crises. It is driven by persistent drought, economic collapse and massive refugee returns, with over 4.9 million children and women needing malnutrition treatment.

On 10 November 2024 the Foreign Ministry confirmed Taliban representatives would attend the climate conference, the first Afghan participation since the Taliban's return to power. The country had been barred from previous summits owing to the lack of global recognition of the regime.

On 16 September 2024 the Taliban halted polio vaccination campaigns, according to the United Nations. The suspension posed a significant risk to global polio eradication efforts as well as to Afghan public health.

A UN report in November 2023 found poppy cultivation across Afghanistan had fallen by more than 95%, removing the country from its position as the world's largest opium producer. A 2023 report had already found an 80% reduction in the south, driven partly by systematic suppression of water pumping. The change transformed a mainstay of the illicit rural economy.

In October 2023 the Pakistani government ordered Afghans expelled and Iran also decided to deport Afghan nationals, moves Taliban authorities condemned as an "inhuman act". In May 2025 Iran ordered the mass deportation of an estimated 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees. Massive refugee returns have helped drive the 2025–2026 hunger crisis.

The earthquake of 7 October 2023 northwest of Herat killed over 1,400 people. It compounded the humanitarian crisis Afghanistan faced in late 2023.

In September 2023 the Taliban concluded contracts for gold, iron, lead and zinc extraction in Herat, Ghor, Logar and Takhar provinces. The deals marked an attempt to build state revenue from mineral wealth amid frozen foreign assets. In 2023 the Afghan economy began showing signs of revival, with the afghani the world's best performing currency in the third quarter.

Afghanistan had become the world's top producer of cannabis in 2010, but production was outlawed by a Taliban decree in March 2023. The ban formed part of a wider narcotics suppression drive alongside the campaign against opium poppy.

The June 2022 earthquake killed at least 1,150 people and raised fears of a major humanitarian crisis. It struck a country already facing famine risk and suspended international aid.

From May 2022 all women in Afghanistan were legally required to wear a burqa or an abaya with niqāb in public. The same month the Taliban dissolved the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission and four other departments, citing the budget deficit.

On 20 September 2021 UN Secretary-General António Guterres received a letter from acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi seeking the country's UN seat for spokesman Suhail Shaheen in Doha. The United Nations had not recognised the previous Taliban government and chose to work with the government-in-exile instead.

Hasan Akhund, one of the four founders of the Taliban, became acting prime minister on 7 September 2021 under supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, in an appointment seen as a compromise between moderates and hardliners. A new all-male cabinet included Abdul Hakim Haqqani as minister of justice.

On 17 August 2021 first vice president Amrullah Saleh declared himself caretaker president and announced a resistance front of a reported 6,000-plus troops in the Panjshir Valley. By 6 September the Taliban controlled most of Panjshir Province and clashes ceased in mid-September. Armed conflict nevertheless persists between the Taliban, Islamic State–Khorasan and a Republican insurgency.

After the 2021 takeover it became unclear to what extent female education would continue. In March 2022 it was announced that secondary education would reopen shortly after a period of closure, and by November 2024 some parts of the country allowed women to attend religious schools for dentistry, nursing and other subjects. Literacy stood at 43.02% overall in 2018, with only 29.81% among women.

Following the August 2021 takeover, Western states suspended most humanitarian aid while the World Bank and IMF halted payments, and the United States froze about $9 billion of Afghan central bank assets. More than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced acute food shortage by October 2021, and Human Rights Watch reported widespread famine risk on 11 November 2021.

Taliban fighters entered Kabul on 15 August 2021 without resistance as President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, completing a rapid offensive that followed the withdrawal of US and NATO troops. The Taliban declared the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The agreement of 19 February 2020 was a critical event in the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces. Following its signing the US sharply reduced air attacks, depriving Afghan forces of a decisive edge against the Taliban insurgency and leading to the fall of Kabul.

On 28 December 2014 NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government, standing up Resolute Support the same day. Thousands of NATO troops remained to train and advise Afghan forces.

Ghani took office in September 2014 following the presidential election, the first time in Afghanistan's history that power was democratically transferred. The milestone was a central claim of the republic's legitimacy.

The 2012 agreement designated Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally of the United States. The qualification was rescinded by President Joe Biden in July 2022 after the Taliban takeover.

