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Afghanistan: A mujahideen mortar position in Kunar Province, 1987. Photo by Erwin Lux (CC BY-SA 3.0 License)

The Soviet War in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the indigenous Afghan Mujahideen and foreign ‘Arab–Afghan’ volunteers. The mujahideen found other support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Egypt, China and other nations. The Afghan war became a proxy war in the broader context of the late Cold War. The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979 under Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.