What Actually Went Wrong In Afghanistan? Made Taliban Come Back On December 24th, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to prop up the faltering communist government they had helped install. Smelling an opportunity to make its ideological enemy bleed, the United States covertly began a process of funding and arming a resistance to the Soviet invasion. The clandestine operation would prove crucial in defeating the Soviet Union's efforts in Afghanistan, and as the Red Army pulled out of the nation in defeat in 1989, Americans cheered their great success. They had no idea that their 'victory' had planted the seeds of America's own defeat just thirty years later. To understand what went wrong in Afghanistan, first one has to understand recent Afghan history. In 1953, Afghanistan's king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, wished to modernize his country. Zahir Shah recognized that he lacked the expertise to lead a major modernization effort, and that his country neede...