In 2011 Afghanistan contracted the China National Petroleum Corporation to develop three oil fields along the Amu Darya river in the north. The USGS had estimated in 2006 that northern Afghanistan held some 460 million cubic metres of crude oil and 440 billion cubic metres of natural gas.

NATO troop numbers in Afghanistan reached 140,000 in 2011 before falling to about 16,000 by 2018. A report titled Body Count concluded that 106,000–170,000 civilians had been killed in the fighting by all parties.

Hamid Karzai won a second term in the August 2009 presidential election, an outcome marred by widespread allegations of fraud but confirmed after his opponent withdrew from a planned run-off.

According to the World Bank, rural access to electricity rose from 28% in 2008 to 98% in 2018. As of 2016 the country produced 1,400 megawatts but still imported most of its electricity from Iran and Central Asian states, with the CASA-1000 project and TAPI pipeline under development.

The $3 billion lease agreed in 2007 was the biggest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan's history. It signalled the strategic value of the country's mineral wealth, later estimated by US and Afghan officials in 2010 at at least $1 trillion in untapped deposits located by the US Geological Survey in 2007.

Despite gains toward building a stable central government, a resurgent Taliban and continuing provincial instability, particularly in the south and the east, remained serious challenges for the Afghan Government from the mid-2000s onward.

Following the presidential election held under the new constitution, Hamid Karzai was inaugurated in December 2004 as Afghanistan's first democratically elected head of state.

Delegates adopted a new constitution in January 2004 creating a presidential Islamic republic with equal rights for men and women, following the 2001 fall of the Taliban and the Bonn Agreement. Hamid Karzai was elected president later that year in Afghanistan's first direct presidential election.

Press controls were gradually relaxed and private media diversified from 2002, after more than two decades of tight controls. The country now has around 350 radio stations and over 200 television stations, including private channels such as TOLO and Shamshad TV.

Following 2002, nearly five million Afghans were repatriated, and more than 5.7 million refugees returned after the 2001 invasion. The influx drove rapid urbanisation, particularly in Kabul, and the return of over 5 million expatriates in 2010 brought entrepreneurship and capital.

Following the Taliban's overthrow, an interim administration under Hamid Karzai was created in December 2001 and the UN Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force to provide basic security. Afghanistan then had among the world's highest infant and child mortality rates, the lowest life expectancy and ruined infrastructure. Foreign donors began funding reconstruction as the Taliban launched an insurgency.

The Bonn Conference of December 2001 set out a roadmap for rebuilding Afghan political institutions, including the adoption of a new constitution in January 2004, a presidential election in 2004 and National Assembly elections in 2005.

After the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in al-Qaeda's 11 September attacks on the United States, a US-led coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001, bombing al-Qaeda training camps and working with the Northern Alliance to remove the Taliban from power within weeks. The majority of Afghans supported the invasion. Taliban leaders and fighters retreated to Pakistan and rural areas, later regrouping as an insurgency in a war that lasted until 2021.

Massoud, the Northern Alliance's leading commander, was killed on 9 September 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks. Around 400,000 Afghans died in internal conflicts between 1990 and 2001.

Virtually non-existent by 2001 after years of civil war, the telecoms sector had grown by 2016 to a $2 billion industry with 22 million mobile subscribers and 5 million internet users. More than $1.5 billion in telecom investment since 2003 created over 100,000 jobs, and the sector employs at least 120,000 people nationwide.

After Kabul fell, Massoud and Dostum created the Northern Alliance, later joined by others. Dostum's forces were defeated at the Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997 and 1998 as Pakistan sent thousands of militants to aid the Taliban. By 2000 the Alliance held only 10% of the territory in the northeast.

Taliban forces expelled Rabbani's government and took the capital on 27 September 1996 during the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, proclaiming an Islamic Emirate that only three countries ever recognised before its fall in 2001. They imposed strict Islamic law, barring girls and women from most education and employment, and were condemned internationally for massacres, denial of UN food supplies to starving civilians and scorched-earth policies.

The Taliban appeared in September 1994 as a movement of students from Islamic madrassas in Pakistan, soon gaining Pakistani military support. They took control of Kandahar city that year and pressed on to conquer further territory.

The communist regime under Mohammad Najibullah fell in 1992 and the Peshawar Accord established the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The accord could not hold, and a second civil war broke out between mujahideen factions amid anarchy, widespread rape, murder and extortion. Kabul was heavily bombarded and partially destroyed.