A Brief History of Afghanistan

For centuries Afghanistan was able to maintain its unofficial policy of political isolation, aided by its sparse population and remote geography. Slowly, however, worldwide economic and cultural changes could no longer be shut out. At the end of the 20th century, after a protracted civil war, the capital and most of the nation's provinces were under the control of the rigidly fundamentalist Taliban. A Brief History of Afghanistan, Second Edition examines how this once isolated country became …